do you mind if i knit

My Missing Blog Year

Hello

I'm sorry I've been away for so long. Almost a year.

So much has happened. There's been a lot of sadness and pain, as the marriage between Hugo and I has come to an end, and we are getting divorced.

Fortunately, things are very amicable between us, we still share the same house until it is sold, and we do things together, like walking the dogs, visiting car boot sales, going to the cinema, going out for day trips and other things. We are very much good friends, I'm so pleased to be able to say that.

It is very, very sad that our ten year long marriage did not survive.

This last year has also led to a huge change in my work.

The Sleeping Hare's heads in the photograph above are an example of my new work.

You might get a surprise as to just how much my work has altered.

At the end of last year I had a solo show in Mansfield Park Gallery, Glasgow, Scotland, which went very well.

And then recently a lot of my work sold when Frames Gallery took it down to the Affordable Art Fair in London. There's a link to photographs of my work on the gallery's website here.

I have still been knitting. My colour choices have gone from bright to naturals. All the colourful knitting and crocheting I used to do has toned down a lot.

I have thought a lot about returning to my blog whilst everything has being going on, but I didn't have the energy, despite the wonderful kind messages of inquiry about how I was, thank you so much for your caring emails, they have been very much appreciated. They always surprised me, and always cheered me up.

Whilst the last year has been testing, I am still here, and feeling positive. I have a lot to be thankful for, such as exciting new things happening with my sculptures, my health is good, my family and my friends and my dogs are all well, and I have been determined, (despite some of the things thrown my way), that Hugo and I remain friends, and we are friends, good friends. There is a lot of positivity there.

It feels good to be back in the land of blogging. I'm not sure how regular my posts will be for the moment, there is still a lot going on, but I'll do my best to keep up. I thought I should pop in to say hello, and explain my absence, as I did just disappear  mysteriously last year.

Vanessa xxx

Things at the moment.

Dear reader,

thank you for coming by and stopping to read my blog, my blog posts have been so erratic over the last few months, that I feel the need to explain to you, with out going in to any detail, that I need to ease up a lot on blogging for a little while. There are a few reasons for this, and those of you who have been reading my blog for years might have sensed something was wrong, because my posting has been erratic the last few months, and I haven't been responding to comments or commenting on people's blogs as much as I usually do, and I'm very sorry about this.

I can't really explain my situation at the moment, it may be that in time I can give you an indication of why things are so difficult, but at the moment it's best that I don't make things public.

What I will try to do is pop in every now and then, and try to be jolly, and get on with life. I'm still knitting, and I hope to do a reveal of the cardigan I'm making at some point.

I've been feeling that I owe it to my loyal readers to let you know that there is a reason for my blogging being so erratic, it's not that I'm losing interest in you, or blogging, it's just that things are difficult at the moment, and they will be for a while.

Thank you.

Vanessa xxx

Evangeline Meditates, and Evangeline Does The Tea Towel Dance.

Hello.

Who would have thought.

Little Evangeline the mouse, is still going about her business, living her life, immortalised (sounds very grand) in various sculptures that go to different people's homes.

Last week I sent off a new mouse to Australia, to a lady who commissioned an Evangeline to reflect a part of her own life.

Evangeline Meditates.

The same lady bought another Evangeline to send to a special person in her life. In this one, Evangeline was doing The Tea Towel Dance.

I was just thinking, it might be fun to look back over all the Evangeline sculptures I've made, from the very first, to the latest one.

 

I'm working on another Evangeline, in which she's pretending she's at the wheel of a very fast car.

I've always liked Evangeline's little dream world. Her escapism, which peppers her days of cleaning and tidying, really appeals to me.

Though my sculptures are changing.

I'm moving towards creating pieces that have more serious content, exploring themes that bear no resemblance to the world of childhood, which a lot of my sculptures might have leaned towards in the past, or been considered to be linked to.

Unfortunately I can't show you these new pieces, they are being created to go to various galleries, and I have to be all secretive about them, sorry about that. I will be able to show you photos of them eventually.

You know what? I think I've reached the end of this blog post, I've suddenly gone vacant. I think I'll head off now, my concentration has completely evaporated.

Cheerio!

Vanessa xxx

 

The Walnuss Cardigan.

Hello!

