These Boots Aren't Meant For Walking

This past March was a "put one foot in front of the other" kind of month. With a combination of family health scares and a pile of difficult tests, I ended up pretty stressed out. It's taken me a week or two to start feeling better. But rather than focus on the negative, let me show off some things that helped lift me up.

1. I have made a new pair of baby booties. The last pair I made unfortunately didn't fit the recipient. After seeing the tiny baby feet in person, I decided to make up my own pattern. They look weird without feet in them, but I'm pretty sure that with small feet inside them, these new cowboy booties will look much cuter.

2. I finished embroidering the lower 48 states. What a job! I'm not anywhere close to finishing this quilt, but I feel pretty darn good about how far I've gotten. I've ordered some new embroidery floss and plan to quilt the remaining background with longitude and latitude lines. (Alaska and Hawaii will be added too!)

Toughest coastline embroider: Maryland

3. Yarn! My Plucky I ordered at Stitches West arrived. I initially felt it was too dark, but it's growing on me. Then a fantastic package from Wei Siew arrived. She sure did spoil me. Dark Harbor, Bleeting Arts, and Fiber 2 Go?! She also sent a few other unpictured goodies.

4. I finished my Groovy Socks and have cast on two new pairs. Vanilla Latte socks in Stray Cat Socks's Blue Moon color way and Woodpile socks in Spun Right Round's Bug Jar color way.

5. Just today I decided to paint a scene from the TV show Riverdale. Connor and I recently finished it and I really liked the design for Pop's Chock'lat Shoppe. 

How has life been going for all of you? Have you focused on anything to help keep you sane?

Postcard Project

Late last month I decided I wasn't going to show my paintings online so I could reclaim the joy of painting. That is mostly still true, although a friend of mine launched a 50 State Postcards in 50 Weeks project and I just feel compelled to join in. Obviously, it's more fun to be a part of a project like this when you are sharing. It feels almost like a collaboration, which I think I've needed far more than I realized.

I've really been enjoying dusting off my old graphic design skills with this project. Coming up with compositions that best represent each state has been a fun challenge. I've also enjoyed trying to have the occasional easter egg appear in the cards, like having the Hawaiian Islands dot the i's in Hawaii as well as represent the stigma in the hibiscus flower.

What makes this project a bit more challenging is that I'm choosing to do it all in watercolor. There isn't much room for error with watercolors, so sometimes when I'm stuck on a color decision, I'll make little color studies. I didn't know what color to make the words, "California" so I took a picture of the unfinished postcard and made a sheet of them so I could color in different possibilities.

I texted this picture to a bunch of people and everyone like a different option. I went with #4.

I've had real fun with this project and I've looked forward to seeing Heather's postcards each week. We are both posting on instagram under the hashtag "#5050postcards". Heather is also posting her postcards on her blog.

I've realized with this project that there are a bunch of states I know nothing about. If anyone has any ideas of what symbols make you think of a particular state, I'd love to hear about it. I'm particularly at a disadvantage with East Coast and Midwestern states. I'm embarrassed to admit that some of those states seem so similar to me that I'm worried I won't make a distinct enough postcard for them. Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.

Shaking Off Perfectionism

I've had a really rough time reclaiming my creativity lately, especially when it comes to painting. I look at different artist's sketchbooks on various social media and they all seem so perfect. Intellectually I know that it is unlikely that every page they have produced is perfection, but it's left me being too afraid to lay paintbrush to paper.

Filling some new pans with paint

But what could I do? You only get better by practicing and I am now afraid of practicing.

Empty Meeden watercolor tins

Eventually I realized that what I was most afraid of was not having any masterpieces to share. So I've taken a new approach.

Holbein, M. Graham, and Grumbacher tubes. Not shown is Daniel Smith. I'm most fond of M. Graham at the moment.

Even if I paint a masterpiece, I am not going to share any paintings online for a while.

Moleskine Art Plus sketchbook

I think it will be much healthier for me to reclaim painting as something I do for myself rather than something I do to earn accolades.

I got an adhesive magnet tape, cut it into little rectangles and adhered it to the bottom of the pans so they would magnetically stick to my tin.

