ProjectArt

Why is the skein of yarn so much more beautiful than the knitted object?  This quandary has driven my knitting, my yarn purchases and my recent adventures in spinning. A beautiful hank of yarn does not a beautiful garment make.

Today’s spinning; merino carded with Black Welsh and gray Coopworth. I used colored merino, primarily red. My goal: to make a yarn that would pair nicely with the green yarn I had made previously. The two yarns have the Welsh, Coopworth, and Navy merino in common. The green yarn was two-ply; this red yarn is Navajo plied. I started knitting the green two-ply yarn; this will be the ultimate test. It has the speckled look typical of plied yarn. Too speckled for color work? Tomorrow I will add the red and we will see.

Eunny addresses the problem of variegated yarn in her blog. Small variations of color, imperfections if you will, often enhance the finished product and make the color seem all the brighter. Too much variation, though, gives a chaotic final result. I choose my colors very carefully, and find that they often fall right into a formulaic color scheme; it works, but is too often lifeless. I go right up to the edge of a perfect color system; value, hue and intensity perfect, warm to cool, 10% accent color and so forth, but if I find myself too close I add one thing that doesn’t seem to fit at first glance. One imperfection or unexpected addition will bring the whole thing alive.

I guess I am one of those unfortunate people that “are not cut out for self-improvement” What am I talking about? The Knitting Olympics of course! I hadn’t even started. But all is not lost; today I DID start. My original goal was to spin the yarn on my drop spindle (I need to get up to speed on the hand spindle as I am teaching a Salish spinning residency next month) and then knit some arm warmers of my own design in two or three colors. I am using colored merino, soy silk, and baby camel. No sooner did I break out my trusty spindle than I remembered how hard it is to spin soy silk on a drop spindle (beyond hard, actually). I knew this, but had forgotten in my Olympic enthusiasm. I spun the yarn on my wheel. Tomorrow I will ply it (two-ply or Navajo?) and drop spindle some ramie and Coopworth for my class.

 of course! I hadn’t even started. But all is not lost; today I DID start. My original goal was to spin the yarn on my drop spindle (I need to get up to speed on the hand spindle as I am teaching a Salish spinning residency next month) and then knit some arm warmers of my own design in two or three colors. I am using colored merino, soy silk, and baby camel. No sooner did I break out my trusty spindle than I remembered how hard it is to spin soy silk on a drop spindle (beyond hard, actually). I knew this, but had forgotten in my Olympic enthusiasm. I spun the yarn on my wheel. Tomorrow I will ply it (two-ply or Navajo?) and drop spindle some ramie and Coopworth for my class. of course! I hadn’t even started. But all is not lost; today I DID start. My original goal was to spin the yarn on my drop spindle (I need to get up to speed on the hand spindle as I am teaching a Salish spinning residency next month) and then knit some arm warmers of my own design in two or three colors. I am using colored merino, soy silk, and baby camel. No sooner did I break out my trusty spindle than I remembered how hard it is to spin soy silk on a drop spindle (beyond hard, actually). I knew this, but had forgotten in my Olympic enthusiasm. I spun the yarn on my wheel. Tomorrow I will ply it (two-ply or Navajo?) and drop spindle some ramie and Coopworth for my class. of course! I hadn’t even started. But all is not lost; today I DID start. My original goal was to spin the yarn on my drop spindle (I need to get up to speed on the hand spindle as I am teaching a Salish spinning residency next month) and then knit some arm warmers of my own design in two or three colors. I am using colored merino, soy silk, and baby camel. No sooner did I break out my trusty spindle than I remembered how hard it is to spin soy silk on a drop spindle (beyond hard, actually). I knew this, but had forgotten in my Olympic enthusiasm. I spun the yarn on my wheel. Tomorrow I will ply it (two-ply or Navajo?) and drop spindle some ramie and Coopworth for my class. of course! I hadn’t even started. But all is not lost; today I DID start. My original goal was to spin the yarn on my drop spindle (I need to get up to speed on the hand spindle as I am teaching a Salish spinning residency next month) and then knit some arm warmers of my own design in two or three colors. I am using colored merino, soy silk, and baby camel. No sooner did I break out my trusty spindle than I remembered how hard it is to spin soy silk on a drop spindle (beyond hard, actually). I knew this, but had forgotten in my Olympic enthusiasm. I spun the yarn on my wheel. Tomorrow I will ply it (two-ply or Navajo?) and drop spindle some ramie and Coopworth for my class.

