I Didn't Think I Could, But Then I Did...

When asked if I could knit a beaver (shh, keep your jokes to yourselves!), I wondered if I could do it with any success.

Turns out, I could!  This was knitted 'on the hoof' - no pattern to work from, just making it up as I went along.

I feel I should be knitting a lump of tree for him...
 

Irish Wolf Hound & Snow...

Yesterday I completed this knitted wolf hound - I would love to own one of these in real life!

This was a lot of fun, the yarn I discovered in my stash was perfect for it.

This morning we had a bit of snow...
 

Good News...

 Within the next couple of weeks or so, I am going to become a grandma!  Shame I have not had the time to knit more for my first grandchild, but this tiny jumper I made is the cutest thing ever!

Little Fluffy Dog...

Knitted this yesterday for an up and coming project.

He turned out rather cute!
 

Walker...

 As I currently have no painting commissions and needed an escape from the general horror of life at the moment, I decided to paint bear 151 Walker using walnut ink.  Walnut ink is both good and bad to use.  On the one hand, it can be lifted from the paper when re-wetted, which makes altering slight mistakes easy.  On the other hand. it is very hard to get the depth of colour needed in some spots, even with countless applications.  So for the nose and eyes and a few areas of shading, I had to bring in a couple of Inktense pigment sticks in dark brown and black.  Hopefully they do not look out of place.

 

This will be for sale in my Etsy shop shortly.

Happy New Year!

Happy 2021 - 2020 was a disaster, let's hope this year will see some improvement.  For the time being, I've made cranberry & orange muffins for breakfast today...

And we have something wonderful to look forward to this year - I've just made a new cover for this Moses basket as in a few weeks time we will be welcoming my first grandchild into the world!  We know it's going to be a little girl - time to get the pink wool out and get knitting!
 

Otis...

I've been a bit quiet on here lately - as usual, the run up to Christmas has been very busy and also I have not had much to show.  However, here is the painting I have just finished for the winner of this year's Travel Guide summer competition in the USA.  The winner chose to have her favourite bear, Otis, as the subject of the painting and once I got the Christmas commissions out of the way I could devote my time to this.

It is painted with watercolour on paper, using a wonderful reference photo by Olatz Azcona Munarriz and a composite imagining of the background, 'the office'.    I thoroughly enjoyed painting this and am glad to report the recipient is very happy too!