In the meantime, I'd like to share some artists I greatly admire.
Missy Dunaway paints the most beautiful journal entries. Even she will tell you that she paints over some of her paintings repeatedly before she has something she likes.
Chandler O Leary has some awesome travel sketchbooks. She was kind enough to share what materials she uses. It helped me get a better idea of what I could use that would hold up to heavy use.
James Gurney regularly shares his plein air paintings. And still one better, he often releases videos showing how he did it.

Christmas Knitting Starts Early

Classes are still going well. An unexpected perk at school is that I'm getting a lot of knitting done. There are many spare moments in the day when I've been able to pick up the needles and continue knitting. I've not quite finished anything yet, but I'm closing in on finishing the Primavera Socks for my mother-in-law. She kindly sent me an outline of her foot, so I was able to confirm how long the foot needed to be.

My Denature and Trick or Treat vanilla socks both have their heels put in. These are both first socks, but the hard part of getting the stripes to line up in the heel is done, so it should be smooth sailing from now on. Incidentally, both socks are Stray Cat Socks yarn. It was unplanned, but with such wonderful yarn, who could complain?

I've also been working on the loom again. I used Little Wool Company's 4-ply in Tamarillo for the warp and Malabrigo Sock in Chocolate Amargo for the weft of the scarf. It only took me a week and a half to finish. The scarf wove up really fast once Connor and I started a new show, Medici: Masters of Florence. The show is interesting, but most of the Italian main parts are played by English actors, which seems a little odd. I'm pretty sure everyone in Italy didn't have blue eyes at this time. We did enjoy seeing that the actor who played Rob Stark in Game of Thrones' has a father-in-law who just happens to be played the same actor who was Walden Frey in Game of Thrones. I wonder if the casting director did that on purpose.

Connor has also been hard at work on a scarf. We are both working on our Christmas gifts and every night we both try to hit our quota. It's going well so far.

Meanwhile, in the little bits of time we have together, I've also been showing Connor how to watercolor. Basically after I learn something in class, I show him how to do it. We started out with fruit, so Connor tried his hand at it. Maybe I'll have him try the classic bowl of fruit next.

After all, I just finished up my bowl of fruit.

There are some things I would do differently now that I understand more about watercolor, but overall I'm happy with it.

Accounting For Knitting Time

Whew, it's been a wild two weeks since I last wrote. I started school last week and it has taken some time to adjust to the change in the amount of time I have to myself. One of those classes is Accounting, which I've found has a steep learning curve, but I'm enjoying none the less. The other class I'm taking is beginning watercolor. I've tried to watercolor for years and I just never felt like I had a good command of what I was doing. I'm really enjoying myself already. Partially because the teacher is so kind and partially because I haven't mentioned that I have any painting experience, so I don't feel like I need to create masterpieces. It's been freeing.

I think the plums came out the best

Meanwhile, I've managed to finish my Cider House socks. I realize that I never mentioned them here on the blog, but they have been mentioned on my instagram. I adjusted the Primavera Sock pattern to accommodate my sport weight handspun.

It took me four tries to get contrast yarn I liked to match my handspun. This seems to be a trend when I need yarn to match my handspun. In the end I bought a skein of Knit Picks Wool of the Andes in sport weight in the Fedora color way.

And because I got something off of the needles, I rewarded myself with casting on something new. I bought this ball of Stray Cat Socks last year just after Halloween. I've been looking forward to the "I must have Halloween socks" bug to bite me and it has. With the way classes are I thought I ought to start now to guarantee that I finish in time for Halloween.

The Mother-In-Law Primavera Socks have also gone pretty well. I am mostly done with the foot of the first sock, but have had to put it aside until I can verify the foot length it needs to be. My original measurements seemed a little off and I'd like to get this one right. The Denature sock hasn't gone quite a smoothly. I was just about at the heel when I realized that the leg of the sock was quite a bit longer than I usually knit for myself and it wasn't going to fit up my calf. (Usually I knit a length that doesn't require a gusset for my calf.) So rip, rip, rip. I've had to do some extra work to make the pattern shorter and still have it line up correctly on the heel flap. Sigh.

Despite being able to fit in some knitting time, I'm still a little worried about how long that will last. Accounting is pretty tough and I'll be starting a second accounting class in the second week of October. I'd better knit as much as I can for now!