#inktober2019 challenge ended yesterday. I made it to the end! In the waning days I tried out a few other techniques and subjects, including sports figures. Enjoy!
Now I am pondering ways to incorporate some of my favorite drawings into new projects. At the least, I hope to print a few greeting cards for friends and family.
A few months ago, I blogged about working with black yarn. https://dailyfiberfun.wordpress.com/2019/03/09/black-yarn/
After months of fiddling around with the luxury blend, coal colored yarn my daughter gave me, I finally settled into a shawl design. Fellow blogger Deb Gemmell has unvented an improvement to the basic triangle shawl which she calls Wedges Shawl. Her goal is to increase the length of the shawl ends without making the body section excessively long. You can read about it on her blog: https://wordpress.com/read/blogs/135503248/posts/1913
I thought I would give this concept a try. I started out normally, with a garter tab cast on. After increasing four stitches every other row for awhile, I began to insert wedge-shaped sections. These are created with short rows. To make a nice contrast with the black yarn, I chose a beige singles yarn and used the classic eyelet pattern of k2tog, yo. I also tossed in a couple sections of garter lace pattern with the black yarn.
After I worked up about 290 stitches, I switched back to the black yarn for one more eyelet row and bound off. Here is a blocked shawl.
It came out rather well. With such neutral colors, it should be a versatile addition to my winter wardrobe. Thank you, Deb, for your improvement!
Her patterns can be found on Ravelry: https://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/wedges-shawl
Here are my drawings from the Inktober prompts for Days 21 through 26. This week I wanted to work on improving my technique.
The prompt was Treasure. I thought about the great treasures of our material culture, specifically art and the artists that created it. My portrait comes from Georgia O’Keeffe’s autobiography. In this scene she is blind and over 90 years old. The techniques I worked on here were ink washes, shadows and stippling. Also, this image allowed me to practice drawing faces and hands – both are considered challenging subjects for artists of all kinds.
After working on the O’Keeffe, my mind was lingering on Santa Fe. For the next prompt, I drew a ghost in the Loretto Chapel. Lots of line work here, as I focus on rendering architectural detail and dim lighting.
More artwork: sculptures from ancient times. I practiced stippling and the night sky.
The prompt was dizzy. As one who suffers occasional episodes of acrophobia, I chose to face my fear and draw from the dizzying perspective of a high overlook. It was a challenge to get the perspectives right on the suspension bridges.
I was keen to draw some more birds. So I took advantage of the prompt Tasty and drew a momma bird feeding her chicks.
That’s all for now. Only a few days left in Inktober. I am looking forward to getting back to fiber arts, especially sewing. I have many ideas for quilted gifts.
Since I am basically a beginner at this, I consider all of my drawing experiments. But this week, I decided to adopt a more playful approach.
Overgrown: Playing around with ink wash.
Legend: Nessie show herself.
Wild: Drawing the young jaguar that I appliqued earlier this year.
Ornament: Comic book style.
Misfit: Who invited that bird into our flock?
Sling: The challenge of drawing a fishing net.
More fun next week.
If you are a knitter, you may have been asked if you sell your knitting. Or maybe a friend offered to pay you to knit her a sweater. This happens to me from time to time, and I’m never truly satisfied with the answer I give – which is always no.
First of all, there is the pain of telling someone no. Then there is the disappointment on the friend’s face. Then, in a effort to soften the “no,” my somewhat lengthy and awkward explanation: the high price of quality yarn, the large amount of time required to knit a sweater, the difficulty in setting a price. But the truth of the matter is this: the market value of a sweater is always much less than the value of time and materials that the knitter spends on creating it. Simple fact.
Truly I am in the knit-for-love camp. The photograph above is an example of my pay-off. When the image arrived from my son-in-law this morning, I felt my heart melt and tears begin to accumulate in my eyes. This is the ultimate reward.
Knitters, are you like this? You offer to knit a garment for a loved one. You take careful measurements. You ask her about favorite colors and what she likes to wear. Then, as you work your stitches, you think about the recipient. You wonder if the neckline will lay flat and if the sleeves will hit her wrist at the exact spot you had planned it to. You think about the moment your gift arrives. You imagine her wearing it. This piece of knitting has now become imprinted with all your intentions, your hope for your friend’s future and love you feel for her.
No amount of money can buy this feeling. And I never expected that it could.
Daily Fiber 