Woven Woods and Glorious Colour

I seem to be blogging on a daily basis so far this year! No I've not joined Blog365 or whatever, I just seem to have a lot to say at the moment. It won't last. At the moment I'm just waiting for my camera batteries to charge up so I can go for a walk. I wish they'd hurry up as the light just now is fabulous.

Colour
Anyway, while I'm waiting, I thought I'd witter on a bit about colour. I have a head FULL of colour, especially at the moment as I've been looking a lot at Jane Thornley's work and thinking about the Inspired Knitter's Club. I have developed a deep, uncontrollable need for a particular colour. I can only describe it as a mustardy, olivey, goldy green. There's an example here, and Alchemy do a couple of colourways - "Dragon" and "Hidden Place" that are near. I think Colinette do something too, but they've taken their site down for maintenance. Hang on, I'll surf Flickr and see what I can find.
Aha! Jane's Woven Woods wrap. I hope she doesn't mind. Jane - if you do, let me know and I'll just do a linky instead!

Right, see that colour on the edges? Above the button. THAT kind of colour.

Woven Woods button fastning, originally uploaded by thornleytwo.

If anyone can tell me how to dye that colour, I will be eternally grateful.

Kaffe Fassett
Of course if you are discussing colour, then the patron saint must be Kaffe. Oh Kaffe, how I love thee, let me count the ways. I mean, how can you not adore a man pictured on his home page in a blue spotty shirt, brown cords, spotty socks and a big bunch of dahlias, sitting on a quilt? His colour sense is pretty much the same as mine, and I don't think he's ever produced ANYTHING I don't like. A lot of people diss his knitwear as being boxy or shapeless, but of course he's not designing a garment per se, it's a piece of art to wear. I share his love of patterns too, as anyone who has seen one of my paintings will testify :-)

When I grow up, find another settled job somewhere and can buy a house, it's going to be decorated in a Kaffe-crossed-with-a-gypsy-caravan style. There will be lime and purple. It will be AWESOME.

This leads me to show you one of my Xmas presents. My beloved got me this, and I don't think I have squeed so loudly (other than getting Caroline of course) since next door got a Border Collie puppy.



Okay, so I got Glorious Knitting. "So what?!" I hear you cry. Philistines. But wait, there is more. Inside it was:



Oooooh. Wait, it gets better.



Click for bigness. That is two posters produced for the Channel 4 TV show in the late 80's. Look, I got a Kaffe pinup! Hee!

But that isn't all. Look at the front page of the book:



IT IS SIGNED!!! SQUUUUUEEEEEEEEEEE!

Can you believe this book was in a second-hand shop? Can you BELIEVE it?

Anyway it is now MINE, my precious, and it's on the list of "things that I will risk life and limb to rescue in case of fire."

Spinning
Last thing, as my batteries must surely be charged by now.

Look! I made handspun and...IT DOESN'T SUCK!



That is the Rockpool Candy batt, plied with sewing thread - about 75 yards. The black is the Jacob that came with Caroline. It's a two-ply, about 50g but I've not measured it (doh.) They're both really well balanced, and I has a Big Pleased.

Right, off for my walk. It's too nice a day to miss.

~*~

Crazytown

Welcome to Crazytown :-) Pull up a chair, you'll have to move some yarn, and possibly a cat, help yourself to a chocolate biscuit while I put the kettle on. This might take a wee while.

I'm slowly drowning in a sea of yarn, books and equipment. Yes. it was that time again - the Visit Down South. This time, I got to stay with the beloved for a couple of days, which was lovely and we went to car boot sales (why are there no car boots in Western Scotland? I think we should be told) and washed my car and had birthday cake and lots of great food and admired the garden and also bought yarn. So all good there.

I then toddled over to the Parental Units and got more good food and Sorting Out was achieved. Well, I say sorting out. It was more a case of discovering that the corner where all my Stuff was has been taken over by Other People's Stuff. There is a suspicious box of railway books in there, and an old television. Neither have anything whatsoever to do with me.

It turns out that Mum has been rescuing things from Granny's house, before my uncle's pyromaniac urges take over and he starts burning books to fire the heating. Bless him, he is a man of many talents and charm, but he does not have the hoarding instinct that runs so strong in every other part of the family. So, instead of a gentle meander through my paperbacks, in search of the rest of my Terry Pratchett books, I came home with this lot:



That is a pile, bum-high, of mainly books, only about 20% of which are actually mine. (the bag on the right is full of coned yarn! Yay me) The rest is a selection from Granny's ginormous collection of cookery and gardening books. Let me explain a little. Years ago, my grandparents had a quite serious fire at the house, which did a lot of damage and wiped out a lot of their belongings, books included. (The ones that remain smell decidedly odd.) When the insurance came through, Granny was keen to replace her reference books, which she did in some style. Some were second-hand, or from library sales, the rest were new. There is a ruddy mountain of the things, and I, as you know, am a sucker for gardening books. It appears I also have a severe blind spot where cookery books are concerned too. In short, I'll not be short of a recipe or 500 over the coming years :-)

I came back with something else too. Mum has been threatening me with this for the last year, and I'd swerved it up until now. Finally, Dad got involved, fished it out of the garage and opened the Big Green Box.



