Dreamscapes

Creative day 6 already:)

Today, after a good nights sleep, I felt much more up to tackling yesterday's rainbow challenge - as this mini knit is now being called!  As a bonus, the sun came out adding the feel good factor so I indulged in sitting in the garden knitting and writing my own version of the pattern. As this pretty much took most of the afternoon and is a pretty boring process to photograph, I thought I'd show you an afternoon's colour sketching I've been working on instead and save the rainbow bag for later on this week. Sound ok to you?  Cool :)

The idea behind this sketch was freeform drawing to music. I wanted to loosen up and not be so precious and considered in my way of working and see what happened. So no structure of composition beforehand, no choice of colours even, just whatever the music evoked in me. In fact, I even decided just to see what music was on the radio and pick something that took my mood.

I happened upon a Russian ballet, a nice long piece, I think it was Stravinsky. I love how these pieces visually tell a story - they flow and swirl, and move you along in their wake. I started drawing organic, soft, swirly shapes, soft colour fields in pastel, building up a tenuous dreamscape with suggestions of dancing figures, flowing with the melody. As the mood changed so did the colours, as a theme became more prominant, I accented it's presence. I smudged and reworked, I tried to capture the layers of story and emotion. And then it was over. Too quickly!!

And I stood back and looked. For me, it captured the feeling the music evoked in me and a transient, ethereal quality of figures not quite visible, partially emerging, then quietly disappearing back into the nebulous background. As a whole compositionally it doesn't work but I like the essence of it overall. It's the capturing of feelings, emotions, the less tangible elements that are such a big part of us. How to honestly express that?

It also inspires me to think how I could take this further. It makes me think of space nebulas, inner dreamscapes, fantasy illustration with printing, stitch and mixed media embellishments. Dreamlike vistas with layered felt as a base - or painted and hand dyed fabrics with applied layers of pattern and decoration. So many ideas just from a little sketch.

This small section makes me think of drawing with felt, seems the next logical step into textiles don't you think? It's been a while though so I'll have to brush up my felting skills and hunt out that fleece:) Hmm, what if I just drew with fleece to music? Added threads, fabrics, sequins, netting, layers of colour. Then went mad with the stitch and embellishment after? Ooh, a rich vein maybe!

Let's see where this goes. I think I might give this project some space to grow into itself over this month and post as I go. It might be nice to dye some fleece or fabrics to work with too. Maybe hand paint some yarns as well so I can knit some new organic vessels inspired by the music. I can see 'the firebird' colourway now, hehe. Time to hunt out some more inspiring music I think :)

Thanks for the company and see you all tomorrow!  elaine x

Aprons and MP3's

All of a sudden the weekend is rolling around and I'm wondering just what I've done with this week. It's more a feeling that I have nothing tangible or very creative to show for it. So here's a little run down of the ongoing things that are eating up the time...


I have been working on the apron dress - it took me ages just to decide just what colour to use and unusually for me I chose reds (instead of pinks!). The next trouble was "do I have enough yarn to complete the project?" The pattern says 9 x 100gm balls of the main colour and 1 x 100gm ball of contrast. Well, that seems a lot to me but I haven't made anything garment wise for a while so what do I know?

So, off I go. I have now got to 3/4's of the way through this really clear and easy to follow pattern but the yarn is lasting and lasting...... I'm thinking maybe the pattern should have said 50gms instead of 100gms?


I decided I wanted to use red chenille with the strong red wool colour and I have kept the stripe in the middle of the dress but also added two darker chenille edge stripes at both ends. It is a bit of a tester garment and I will work my way up to more complex crochet patterns. I have found this one very easy to visualise and follow, so that's promising!!


I have also been making some cards - the fact that this month has a plethora of birthdays in it, may have something to do with this! I intended to put them in my website shop but most of them have been used! They are posted on Flickr though if you want to have a look.


Talking of Flickr, I have just found a nifty link to http://bighugelabs.com/flickr/ They have all kinds of toys to manipulate your images: calendars, wallpaper, warholiser.... The one I tried was the mosaic maker. You get your photos from Flickr and literally place them into a grid of your choosing. Then you can upload it back to Flickr or save the image. You can edit, change, whatever! Here's my mosaic, you can see a better quality image on my flickr site.


Doing this made me realise that I need to take more photos!

Another thing that has been eating up the time is downloading music! Having just got a small MP3 player yesterday, I suddenly felt the need for new music and old music I don't have on cd. So I have been searching and downloading for two days - while crocheting - and realised just how slowwww the whole process is. I have been using some open source free sites so maybe if I paid it would be quicker?! Apparently it has been sunny outside while I have been lost in the gloom of downloading land! Tomorrow it's off to the beach, or something.... Being a sunny bank holiday weekend, I don't know if I will find any space on the beach in Cornwall!


Anyway, another evening or three of crochet and the apron should be done and now I have just the right music to listen to while I work.....

Enjoy your bank holiday whatever you decide to do!