Multitasking

Knitting on five needles lying on a watercolour cloud

There are many tasks to do today but I knitted instead. The project will become too big for three needles so I’ve added more. They’re slightly bent from being stuck under a heavy item for too long. They still function well.

Spring Equinox

Matchsticks as ink spreaders

Finished equinox card

Test printing

Variable edition

I’m glad the dead matches were there. They’re exactly the right size for getting ink out of the tube lids! The sky will be watercoloured in later.

Decreasing

Slip two knitwise, insert left needle into the front and knit them together.

Hat pattern decreases

Sometimes people ask how I made the pattern on the crown of the hat. It’s made (accidentally) by decreasing the number of stitches. Most written patterns say K2tog, knit two stitches together. That gives the hat the ridges as the circle becomes smaller towards the top of the head.

There are other methods. SKPO (slip one stitch onto the right hand needle, knit one then pass the slipped stitch over the knitted one) gives a ridge leaning the opposite way to k2tog. In theory, slipping two stitches knitwise then knitting them together as in the photo above will give a tidier result.

Lychees

Lychee stones with outer skins

Valentine’s Day, so here is a pencil drawing of two hearts of stone.

Tutorial

Artist I’d never heard of

Typical tutorial, a chat about the artists I *should* admire. Any artists I *did* admire were allegedly not the correct choices.

I was often advised to look at works by Sidney Nolan. Why? Is it helpful to keep telling people to research the same stuff constantly?

Lighthouse

Drawing of a lighthouse on a rock

This might be a sketch for a linocut. The lighthouse would be darker with more interesting light from the top. The waves would be darker, obviously.

The little figure about to step into the unknown is stolen from a tarot card. It’s usually a dog pulling on the clothing.

Climate

Exhibition poster with sun and fog among the words

Art & Poetry won’t change anything. There again, the opportunity to look at everything from a different perspective might affect future behaviour.

Pembrokeshire Green Party is reviving slowly. West Wales has many people who are doing their best to not cause harm to their surroundings. Joining a political movement doesn’t appeal to most of us. It’s good to know there are others who would never support right wing policies. Hopefully this short exhibition will inspire someone to clean a river, stop building houses with leaky roofs, maybe remove all the obstacles to living well.

Pembrokeshire is also home to some narrow minded bigots. They will say climate change isn’t real. There can’t be any pollution here and the sun shines constantly. It does, it’s shining right now, behind some clouds. Everyone is entitled to their opinion but they are also entitled to look outside occasionally and observe the world. The planet evolves, the temperature changes. Arguing about whether humans have damaged the environment is less important than thinking about how to live without making everything worse.

Forgotten messages

Bottled Message linocut

I found a few copies of this message in a bottle this morning. It was the first block I cut with my little T.N.Lawrence cutter (my hands will never be big enough for a professional adult version). All of the prints are patchy in different ways, maybe I’ll make another batch of them someday.

Test prints

Jack Frost monoprints

Linocut of seven black cats

A couple of printing sessions that were more chaotic than usual. Missing pliers meant that I couldn’t get the lid off a blue ink tube. Some leftover black from the previous day seemed a good option. Later, I found another foil-wrapped leftover, a mixture of blue and white.

If Jack Frost has trapped the sun in a block of ice, then that would be the only light source. My first plan was to have a cool grey bluish sky with a bright yellow sun shining through the ice. Now I like the black background better. It still needs some tweaking…

Jack Frost

Sun trapped in ice

Made a start on a linocut, Jack Frost with the sun trapped in a block of ice. Or is it? Anyway, the repetitive action of cutting small lines isn’t good for the shoulder wound so I’m staying away from the lino today.

Cups, plates and bowls

Tidying some space around the house. The last chimney improvements added a fine layer of dust to this dinner set that has been sitting around for years. Might inspire some still life drawings, or some pasta sauces that will be good in the wider bowls in the corner.