Winter Knitting

I don't know if this scarf is technically winter knitting - I don't remember when I started it or when I finished it. It was approximately last fall into winter, so I'll say it counts.

The sweater below was started and finished this winter. It's for Cindy's birthday, which is tomorrow. I have to say a few words about this sweater. It's knit in a beautiful Noro yarn that I saw at the yarn store in Rockport, Maine when we went on the last knitting cruise. I ordered five skeins online. Every skein had at least one knot, and the pattern was broken at the knots. So I carefully took apart all the skeins and wrote down the colors of each piece, and I was able to get the front and back to repeat the pattern continuously (though they did not match). Then with what was left, I arranged the sleeves to look approximately the same and more or less continuous. I only had a few feet of yarn left when the sweater was finished. It was tricky, but the result is just what I wanted. I sure hope my girl likes it.

Finally here is a red scarf. I thought winter would surely be over by the time I finished it, which was a couple of weeks ago. No such luck. A few words about this scarf, and the orange one above. They are knitted along the long edge on circular needles, always starting at the same side, leaving enough at each end for a six inch fringe. Fringes are knotted together every four rows. Every other stitch is slipped purlwise with yarn forward, alternating slipped stitches on alternate rows. It's called linen stitch, and it's very easy, though it looks bad if you accidentally slip the stitch with the yarn back. Also impossible to fix if you get out of sync with the slipped stitches. Then it has to be un-knitted. I used leftover sock yarn and very small needles for both scarves, casting on 450 stitches.

Finally, a Quilt

I started this quilt who knows when. The last project of my own that I was working on in the Coastal Quilt Artists group at Bobbie Sullivan's house was the Sunset Watercolor quilt (which I finished at the very end of the 2011 UFO challenge). That was about ten years ago. I had a lot of leftover blocks, and I arranged them into sixteen 16-patch blocks. At some point further on in time, I arranged the blocks as you see here and added the border using an artistic whole-cloth batik print. Then as usual the top sat around for a while. Eventually I partially quilted it and put the binding on it - last year sometime - and last weekend I finished the quilting and added a label. It is for Cathy, and I named it Sunset Colors 16-patch. (The original Sunset Watercolor quilt is meant for Cindy, but it still needs a sleeve to hang on the wall - after two years finished - sigh.)

A few more boxes

I had made this box to give to Arthur's mom, but unwisely tried to transport it folded into a box. I could have taken it apart and flattened the units. But I didn't, and two of the sides were torn, so I made her a different box when I got to Denmark. I found the torn bits a few days ago and replaced them. The top is pastel and the bottom is deep colors. Below the box is upside down.

I made a couple of boxes for my professors at the end of last year. This one was for the conservative one, so I used conservative colors.

This one has colors that remind me of Mexico. My final project for this professor's class was on credit alternatives in Mexico.

Origami Wrap Up

I started this origami quilt over five years ago. At the same time, I had made another one for the UUAC auction. Long time in the works, on my list to finish all that time. So much for the list. All I needed was a few days off, and nothing to supersede it in the pecking order of UFOs.

Here is the dual, a bit more cheerful with red joints instead of purple ones. But the red paper fades, and the purple is my own paper that I made at Origamido studio.

I had a few stars left over, joined with regular gray and gold origami paper. The stars themselves are cut from large sheets of paper that I buy wherever I can find it.

Tie-dyed towels reprise

This year I have again made towels as Christmas presents for the Everett family nieces and nephews (and my kids). Two years ago I made these towels for the same kids, so I decided to use a spiral pattern this time.

This series of tie-dyed towels used eight different colors (with some slight variations). They were lemon yellow, fire red, baby pink, fuchsia, lime green, emerald green, sky blue and sapphire blue. Each towel had six of these colors front and back, with the colors offset by one on the reverse side.

 

I made these first, to use up whatever dye I had left from before. These spirals had light colors on one side and dark colors on the other side, more or less. I tried to pair the colors the same way across all of the towels. Light colors include lemon yellow, golden yellow, bright orange, jungle red, baby pink, lilac, lime green, kelly green, turquoise, sky blue, and a color similar to fuchsia called "dragon juice." Dark colors include forest green, chocolate brown, violet, sapphire blue, teal green, and some turquoise and dragon juice to contrast with some of the lighter light colors.

Bargue drawing

Today my instructor said I was finished with this drawing. It is a copy of a drawing by the 19th century artist Charles Bargue, from a series of drawings he made for the instructional method that bears his name. This is a milestone for me. Level I at the art school I attend part-time requires four such drawings, and this is my fourth one. It is a drawing of the Belvedere Torso, which I saw this summer at the Vatican Museum.
I started taking classes part time at the Academy of Realist Art in Boston just about three years ago. I've also drawn a series of live models in a different strand of the program, but for the last two terms I've focused on finishing this drawing so I can move up to the next level, which is drawing and painting from 3-D casts.

Someday I'll work on quilts again

But for now I'll just elevate my obsessive sorting of origami paper to blog status.