Distracted

March 12, 2023

Distracted

I can’t clean because I get distracted by all the cool stuff I find. --Anonymous

I've been finding it hard to settle down to work on one thing at a time. After years of being a serial monogamist crafter, I just can't stop thinking about trying out other things. I've decided not to fight it. I mean, I'm not winning any awards for speed around here, so I may as well just enjoy myself while I feel the inspiration.

So break out the pens!

I've been seeing people using Posca pens here and there online and wondered what they were like, but it wasn't until I was watching one of my online watercolour courses that I finally decided to look them up and order them. Oh my goodness, they are wonderful! I've been pulling out some of the paper bags I've been stashing away and just using the pens on them to decorate them, and I am loving how brightly the colours come up against the brown paper:

And it's even more impressive against black paper:

We've been blessed with a few warm, sunny days here on Vancouver Island. I was happy to see the crocuses starting to bloom in Nanaimo:

While we were there, I stopped in at Iron Oxide to buy ONE paint palette... but art stores are art stores... I walked out with two palettes, two new Posca pens, some gum Arabic, a new paint brush, and some gel pens. Could be worse... I could be on hard drugs...

Meanwhile, I attended a class at the local arts council yesterday. It was a fabric dyeing course, and I was allowed to bring things from home to dye. After the results on this t-shirt, I declared that I will never own a plain white t-shirt again... why would I when I could have something like this?

We dyed a lot of pieces, and I will show you more of them soon, but I really wanted to focus on this piece. Believe it or not, this was created by wrapping fabric around a wine bottle and dipping it into dyes. I used yellow first (only a quick dip) and then into the black for a while. I was totally entranced by the result. It made me think of a forest scene:

I mused on it for the rest of the day, and finally decided I would use some of the techniques I learned last summer when I took the textile illustration course and add a stag to it. I found a photo online, mirrored it so that it faced the other way, then enlarged it. After that, I traced the outline onto some tracing paper, then transferred the outline onto the fabric.

After that, I added the details by freehand. I had to really think about how I would show the darkest parts of the photo, since I really didn't want to colour it in solid. I think it worked out ok.

And there he is. I am very pleased with it. I plan to eventually quilt it and hang it up. Hooray for distractions.

What a handsome dude.

Despite the distractions, I have been forcing myself to plug away at my current knitting project. I made it all the way to the bottom hem and even gave it a quick steam block to see how it would hang. I am very pleased with it so far. I was toying with the idea of leaving it with cap sleeves, but every single time I do that I wish I had taken the time to make the sleeves longer. I will not give in this time... even if sleeves are totally boring.