The Walnuss Cardigan by Anke Stricke, is what I'm knitting now.

Would you like to see a picture of the finished cardigan on Ravelry?

Here you are, go to this link. You'll have to be a member of Ravelry to access this, you do this by applying to be a member and when you're invited, you can join and have access to an amazing pattern library. It's free to join.

If you're a knitter you may well have heard of Ravelry, and downloaded patterns. Some patterns you can get for free, with other patterns there is a charge of around $6.

The link to the wonderful world of Ravelry is here.

I'm a huge fan of Ravelry, it's the most amazing way to find all varieties of knitting and crochet patterns.

And one of the best things is that members upload photos of their knitting, so if you want to see what the garment you might knit, looks like on all shapes and sizes of bodies, you go to the projects link for that pattern.

The link to see what the pattern I'm knitting, The Walnuss Cardigan, looks like on many different people, is here.

I have to admit, the pattern for this cardigan is not for the faint hearted. It's a very clever pattern, but you need to be alert when knitting this. I feel as though I'm having a rehearsal for the second cardigan I might knit from this pattern. There are a few uncertainties, like the wool I'm using, I'm not sure the Rowan Cashsoft 4 ply in shade 453, has enough drape for this garment. There are also some mistakes I've made which I only became aware of by the time I'd knitted on quite a lot, and I just didn't feel like ripping back all the knitting I'd done. Like making a buttonhole every 7 mm, rather than the 7 cm required in the pattern. I'll have lots of buttons on this cardigan.

I think I thought that because this is such a simple design, (it looks simple in the photo for the pattern), it would be an easy knit. But it's not a particularly easy knit. I had a question about the pattern which I didn't know how to solve, and I emailed the designer Anke Strick, she got back to me really quickly, I thought that was very nice of her, and my problem was resolved.

Righty-ho, I'm going off to do some knitting, my fingers are itching to get going.

Have a lovely weekend.

Cheerio.

Vanessa xxx

Dressylicious.

Hello!

Back after another week away from blogging, work load, you know the thing, will just skim over it because it's very boring. Just to say sorry for yet another absence.

In my last blog post, I said I'd tell you more about the dress I was wearing under the dress I knitted, in the photo above.

It's a dress I love to wear, and I can imagine other people loving wearing it too, so I thought I'd share my source with you.

I didn't sew it myself, it was made by Kate at Harmony and Rosie, and bought from her shop.

I tell you, it was bloomin freezing when these phots were taken by Helen.

Helen Stephens. I've mentioned her work on my blog before. She's also a very lovely friend, it was extremely nice of her to stand out in the cold with me and take these photos.

Actually, she's just had another fabulous book published, which might interest those of you who know, or have small people in your life. It's called "The Big Adventure of The Smalls", and you can see it on Amazon UK here, or Amazon US here.

Helen has a blog called "oh, I forgot to say", and in one of her latest blog entries she shows her drawings of my Miniature Wire Haired Dachshunds, Ellie and Douglas. She's borrowed them a couple of times to draw them, because....................... !!!! She's doing a children's book in which they are the stars!!!!!!!!!!!!

Imagine if your children were starring in a book, and the author was producing lots of drawings of your beloved children for the book, you might well feel thrilled about it.

Well, it's the same if you have beloved dogs, there are lots of happy feelings involved in seeing your children/dogs being drawn for a book.

If you want to see some of Helen's drawings of the doggies, go to this link.

So, back to the dress.

Without a belt, or with belt? What do you think? I just can't decide.

Maybe it's a mood thing, how I wear it depends on how I feel on the day?

I really love this dress, and I'm so glad I bought it from Kate. It's made in linen and comes with full care instructions. The colour isn't a colour way that Kate shows in her shop yet. I emailed her asking if the Iona Tunic dress was available in any other colours than the dress shown in her shop, and she photographed this colour fabric, and emailed it to me, and I knew immediately it was the one.

This dress is so, so comfortable, and I think it's a timeless piece too, I shall wear it till it becomes a limp rag. I find the pockets very handy and nice to use, (the dresses I have that don't have pockets now seem incomplete). It's made with a linen fabric, which crumples, but that is part of it's charm, that elegant crumple of linen, and I actually like it's look.

