oh yeah, now i remember...

...this blog used to occasionally contain some artwork. Yeah, yeah, now I remember.

I apologize for the intense lack of, well....anything. There have been computer woes, and Dooley woes (another scratch on his eyeball) and just a general sense of woe. Not sure what my problem is but its been a bit on the annoying side so I figured no one wanted to listen to it.

Luckily boredom overcame me today and I finally did some stuff. The thing that was highest on my list of creative endeavors is getting some artwork made for selling. Which meant I had to deal with this:

That's the fabric I printed during Fabrications. Yes, its taken me this long to get around to washing it out. Apparently I was in no gigantic rush.

There was soaking in buckets:



Spraying obsessively to get the devil red dye to quit running:



And a couple hours later I had a washed and dried pile of artwork that was staring at me with great expectation:


I'm a huge fan of printed fabric, especially this type that produces short and sweet series of original prints. But I often find that they lack a focal point. I know many an artist is content with the product as an end result but I tend to treat them more as a base. So I pulled out half yard and chopped them all apart into individual pieces:


When I printed these I intended them to all stand alone as individual pieces. But seeing as how I'm almost as allergic to white as I am to pink, I set about filling in those spaces first:


And then I stared at it. And decided it needed more printing. So I did this:


Aaaaaaaaannnnnnddddd then I stared at it some more. It stared back.

And now I'm in the living room. Not quite sure what the next step is. I almost don't want to stitch on these but not sure yet. I know how they will be displayed and I'm satisfied with where I'm at with them so far but they've gotten stubborn. Good thing I have a separate studio, they can hang out there until I decide what to do with them.

It would seem these days that my studio is for the fabric and the coffee table downstairs is for the yarn. The onset of the cold weather has my knitting needles clicking away. I actually finished something:


This is the Simple Yet Effective Shawl. (Haven't blocked it yet. But I don't expect it to grow much since there is so much garter stitch in it.)

It surprised me in how much I enjoyed knitting a triangle. It was super simple but changed just enough to make it fun. (Although I did sit and mumble one day "Evil thy name is yarn over" to which my mother just glanced at me sideways and kept moving. This pattern has four increases (yarn overs) every other row and let me tell you, by the time you are to the end of it, you'll be happy that you chose needles with a 60" cable.) I liked this pattern so much that I'd like to knit it again. But next time I'll make it bigger. This will be a good neck scarf but even for that, it will be a bit stumpy.

I've been trolling around on Ravelry a lot lately searching for other patterns like the shawl. I have quite a bit of sock yarn but for whatever reason, I knit socks at the speed of mud. I do, however, knit lace fairly quickly. Which seems odd but there you have it. And luckily a lot of lace patterns use sock weight yarn.

One of my favorite things about Ravelry is that you get to see the variations that people put on existing patterns. It really sparks the imagination. Which is exactly what happened when I came across Through the Loops' version of Wisp. I immediately hobbled upstairs (we are having some back issues again) and dug around in my stash.

I pulled two coordinating skeins of Blue Moon Fiber's Socks that Rock. One skein is a little short on the yardage side for this project so I'm going to do the two repeats on each end in one color and the body of it in the another. (I'd tell you the colorways but someone lost the bands to these skeins. Whoever did that was a dumbo.)

Here's the beginning:


And the lace detail:



This bugger is going to stretch out to Denver when I block it. Can't wait.

I queued up enough other projects on Ravelry (I'm redheadknitter75 if you'd like to be buddies) to keep me busy for a couple years.

Dooely has found my moving about today bothersome, its disturbing his twenty hours of naptime. I even pointed the camera at him and he didn't budge:



Can't blame little man, he's not feeling so well. He's getting over a double ear infection and a second run at a scratched eyeball. He tends to cling like plastic wrap when he's feeling lousy, can't say that I blame him.

So that's my thrilling life. I think part of my problem is that I'm fighting a cold too, makes me want to follow Dooley's cue and just curl up on the sofa. Hopefully that all passes soon. In the meantime, I'm going to go knit...