More recently in my knitting career, I have taken to making baby blankets for those close to me when they are having a baby. I know we used to have knitting projects around our house from when we were little and they were always really important to us. I have the ability to schedule these kinds of projects in and I want to spend that time on something special for those that mean a lot to me.
Recently two families in my little circle have added to their households, so the knitting needles were busy to start the year.
When I build a blanket I try to keep a few things in mind: the family, the gender (if applicable), the time of the year when the little person will arrive, and anything I may have knit for them before. I also pick yarn that is easy to wash, because… babies.
This year I knit up these two blankets, and now that they are with their respective families I can finally share them with you.
The first blanket is called “Baby Blanket”. I knit it up using Cascade 220 Superwash yarn in Summer Sky Heather.
It might seem like a lot to take on, but it is something that means a lot to me so it never feels that way. It is a really fun process to pick out the pattern and the yarn that will go to a new addition to a special family. I have enjoyed all of these so far, and I look forward to any other potential baby knit requirements that may arise.
I am currently taking a nano degree in the field of User Interface design. One of the courses suggested a great idea that could be used across creative fields. This was initially presented as a way to get some ideas for your design layout and problem solve, but it could also be a great way to come up with any other creative idea, or even get rid of any creative block you may run into.
Here’s the steps:
Fold a sheet of paper in half three times, creating 8 sections on your paper.
Set a timer for one minute.
Draw in one section for that one minute.
When you’re drawing make sure you are drawing the most outrageous thing.
The complete wrong answer to your question
The most elaborate way to solve the problem
The longest way to solve the problem
Anything that you might think is a little “out there”
Once you are done, in under ten minutes you will have a page full of ideas. At very least it is eight bizarre ideas that are now out of your head, making room for the more practical solutions.
This could be adapted to many different mediums as well. I went with drawing because it was presented that way and is my default, but there are so many ways you can use it idea.
Give it a try, you never know what you might come up with.
Yesterday the world received sad news. So, I switched gears at the very last minute in order to draw a character that would better honour the loss of the Queen than my original plan. I give you Paddington!
My original character would have worked too, but this little guy had tea with the Queen so it was a little closer.
The wild of these characters has been so much fun. I am really enjoying playing with the different brushes and what they can do.
The chatter through the live was a little scattered on my part, but I did come up with a tentative plan to make some “swatches” of these brushes so I can find what I am looking for during these experimental sessions a little quicker. Something for the list.
If you missed it you can watch the stream here or here. And don’t forget to tune in on all my socials next Thursday at 7PM EST.
This week I have launched a new logo and branding colour scheme. What do you think?
I have built a handful of logos in my career, but none are more stressful than building your own. I wanted something that stood out, but that also related to my work and my style. The swooping lines copy the flowing hair lines that I draw for my ladies. I almost always have some sort of flow line in my sketches. The colours came out of the palette that has emerged from the patterns I have been using for my Behance projects lately.
I stared at this for days and days before sending it out for a review. Always send it out for a review, people will see something that you don’t, so take that time. I had some very helpful people let me know what they thought of the designs and what they saw when they looked at the letters. We finally came to something that read as an H and a T. And here we are!
I am very happy with this final result and I can wait to start expanding the brand even further!
In the world today, it is really easy to get hung up with the whole “is it good enough” mentality when it comes to posting our work. Worrying about what other’s might think could stall us out. But in reality, we don’t really know what people think.
For example… Recently I posted my August Behance Story. I wasn’t 100% sold the day or two before, but I sat and looked at it and I found that I was happy with the result. The lines were what I would expect, it looked relatively polished and it fit with the style of the other stories. It was finished. I posted it, and the response was so great! People were loving it.
Behance has also featured a few of my projects on their Fresco page. The first two that they picked were ones that I really struggled with. Ones I may have put on the lower end of showing my best skills. But people really responded to both of them, before and after the feature.
Elton John almost didn’t record “Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me”, The Wizard of Oz almost went ahead without “Somewhere Over the Rainbow”. There’s a bunch of stories like this, what would these things look like without those shares?
It’s really easy to get caught up in what people might think, or seeing the flaws in a project, but you never know what others are going to see or respond to. So post your work, see what people think. Share it with the world. What’s the worst that could happen? You may be sharing the work that someone has been looking for, the work that really speaks to your community, or the work that could teach you something new. You can’t learn these things if you don’t share it. Remember, you can always take it down later if you want.
Last night’s live was a full on science experiment. Last week we got started on another Story Time illustration, but we didn’t quite finish it. I felt that there was enough work there for another week and I was right.
