Lots And Lots And Lots Of Knitting

Soon, very soon, this blog will return to its focus on drawing and painting. I'm really itching to get back to that. In the meantime, I have been knitting, knitting, and knitting.

Last week, I was away on a trip involving my biological roots. I left on Wednesday afternoon and spent time in town 1 to visit the place where my biological mother grew up. I did things like go by the home she grew up, find out what I could at the historical society, and spent time at the public library trying to find pictures in old high school yearbooks. I found more pictures of my bio-mom's older sister and brother, who both died tragically prior to reach adulthood, than of my bio-mom, but was really glad to find any pictures.

I stopped in town 2 on the way to town 3. In town 2, I went to the cemetery where all of my bio-mom's immediate family is buried. There is a Jewish custom of leaving a stone at a grave site.  I don't know where it originates. I left both a rock that I gathered from my trip to Ely on the family marker, since the family lived in the Iron Range of Minnesota prior to moving to town 1. I also brought some tufts of grass from the family home and divided that among the individual stones.

I  arrived in town 3 on Friday afternoon. The purpose was to meet my 1/2 sister on my bio-paternal side and to meet her 4 children.  1 new sister plus 3 new nieces plus 1 new nephew = 5 new relatives and I decided to knit each person a hat. It was a good trip and I enjoyed meeting everyone.

I tried to get each person's favorite colors, but not everyone provided this info. If they didn't, I just did what I wanted.  This idea to knit hats occurred to me 6 weeks before the trip and it helped me process and deal with the emotions surrounding this trip. 

Here are the hats.  They were all knit with either Nashua's Julia, Classic Elite's Color by Kristin yarn or Classic Elite's Tapestry yarn.  These are my favorite yarns.  They are very similar to each other and I decided to go with yarn in my stash.

I liked how all of them turned out. I especially like this last one and am making another one in different colors for me.

Practice

On Tuesday night, I practiced some thumbnails using pictures from Ely. This feels awkward, but I know I need to practice this skill. It should help with seeing value shapes better. For the sunset reflected in the water, I like the second attempt (the one on the right better).

I also tried a quick one of a scene outside a window. It's hard figuring out how to do this!

Last, but not least, I practiced paint strokes for painting evergreens. There were beautiful evergreens up in Ely and I'm not sure how to paint them. Rather than committing to a painting, I thought I'd just play around and see what happened. 

Paintings Done Up North

I've been fighting a pretty bad case of the internal critic regarding drawing and painting.  In spite of that, I did finish two paintings when I was up north last week.

#346 - Fall Splendor and Canoeist - 3.5" x 8" - hard board

#347 - Minneapolis Monarch - 8" x 10" - paper

Kawishiwi Falls

Water - 

flowing, caressing, pounding, ricocheting, journeying, foaming, singing, falling, mixing.

Water - 

dancing, misting, shining, working, splashing, spreading, jumping, dropping, shimmering.

Water - 

running, moving, turning, rushing, surrounding, dripping, trickling, reconnecting, 

And, finally, 

releasing down, down, down. 

An Incredible Week And Two Incredible Pictures

These are two of the best pictures I think have ever taken. It helps to have spent a week in a beautiful place in the world, outside of Ely, MN, at a beautiful time of the year, with the time to savor and enjoy the experience.

I like seeing what I can achieve with my camera without cropping or editing the pictures. 

A Week Without “Shoulds”

Work has been very, very busy, plus I had a number of things to do prior to going out of town tomorrow. That means I haven't been posting to the blog. I haven't been drawing every day. I haven't been painting for quite awhile. In fact when I went to pack one of the palettes for the trip, it was really gross. The palette is all clean up and much better now. In fact, it all is going to get much, much better very, very soon, although I will miss my spouse. Next week, I will be here outside of Ely for a mindfulness retreat.

I hit the road tomorrow with a dear friend. We are road tripping one day early to go to the International Wolf Center and just hang out up there an extra day.

I plan to have a week without "shoulds" and I also want to be unplugged and unphoned for most of the week, so see you later alligator!

Just Keep Drawing

I've kept up with drawing each day. Lately, I've been looking at pictures of people engaged in sports and trying to capture rough, general shapes using cylinders and other shapes. The focus is on shapes, not proportions. I wish I could draw smaller, but I just can't at this point. On the plus side, I think this type of practice is helping.