ode to summer. this beauty is across the street from my house. i do not know what this is growing all over the balcony. mama?sitting in my studio
fairly early for a Saturday night
listening to Aimee Mann [singing along]
after a fun day of play and great finds
lately i've been doing a lot of research for my products
finding inspiration and original ideas
flowers have been my main inspiration for a long time
i can't seem to escape it
so rather than try, i am embracing it, broadening my mind and my creative energy.
i stopped by my favorite thrift store today, to rummage around. lately i haven't been finding anything, but today i hit the jackpot.
two books, "Flowers" and "The Forgetting Room". Flowers was printed in 1950, and is absolutely the best find. all full-color illustrations of American flowers. i've already found my favorites. The Forgetting Room is a collection of prose and poetry and collage by Nick Bantock. can you see the prices? what a steal!
fabric and yarn, delightful colors and textures. i love that mustard yarn, great for some of my new lace projects.a few weeks ago i walked around my neighborhood, hoping to find some inspiration. these flowers are all over Astoria!
so i looked it up in my new Flowers book, since i didn't know what it was either.
Trillium? is that right? so lovely. [mom, you're the expert here.]
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in other wonderful news, more sales on Etsy! thanks to Heather and her custom orders.
the finished product! embroidery to match the hat i had posted on Etsy, which Heather also purchased.
both cabled, both hand dyed with kool-aid, both hand knit by me.i'm really loving the new Stitch 'n Bitch i've been going to. since i'm always knitting with yarn i've dyed, a few of the gals want to learn, so i'm going to have a kool-aid dying party at my apartment in a few weeks!
current knitting projects: lacey scarf for myself with beautiful light blue yarn i received as a gift.
i'm also working on knitting graphics with different colors. equipped with graph paper, colored pencils and as many colors as i can carry behind my work, i embark on the adventure of working with color. please attempt with caution. do not begin as i did. this is a sample of course, so i thought it might be fine if didn't wind the yarn on separate bobbins to carry behind my work. it's definitely making it difficult. the graph paper is needed to count the stitches, to know when to really change the color. otherwise, you're knitting blind.
this is going to be a cute little sample that i get to keep. but i really like this little tree, so i'm going to make a baby hat out of it! that orange for the background is actually the same yarn i used to make Heather's cabled hat. the other yarn i purchased, with color already added. i especially love the lime green Butterfly yarn. i bought 5 skeins of that when i was living in Detroit, and i'm so glad i did.
it's funny to me how pixelated and nintendo-like the original image is on the graph paper, but when knit, it becomes organic and smooth.time to knit in front of a cheesy movie.
10 comments:
Hi Lesley,
Oy! Beautiful projects you've got going there. I love that lime green yarn you got in Detroit, too. It rocks. Flowers are always inspiration. I think I may have had a Flowers book similar to that as a kid. I loved looking at the illustrations. :)
Sweet girl, it's hard for me to tell what that is, maybe a closeup of the orange. Are they flowers or berries? There's a fall vine, something like firebush or something? It's beautiful in the photo whatever it is.
The other flower you asked about is canna. It does look like the trillium. Trillium, though, is a woodland flower, small, grows in the spring. Canna gets very tall. It's tropical, so we can only grow it here as an annual. I remember seeing them in your front yard there last August.
Once I asked Larry (b-head) if a rhodendron was a hydrangrea. That was pretty early in my flower schooling. He looked at me like I was from Mars. (Wasn't he from someplace like that?)
How clever of you to knit the cap and gloves in opposite combinations, like a negative and positive. I hope Heather will bring them to Sapphos this week. I'll take a pic. :D
The graphics and patterns you're creating blow me away. That is true craft, when you design your own. Well you've been doing that always, but it still amazes me, because it's such a process of trial and error and takes a lot of patience.
"it's funny to me how pixelated and nintendo-like the original image is on the graph paper, but when knit, it becomes organic and smooth." I LOVE THAT.
You are adored, little one.
Oh, and the books look great. Beautiful illustrations. In another life, I think I would have liked to be a flower illustrator.
heather!
thank you so much. i love the illustrations too. much more interesting than looking at a book of photographs. :)
i hope you get your goody package tomorrow!
xo
mammas!
yes, orange flowers on the vines..it may be firebush! that sounds familiar actually.
canna, yes. i think the book of flowers i have is just woodland flowers, native to America, so i'm sure canna wouldn't be in my book. probably why i couldn't find it.
as always, thank you for your kind words. and for always bringing flowers into my life for inspiration.
Lesley, the Inspiration Lady! :)
My Mother has that Flowers book and she uses it as inspiration for her pencil drawings. She likes to draw flowers, mushrooms and deer.
How cool to see this book on your site, rather than packed away in a box in my Mom's basement!
RK, I remember your mom and dad drawing and coloring mushrooms in our kitchen in the early '70s.
awesome Rachel, that book is so inspirational. i consider it a fantastic find! isn't that a bridal shop in Michigan?
What a couple of hippies!
Haven't been to fantastic find, nay, may never will.
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