Obviously the redesign of this blog has not yet happened. Temperatures continue to go past 100 degrees on a daily basis, work has gotten very challenging and I come home and lie in front of the fan, obsessively playing Scrabble on my Kindle. Not much creative work is being done chez Rob. Actually, it is not quite accurate to say I am lying in front of the fan. The air conditioning is on, laboring mightily to cool my 54-year old house, the ceiling fan is on, and I turn a small tabletop fan directly on me. Then I am comfortable. But it means I tend to stay in one place, and don't get very active. I am developing cabin fever.
Most Saturday mornings I go to my drawing class and have a great time there. It is a roller coaster emotionally, since some days I produce things I find interesting and other days I appear to be starting from scratch again. I remind myself that the same was true of learning to knit. And that I knitted obsessively for years, but have not yet developed the habit of drawing between classes. One very useful book, Twila Tharp's The Creative Habit, stresses the foundational productive role that structure, work habits, warm ups and routines have on creativity. So I am trying to get into the habit of sitting down to draw just as I have for years sat down to knit. The room I use as a studio/craft room gets hot in the afternoon sun, which works against this practice right now. On the other hand, I went outside to spray a pastel painting I did with a substitute teacher a few weeks ago. The instructions on the fixative say to use in temperatures between 55 and 85 degrees F, and not to use in humid conditions. They could have just said not to use it in the state of Texas. I used it on the back porch anyway, and will bring the painting inside in a bit to hope that it dries in the semi-air conditioned house.
And, surprisingly enough, in this week of 103 degree heat, I started knitting again. A cute cropped cardigan, Berroco's Bianca, perfect to wear indoors over the sleeveless long dresses I wear in this heat, in some yarn I have had in the stash. I am of course knitting it in a very different yarn. The cardi is knit up the fronts, stitches added for sleeves, decreased, and then knit down the back. Easy peasy. So of course I am thinking of knitting it in pieces, adding darts to the front, adding shoulder sleeves, modifying the sleeves... which also means I will never finish it. So I may take the risk of knitting it more or less as written, even if I suspect that a cardi with no shoulder seams and sleeves that are part of the bodice is not going to fit very well. Oh, and I will make it with shorter sleeves, 3/4 length at most. That change will be easy.
This is more or less the fabric being produced. It is actually lighter than in this picture, and someday, if I find my camera, I will get better pictures up on this blog.The yarn is Artful Yarns Olympic, a rayon, acrylic and cotton blend. The color name is Mexico City, so of course I had to buy it. It has been in the stash for quite a while. I think I will relax about the finished product, and just enjoy the knitting. As long as the fan is blowing directly on my face.
I am dripping sweat onto my keyboard, so it is time to find a cooler spot in the house. To be brave, I am posting here a quick sketched portrait of a classmate in my drawing class:
A redesign of this blog is coming. Really. Probably after the heat breaks, and I am ready to teach the course I was asked to teach at the last minute, and I finish Bianca, and I do some drawing, and I finish the needlepoint I am working on, and maybe warp the loom...
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