Yes folks, it's a knitting machine. A Singer, dating from 1967. My mum bought it brand new for £55 16s 9d. That was expensive.
We always thought the instructions had gone, which had put us off as no-one had the faintest idea how to make it go (even Mum has forgotten.) However, when Dad opened up the case, he discovered the original manual, all the tools, all the extras and the original receipt. Well, I could hardly say "no" at that point, could I? It was either me or the tip, and that seemed a shame. I was thinking "eBay!" at first, but when I had a good look at it and the handbook, my curiosity got the better of me. I'm keeping it :-) I shall be spending a good chunk of the weekend servicing and cleaning it, and seeing if it needs any serious work doing. I'm determined to get it working now - I loves me a technical challenge, and I've definitely got one here...

Craft Fair
Nearly forgot!

EPIC fail on the selling front. We didn't shift a THING. Got some interest and some nice comments, and had a nice day keeping Ange company and having a super-quick tour round Troon, but NO SALES. Meh. Hopefully I'll be doing the next one too which is November so peeps will be thinking Christmas. I hope.

Here is our stand - I think it looks pretty darn good:



Another New Addition to the Family
A picture says a thousand words, so:



Yep, I bought a loom...

And now Firefox is being a muppet with Adobe so I shall have to sign off and beat it with a big stick.

~*~

Random thoughts

Ah, Monday. Joy of joys. It is a miserable, dreich day in Glasgow, dark and grey and not-quite-raining. I am so bored I could eat my own hair, but surprisingly, considering the above two points, some creative thoughts have been bubbling away in my poor underused brain.

I may have mentioned that I started painting again. I took a few days away from it (Dad's sweater and playing with the chainsaw took precedence) and then went upstairs and had a second look at what I'd done. They were fairly crap, to be honest.

This was something of a knock-back, as you can imagine. I promptly took a sulk with the whole thing and went back to my knitting and the nice warm fire downstairs. Quick explanation here - I use the upstairs spare bedroom as a "studio." This effectively means there is a drawer unit full of unused art materials, a pile of canvases, an easel and a lot of unrealised ideas in there. There is no heating upstairs either, so not only is it somewhat depressing, it's bloody freezing. And the window lets water in in torrents. Anyway.

I was sitting, kind of thinking, kind of drifting, and reading blogs. I stopped by the regulars, and was struck with the drawings of Mym the Creative Genius over at Shula's place. Go have a look. Go on, I'll wait.

Good aren't they? So I started thinking about why they are good. I finally hit on a conclusion. (I am a bit slow these days.) It's because they are entirely hers. No-one is sitting on her shoulder saying "that's wrong" or "that's rubbish" or even worse, "do it like this." That's how I used to be. I drew and painted because I had to and I produced the work that I wanted (needed?) to make. I didn't worry about criticism or opinion, whether it was valid or relevant or whatever. I just got on and created, and the terrible Creativity Monster was sated and happy. And so, to be honest, was I. I didn't always like what I created, sometimes it wasn't quite what I was expecting, but somehow it all needed to be done and it was basically good.

Then somewhere down the line, and I'm not going to psycho-analyse myself to figure out where cause it really doesn't matter, I forgot all that. I started to overthink, tried to justify what I was doing, tried to make it Valid and Art and Important and Conceptual and (gasp) Saleable (and that's far too many "ands" in one sentence) and you know? I totally ruined it for myself. I over-criticised, over-analysed, negatively compared myself against the work of others and totally overdid it. Screwed. Ruined. Finished. Kaput.

Duh.

Am I an assbeagle or what? The reason the new paintings are crap is Totally Simple. They're not what I want to make!!! They were expressly thought up as something that OTHER PEOPLE MIGHT LIKE!!! Nooooo! I hadn't broken the cycle like I thought I had, I'd just found another way of perpetuating it. Muppet. Idiot. Brain-the-size-of-a-peanut. Really, sometimes, I think I should be locked in a room and have my pens taken away, and possibly be lightly beaten with my copy of a "World History of Art." I need, quite simply, to stop caring what others may think of what I create. I can post my knitting and crochet on Ravelry without a second thought, and I have been surprised and charmed by people "fave-ing" things and commenting. Because, for some reason, I don't put knitting and crochet into the same category as my art, like I used to. Art got punted into the Big Serious Stuff, whereas knitting stayed as Creative Expression (and keeping warm *grin*).

So as of today, "art" is getting kicked in the teeth in this house. It's Creative Expression all the way, no matter what medium, and knackers to the naysayers and the critical little voice in my head saying "that's crap, by the way." The Creativity Monster is back with a vengeance, stomping about and shouting to be heard. Fortunately, I think it's loud enough that the annoying little critical voice will be silenced.

I must say, I feel better already.

~*~