WIP

(Please note new Blogspot thing: you used to be able to click once on my pix to enlarge them. Now you click once, the pic appears same size in its own screen, then you click again, and it will finally enlarge! I think this is supposed to be one of those improvements...)


WIP means either Work in Progress or War in Personality, and in this case, it's both.

It's that time of year when the days get longer and lighter and I have that annual urgent need to paint watercolors, and it struck today. So I show you a Watercolor in Progress, probably nearly finished. You do know the old joke about how an artist needs an assistant with a mallet, ready to hit her on the head and say, STOP, it's FINISHED..

The other Work in Progress, and War in Personality, is that I have an equal and opposite urge at exactly the same time, to knit and crochet stuff at this time of year. So here you see the front and back of the lovely pullover thingie I designed for The Great Me. It's all about varying blocks of garter and stockinette and seed stitch.



This is made from the undyed yarn Heather's fiber farm share brought to me, what a wonderful gift it is, and may or may not end up being dyed with Koolaid, we'll see how it goes. What happens next is that I stitch together front and back and crochet the neck and arm edges to give them a bit of body, this yarn being very very soft and wonderful to handle and knit.

Next time I will use bamboo needles, though, since the aluminum ones I had in the right size were like knitting on a skating rink, the yarn being so soft and biddable that it would fly off the needles at the slightest move, needs to be lodged firmly on wood needles, I guess. A special feature of this yarn is that I probably saw the owner of the fleece last spring on Lambcam, frisking about with her fleece ready to go.

So today ended up being productive despite one of the most totally hopeless shopping expeditions of all time. The thrift store has NO SWEATERS!!!!! I was all ready to get one to unravel for my first foray into knitting a sweater from the top down, all systems ready, instructions marked in the Knitting Outside the Lines book, even stopped at the store to get some circular needles, since I don't use them and need them for this poipose. It was supposed to be the Next Big Project on the Needles.

I also wanted some frisket (masking liquid) for use in watercolor painting, you apply it to areas you particularly want to have sharp white edges, couldn't get that either, so painted without it, and it worked okay anyway....but I digress...and there was the thrift store, jumping the season, and all about shirts and tshirts and useless garments of that kind that you can't unravel..dangit. I hadn't realized there were seasons to the Unraveling Cult. So now I know. I guess I should have known that the Yarn Harvest would take place at the normal harvest time. What was I thinking???

Or, since it was 32 degrees today, what were they thinking at the thrift store...one good thing about the weather was that it prevented me from acting on the third overwhelming urge at this time of year, to go out and chuck potting soil and containers and spades and stuff around and lug stuff here and there in the garden.