This blue green colour is a colour I'm very "in" to at the moment. I've started a new knitting project in a blue green wool. It's a very clever but complicated knitting pattern (for something that appears relatively simple), and requires a small amount of gritting of the teeth and bearing the pain stoically in the following of the pattern.

Maybe I'll save showing you what the pattern is till my Friday blog post, rather than over-loading you with too many links and images.

Yes, Friday's post it is, showing you what I'm knitting.

Till then, take care, may the sun shine on you, and now I'm tip-toeing off back to work.

Cheerio.

Vanessa xxx

The Alpaka Tunic by Deborah Newton - finished!

Finished! One lace dress.

A lace marathon, or that's how it felt to me.

I think the best thing I can do is get straight down to pictures, don't you?

So that's the lace dress with a fabric dress underneath.

I'll be telling you about the fabric dress I'm wearing underneath the knitted dress, next week, it's something I'm really pleased with, and want to share with you.

The next day, I wore my lace dress over jeans and a long sleeve t-shirt, for a slightly different look.

Which look do you prefer?

With dress?

Or trousers?

 I think I prefer the dress underneath, I love the colour contrast.

I'm not sure whether I enjoyed knitting this dress, the experience is a bit hazy. Because I had to concentrate when knitting it, I had to knit in fits and starts, a few rows here, a few rows there, when I had a quiet moment, and it seemed endless. I loved watching the lace pattern develop, that was wonderful. And I like the colour of the yarn, which I'd describe as burnt orange, but everyone else sees as red.

I would knit a lace garment again, despite the frustration and pain, purely because it seems like magic knitting. With a few yarn overs and knitting togethers and so-on, you get lace! MAGIC.

This pattern is called the "Alpaka Tunic", and it's by Deborah Newton. It's available to buy on-line from Interweave, as a single pattern, here.

There are some lovely photos of a beautiful lady wearing a grey version of the dress here.

I used 4 mm nedles to knit this, because the general consensus when looking at people's Alpaka Tunics on Ravelry, was that it comes out quite big if the 5.5 mm needles are used.

The yarn I used was "Scappa" DK, which is 100% wool, spun and hand dyed in Scotland. After washing, this yarn softened up.

My major modification to this dress was to not knit the sleeves, I felt it looked nicer with out them.

I started this dress 28th October 2011, as evidenced in this blog post. It was finished and blocked on 14th April 2012, so length of time to knit it? About five and a half months.

Thank you very much to Hugo for patiently taking the photos of me, he did a great job.

I'm going to go and put this on my ravelry page, here. On Ravelry I'm vanessahc, you can see all my other knitting projects here.

Righty-ho, I'd better be going, things to do, you know how it is.

Have a wonderful weekend.

Vanessa xxx

The Hare's Reflection in a Puddle.

Hello!

I was beginning to wonder where I'd disappeared to .......................

I've not been on holiday, or ill, I've just been working to the exclusion of everything else, I'm very sorry I've been so neglectful of my blog and not explained sooner.

So where did I leave off?

I think in my last blog post, I said I was going on a Screen Printing course, and so I did.

I had a WONDERFUL weekend, loved every minute. There was a group of eight of us, and the people on the course were so nice, everyone was very good natured and interesting. The tutor was lovely too, and a very good teacher. I plan to return and do some more Screen Printing soon.

The course was a gift, my family and Hugo all clubbed together and gave it to me for my Birthday, what a fantastic thing for them to do, I'm very grateful to them, such a wonderful present.

The image I'm showing you, is the piece I finished the weekend with.

There are four colour separations in this print, you can see the different layers I painted and drew on acetate, for each colour.

And above is the paper showing my working out the colours for each layer.

When I was at art college a long time ago, I did a little etching and quite a bit of Lithography. I'd always regarded screen printing as something you create bold graphic images with, and lots of flat colour, and that didn't really interest me. But when I saw Gerry Turley's screen prints, it changed my view of screen printing completely. You can build up fine layers, like with lithography, so I'm very enthusiastic about screen printing now.

This print fits quite nicely in an Ikea frame, always a useful thing in terms of keeping the costs down on framing.

Everyone on the course did an edition of six prints.

I haven't signed and numbered my prints yet, I must do that.

I quite like the idea of doing a set of four prints along the same lines as this piece, based on my sculptures.

