Skip to main content

The birds


There is knitting action going on at the moment, I just haven't got round to blogging about it yet. I've also been doing more #CBDrawADay challenge. Here's birds from Sunday's lesson.

I wrote about how I was approaching Sunday's #CBDrawADay subject with anticipation over on my blog. I love #birds. I #bird watch. I have binoculars next to my garden facing windows at home so I look like a freaky Rear Window type when I'm just looking at who visits my garden. I go on holiday to places where I can do some serious birdwatching. I watch wildlife stuff all the time. Love it! This is something I'd like to be able to draw well, ie field guide illustration well. As Pam the tutor says at the end of today's video " Just go with it and have fun" which is something I found tricky, unlike yesterday's challenge. I started off drawing cartoon-like birds but started getting irritated when I couldn't get the lines right, especially the back between the head and the tail. I gave up on this approach and looked at pictures of birds and used this as my reference point. I did make myself draw without doing a preliminary pencil sketch which is something I'm trying to improve - hand-eye coordination and accuracy. I've also realised I need to slow down sometimes. I get impatient and when I rush my lines are wonky. I'll probably come back to this subject and try different species, maybe with #colour.

A photo posted by clarestorry (@gingerknits) on

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Knit Nation

I've been busy over the last week taking p/hop to the Knit Nation festival in London. It was good fun but I'm still a little dazed from 3 full on days of talking to knitters. It was fab and I've met some brilliant people so I will share it in photo form. Here's our stand, manned by yellowpurplezebra and cybil. Bad pub photos from Friday night with Stitch London Stitchettes, WoollyWormhead, @julietillyflop (who makes fab knitting tea towels ) Babylonglegs, @knitterbird and Bionic Laura (who stayed with me and brought me some gorgeous Aran yarn from Ireland) There was a grout baby and also some tipsy yelling at Ysolda and Sazknits and Jess and Casey the marvellous people who made Ravelry when we spotted them on the way to the tube. On Saturday I made sure I had time to shop and bought some sock yarn from Renaisance Dyeing... ... creepily fabulous stitch markers from The Bothered Owl ... As well as a fab needle roll with Mexican Day of the Dead pattern I also bought some...

Champagne Bubbles

We went for a stroll this afternoon along the Seine where my MIL lives to work off the champagne and cheese from New Year celebrations and build up an appetite for our postponed Christmas meal. It was a good opportunity to take some photos of my latest FO, Bubbles hat by Woolly Wormhead . Compulsory Catalogue Pose I've met Woolly at several shows over the summer and we sat together at several meal times at the infamous Knit Camp as well as getting tipsy at Knit Nation. She's ace and also a great designer. She leads a pretty interesting life, living in a converted double decker bus in Italy. Take a look at her blog which is a good mixture of her day to day life on the bus with her partner and young son and loads of great knitting tips. The Bubbles pattern was great fun to knit and worked up pretty quickly, the cables providing just enough interest to make this a great knit while watching Agatha Christie mysteries on TV in between eating festive leftovers. I used Araucan...

Double trouble continental style!!!

Or why all my fingers feel like thumbs. I want to make my BIL an Uncle Argyle Scarf for Christmas which uses a technique called double knitting, where two sides of fabric are knitted at the same time. Trouble is I don't own Stitch and Bitch Nation and as the scarf is the only thing I'd knit from it I'm not forking out £11 for one pattern. Using the magic of the interweb I found a couple of tutorials for Double Knitting . It's a great video but the continental knitting style looks much easier for double knitting. I sort of got the hand of knitting continental when I tried my hand at fairisle but I had one hand doing the familiar english style so I only had to concentrate on one hand. With this I'm trying to do something unfamiliar with both hands and two stands of yarn. Following the example pattern I've sketched out a smaller pattern for a small facecloth which can be a stocking filler if it turns out OK.