Showing posts with label patterns. Show all posts
Showing posts with label patterns. Show all posts

Thursday, 30 May 2013

"Could Do Better..."

Back in school, I was one of those annoying students who got top marks in everything with very little effort - you know the type!  However, there were two things I was definitely bottom of the class at, sports and handwriting.  I went to a tiny little school in Alderney, one of the Channel Islands.  So tiny, there were 7 children in my year group - when the flu virus went round, at one point there was just me and I had to be put with another year group just to make up numbers.

But I digress.  Once a week on a Monday morning, the whole of the upper school had to do a handwriting test.  If our efforts did not measure up, we were sent to a remedial group for practice. Can I just say, I was in that remedial group for years.....I can paint with precision, I can knit and sew tiny things, I can make jewellery using the smallest of beads, but I still cannot tame my handwriting into legibility.  Yesterday it came back to bite me in the behind.  I spent three hours (three hours) trying to find out why a knitting pattern I had written and sold was proving to be inexplicable to my customer.  After two trial knits and going over the pattern and my handwritten notes, I finally identified the problem - I hadn't been able to decipher my own writing when transcribing my notes and had typed a couple of silly errors, thus throwing the whole thing into disarray. Sigh....Oh well, I'm glad someone had the sense to query it which gave me the opportunity to correct the pattern. 

Thankfully, this was a pattern from a couple of years ago when I was first writing them down - since getting two jobs involving keeping meticulous notes on my designs, I make sure to write clearly these days.  Well, as clear as is humanly possible for me at least!

I'm better at using a paintbrush - this is a tiny section of a commission I am working on at the moment.  The brief is to combine precise drawing with lots of dribbles and splashes.  It's proving to be a lot of fun, although I'm having to make sure I cover myself up before throwing paint around as Inktense does not come out of clothing once it is on there!

Thursday, 3 February 2011

Hello Sailor!

In exchange for the sofa and dog, I received a bumper envelope of vintage knitting patterns.  The two that really took my fancy were this one (love the sailor with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth, you couldn't get away with that these days) which has these beauties inside :-

Anyone fancy a balaclava helmet and some knee warmers?  If you want me to knit you some, you only have to ask!

This one is pretty cool too:


 although I don't think my waist ever looked like that!  I'd love to make this but for someone else - the pattern only goes up to a 36 bust anyway.

I've put some more paintings for sale in my Etsy shop recently, including this one:


 It was painted in situ a few years back when I used to take an art class at a local church hall.  One bright summer afternoon I sat in the graveyard outside and had great fun painting this sun-dappled headstone.  The subject matter is a trifle bleak, but I feel it is actually a very peaceful picture.  I've always liked it and it seems a shame for it to languish hidden in a porfolio.