Screen printing is so exciting, watching the image materialising as each layer is printed, is magical. There's a lot of practical stuff that goes in to the making of each layer, many different stages, but then you're rewarded with the end result of a picture, it's very gratifying.

I did my course at Edinburgh Printmakers, and I'd recommend them to anyone, it's a fantastic set up. Their website is here.

Before I go, I thought I'd give you a hint of my blog post for Friday, just to prove I'm not running off in to the mists of time and getting lost again.

On the 28th October last year, 2011, I did a blog post (here) about starting to knit a lace dress.

It's now finished!

And that's what my blog post on Friday is going to be about, showing lots of photos of the finished piece.

Cheerio!

Vanessa xxx

 

The Whippet.

Whippet. Just say that word to yourself.

Whippet.

Don't you think it describes the dog so perfectly? It's a name that sounds thin, sinewy and lithe.

  Annie, of beautiful, interesting and very readable blog Knitsofacto, (link to her blog here ), commissioned me to make a brooch of her dog Finn, after seeing the brooch I made of Eddie Spaghetti, (the blog post about him, and more photos, are here).

Annie e-mailed me lots of great photos of Finn, taken from different angles, they were very helpful when I came to make him.

I asked Annie if she would like something balancing on Finn's nose, and she decided that a leaf would be perfect, because Finn likes to chase leaves. I couldn't resist adding a few leaves, so he looks like he's running through a pile of leaves.

Finn is an absolute beauty of a dog, with immaculate pedigree. Though I understand he didn't distinguish himself recently by demolishing Annie's knitting.

Annie has done a blog post about Finn and the brooch here, her photos are superb, the light is beautiful, and you can see the brooch very clearly.

I enjoyed making this brooch of Finn enormously, it was very satisfying to resolve various problems I came across when making him, plus, he has such a beautiful shape. Whippets are superb creatures, especially when they're not destroying your knitting.

I have two Miniature Wire Haired Dachshunds, and I'm very excited to report that I've found a blog entirely devoted to Dachshunds. Heaven! The link to blog The Long And The Short of It is here.

It's a blog for "Dachshundists".

I must be a Dachshundist, because one of the reasons I visit Penny's blog Planet Penny, is to see Higgins, her Miniature Smooth Haired Dachshund. He's a character, and very, very handsome.

One thing I do on the rare occasion I come across other Wire Haired Dachshunds is compare them to our two Dachshunds, especially their personalities. I've found a short video on The Long and The Short of It blog which shows a Dachshund feeling very pleased with himself about carrying his own little suitcase around. It could be my little boy, Douglas, in this video, here. Douglas does the same whole bottom and tail wagging thing, sometimes accompanied by a great big smile, which is always a special touch.

This weekend I'm going on a course to learn how to do screen printing, I'm very excited about it. I'll give you a full report in my next blog post.

Have a lovely weekend.

Vanessa xxx

Another few weeks on Skye would have been lovely!

And these were some of the views on the first evening, of my week away on the Isle of Skye.

Hello ........ a week is never enough for a break away is it? Two weeks is always a better amount of time, not that I wish to sound ungrateful.

As I was putting an empty plastic bottle in the recyling after returning home, a saw there was a little bit of water left at the bottom, and I found myself thinking "this is water from Skye, because this is the bottle I filled from the tap in the cottage I was staying in". I feel like I'm still half in Skye.

It was a working holiday. During the day I would work on paintings, and in the evenings I worked on my sculptures.

This all took place in the cottage you see in the photograph above, which had the perfect spot and gorgeous views. In the end wall of the cottage (on its left), was a huge picture window, and from that window I could see down in to the valley and out to sea, it was idyllic. The website for the cottage has some fantastic photos of the views in its picture gallery, which you can see in the link here.

The cottage itself was lovely, clean, welcoming, no fussy decor, modern and just right, and I felt extremely at home there. In the photos on the website, it looks like it's very isolated, but it's not, there are other houses dotted around so you don't feel vulnerable, but there aren't so many houses that it feels crowded. The link to the website for the cottage is here. Looking at the calendar of availability, it's very booked up, I wouldn't be surprised if some of them are return visits.

Skye has dramatic landscape, wild even, especially this time of year. I like the wildness and the drama, it's impressive and awe inspiring. I didn't explore the island much because I was working most of the time, I stayed mostly in the North West area, and stretched my legs each day with a walk along the cliffs in the late afternoon, rain or shine.