I spent the live working through what I didn’t think was quite working from last week. I was able to share my process for when this happens, what I try, what I hide, what I add, until things start to click. I’ve been very lucky in my lives so far that this process hasn’t been too long but it was good to actually go through this rather than continue to speak in hypotheticals.
In the end I think that we came to a great adding to the little collection. I give you my interpretation of… Mortimer!
If you missed the live and would like to check it out, you can watch the video here.
Make sure to tune in next week! I go live every Thursday at 7PM EST on Instagram, Facebook and Behance. See you there 🙂
I’ve talked about it a lot here, how people, myself included, will not start something because they are stumped somehow. They don’t know the style, the process, the tool, so they will just wait for that to happen before they get started. Here’s another idea… give it a try!
I saw a video years ago, so I forget the name of the person being interviewed for a proper credit (sorry), where a woman said that at the dinner table at night, her father, rather than ask “what did you do today?”, would ask “what did you fail at today?”. Not in a “how did you mess things up today?” way, but a “what did you try today?” way. If you didn’t fail at something, then you weren’t trying anything, or at least weren’t trying anything that is a bit more of a challenge for you.
When trying something new, or starting a big project, it won’t go smooth right away. To be honest, if it does, it isn’t challenging you and you may be getting less out of it than you think. If you don’t fail, you aren’t learning. If you don’t try something new, you aren’t growing.
“Trying is more than others are doing.”
Jose Andres (chef)
Artistic people didn’t get where they are on natural born talent, they tried things, failed A LOT, learned, and tried again. Over and over and over, and are still doing it today. What can it hurt? At very least you are going to learn how to do it differently next time. But you will never know that if you don’t try.
At the start of the year I posted a stash post with the caption “How it started”. I set a New Year’s Resolution for myself to focus on using what I had. This was meant for all of my things: books, yarn, art supplies, and for the most part I am doing really well. The goal was to have a mid-year post, “How it’s going”, and a year-end that said, “How it ended”. Ideally that last one would have muuuuch less yarn than the first photo.
My stash at the start of 2022.
Here’s the thing. I did set this up with my last yarn purchase being a year long sock club where yarn and pattern were provided once a month throughout the year. I had also decided to join in for the Year of Gnomes project throughout 2022, creating a little colour coordinated family of gnomes for my home.
Although I have been knitting from stash for all of my other projects, and I haven’t purchased more than 10 skeins of yarn this year (mostly for gifting projects), I have not been beating down my stash supply as quickly as I thought. Having one year long project that didn’t use stash, and one that used tiny bits of a particular set of skeins throughout the year really slowed that process down, visually.
The projects that are in between are smaller and slower, as the focus has been to complete one pair of socks and a gnome, at very least, each month. Some of my gift knitting has been pretty large too.
These are not excuses! I am still sticking to my plan. I have bought very little in the supplies region this year. I am getting used to not buying yarn unless I need it. (I scrolled past three “this is your last chance” posts this morning… that’s how they always get me… how strong am I?). I am still on track, it just doesn’t look like I’ve made much of an impact just yet. So maybe this year is getting me on track, and next year will be the uber stash use!
Quick disclaimer: I am a strong believer that my hobbies should be fun. Number one. I put this “rule” in place to reduce the stress I had about all of the supplies, books, tea, I had on hand and wasn’t getting to. I had accumulated all of these things that I was excited about, but there was so much of it that it took too long to enjoy anything new that came in. New purchases were fun, but then fizzled a little bit when I saw all the other “new purchases” waiting for their turn at home. This wasn’t put into place to prevent me from enjoying my hobbies, or to prevent me from making a purchase if it interested me. I said “buying ban” to make it stick in my brain a little more, and make me stop and really consider a purchase before making it. “Will I use it now?”, “is this exactly what I have been looking for?”, “will it still be here in a couple months when I will be more ready to use it?”, “do I have some projects like this ready to go at home?”, things like that. It’s just a stop and consider “rule”. You do you for what you need to do for something like this, but remember that this is also supposed to still be fun!
I don’t know about you, but I am a huge reader. I enjoy books in all shapes and sizes. I’ve actually had interactions that went along the lines of, “Would you like to read this?”, to which I responded, “Yes, what is it?”.
My quick prompt for the week is to draw a scene from your favourite story, or maybe your favourite character.
Here’s an example from my Story Time series that shows my representation of the Paper Bag Princess. She’s one of my favourite characters to this day, and this drawing sparked a whole series of fun illustrations that will be on my feed for a while yet.
Hues & Tones 