Here is the “Peacock” journal page. Originally, I planned on pasting in a dyed silk or velvet scrap as blues and greens are so vivid and beautiful in Procion. But when it came down to it, I grappled head to head with the Muse of Watercolor and emerged with this result. I bought some new iridescent and pearlescent watercolors (buying gorgeous new art supplies is always a good tactic to get me into the studio, albeit one with an obvious limit). Still, even with the most fabulous art materials one cannot replicate the extreme iridescence of a peacock feathers.

As it happens, I am currently reading “Art and Fear” by David Bayles and Ted Orlando, and here is what they have to say about perfection; “…the belief persists among some artists (and lots of ex-artists) that doing art means doing things flawlessly”. In fact, our imperfections and failings are our guides and most valued teachers; “the seed for your next art work lies embedded in the imperfections of your current piece”. Well, if we learn from our mistakes, I tackled the right subject; art is hard pressed to make a peacock more perfect than the peacock itself. 

Luckily, this is the last entry so the journal bursted with peacock art of every sort. The other artists had each approached the project in their own way; and each image or written piece had a separate merit. I had several collages of photographic images, as well as abstract compositions of saturated color. The freedom of Sumi-e brushwork is very impressive. I opted for art deco meets Audubon; and grappled with my perennial problem of where to stop with the detail. Add too much and approach a tight and fussy photorealism that is compensating for true “art”. Of course, this piece did not begin to achieve what I have pictured in my head. But, according to Bayles and Orlando, this is as it should be.

Squid, the new black! This is my first project that I have made actually following a pattern (more or less). Here is the pattern. I made crochet yarn eyes (or rather crochet wiz Jeanette made them for me while I watched and made appreciative noises). I didn’t want buttons for eyes in case little baby Max chokes on them. Then I made a crochet Granny square with a lot of help from Jeanette; I must have crocheted when I was about ten, but I have no memory of it! Now I am thinking about Granny squares and their position in the world of art.   

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Today and yesterday I put on the outer shell of old T-shirts dipped in white glue. I also experimented with different paints; that is why we are seeing so many shades of blue. It is not so much the color but the hardness of the paint that I am after. House paint is too soft and flexible. White glue and powdered pigments work well so far. 

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This is a close up of the T-shirt with the pins holding it on until it dries.

I have finished the last of the dryer sheets on the legs and claws. Tomorrow I will move on to the body.

This sweater has been in progress for a while. I have been knitting it in singles yarn right off of the spindle. Most of it has been spun on my drop spindle, but some on my wheel. I am making the designs up as I go along; this takes just enough brain power to be interesting, but I do not have to follow a chart and there are never mistakes. I love working on this sweater.

I have covered the legs with the spent dryer sheets. It works best to dip the dryer sheets in the flour and water paste, but I added a little white glue for more durability. The dryer sheets need to be quite wet in order to form them into ridges and scales.

The Model

The crafting of the dragon began with a Christmas present. This Christmas present was a voucher that could be traded in for one paper mache dragon. The artist-parent-mother-blogcrafter was likely expecting that I would ask for a dragon a few inches long. Obviously, she assumed wrongly. As soon as I received this voucher, I grabbed a tape measure and went to measure the length of my room, an idea forming rapidly in my mind. The room measured 12 feet long and 10 feet wide so I grabbed the Draconomicon and found the length of the dragon’s head, neck, torso, tail, and wings along with its height and width and scaled them to a 7.29 scale so it would fit in the room.

Once I knew the statistics of the base dragon, I had to think of a method for construction. This is where the mother-creature came in handy, as she happened to know a form of paper mache that would have a result of being much sturdier than normal paper mache. This method involved constructing a basic skeleton out of wire, taping down wadded up paper in the appropriate shape, then layering down paper soaked in flour over the top and finally placing a layer of cloth soaked in glue over that to look like scales. Once the cloth is laid down, the dragon is painted blue then has gloss applied to it. Our chief references; Make Something Ugly… for a Change, The Definitive Guide to Papier/Cloth Mache by Seattle author Dan Reeder and Draconomicon: The Book of Dragons by Andy Collins, Skip Williams, and James Wyatt.

Daniel the Dragoncrafter