One of the things I love about the landscape is the effect of the huge rolling skies, and the dramatic changes always taking place. Clouds appear, sweep over the landscape and then sunshine bursts through, it constantly shifts. It's a challenging landscape which makes you feel small, this is the sort of holiday that is the complete opposite of sunbathing on a beach.

I was on Skye before the tourist season had started, so many shops and cafes were closed. Before I left, I made an appointment to visit Shilasdair Yarns, where all the wool is hand dyed with natural products. They have a website here.

Anyone who loves yarn will understand what a delicious treat it was going to the Shilasdair Yarn shop. It was the equivalent of going in to an old fashioned sweet shop for a child.

I bought some skeins of 4-ply to knit my little diamonds, for the blanket I'm making. And I have to admit, although I have no need of more yarn to knit another garment, I bought enough DK wool to make a striped dress, which I haven't photographed yet.

The photo above is one I took just before setting off in the car to return home. My Shilasdair yarn is sitting on the window seat of the picture window in the cottage, the window I sat in front of to knit occasionally during my stay. The drive, rather than being seven hours long, was eight and a half hours long going to Skye, and the same coming back, with only two breaks either way. Exhausting when you're doing it entirely on your own. Still, my stay on Skye was worth it, and if I was offered the opportunity to return any day soon, I'd jump at the offer.

Righty-ho, I need to get back to work. Cheerio.

Vanessa xxx

 

 

Sketchbook-ing.

Well, this feels like a luxury, sitting here blogging, actually being able to spend some time saying hello and taking part in the blogging world.

My absence?

(Yet another absence)

Work.

Sheer work load. I haven't been ill or indisposed, I've been in a time warp where days seem to blend into weeks, and sometimes days have gone missing, or that's what it's seems like at times. In a telephone conversation the other day, the person I was speaking to told me it was Wednesday, and I exclaimed "IS IT?????!!!!!!!" For some reason I thought it was Monday, and my day management was under control. My day management (because days seem like a couple of hours at the moment) was not quite under control, and the worrying thing was that I had lost two days in the lead up to a deadline.

I always think that any kind of concentration, whether it be on a painting, or doing the accounts, or cooking a meal, involves stepping into an alternative reality. The process of concentrating on something means your mind is not focused on anything else other than the thing you're concentrating on. This is especially true for me when I'm doing my sculptures, paintings, or illustration work, I'm just existing in one dimension, my mind (!).

I've always been happiest when I'm living like this, removed. It probably makes it difficult for those around me I imagine. I'd quite like to be removed from reality all the time, like many of us I imagine.

Even when I'm having some down time, taking a break from work, my idea of relaxing is to do something where I'm removed from the world around me.

Like my sketchbook, (of which I'm showing you more pages, because I'm not able to show you what I've been working on recently, and I haven't got much knitting to show you).

It's sometimes a real pleasure to have a break from what I'm working on, and sketch. 

These drawings are of my two Miniature Wire Haired Dachshunds Ellie and Douglas, and a visiting Jack Russell called Cuddy.

I love my doggies. I love them a lot. They have their faults (most definitely) but they are mostly loveable. I even managed to talk about them to one of the classes I spoke to, on the school visit I did last week. Yes, I told the children I really love my dogs. When I was asked by the children to do a drawing of them, I drew Ellie, and talked about her waggy tail and love of carrots.

And just to link to my last post, in which I also showed you some pages from my sketchbook, here's what happened after my last blog post. A painting based on my sketches, of the brown mouse, on a loose piece of paper I could frame if I wanted to.

Doing the painting felt like closure on the sketches, it was satisfying, and maybe a proper fitting tribute to the Brown Mouse. A proper painting, not just a page in my sketchbook.

And now I'm going to be absent again, for a week. I'm going on a sort-of working holiday, renting a beautiful isolated cottage. It will take about seven hours to drive there, and I'm filling the car with all the art materials I use to create my sculptures and paintings, and I'm doing the holiday entirely on my own. Stepping out of reality, into what I like to think will be escapism.

This will be one week I do pay attention to the days going by.

See you in about a week and a half I imagine.

Cheerio.

Vanessa xxx