Goodbye, love

Today I am going to put down my knitting and make paintings until school starts. So I thought I would start things out with a piece showing my mad passion for untangling yarn.



I promise the next thing I post will not be a self-portrait.


Hey, look! A finished object:





From Knitty's "fetching" pattern with my own accidentally graceful colorwork, in...um, I've lost the bands. The cream is Frog Tree alpaca and the teal is a different, super-dooper prettily heathered alpaca.

I know I should have more to show after an entire summer of obsessive knitting, but the rest of the projects are (a)in drastic need of alteration and repair, (b)unassembled, (c)in someone else's hands or (d)half finished. The ugly fact may be that I like knitting more than wearing.

I've also been sewing a new messenger bag these past few days. Having a quantifiable project that clearly has a beginning and end is a great way to deal with being frustrated about how very open and subjective illustration is.

Speaking of illustration and frustration, I've been relieving sketch-related tension by looking at blogs, specifically Vera Bee's and Craig Thompson's. His work makes me appreciate all the resources I do have, and every once in a while prompt me to go out and draw from life. And, of course, I want to be Vera Bee. She lives out west and knows that you should draw what you want to, not what other people expect. And her name is perfect.

I need to relax and sketch and perhaps accept the fact that in the six days I have before class starts I'm not going to have five perfect, finished illustrations. But I could have a whole lot of studies.