Knit-twit...

I’ve been knitting every night this week, and as a result I’ve finished a sleeve for my jumper! Hurrah. Now I just need another sleeve... and a front ... and a back.
The rest of the wool I ordered had arrived when I got in from work I can start on the stripey bits (the front and back) as they’ll take the longest.

So here’s a few photos of the sleeve...

The pattern advises to bind off stitches at the beginning of each row to create the arm pieces, rather than decreasing, which I’m not so sure about, it looks a little messy as rather than a nice straight edge it’s stepped, I guess I’ll just see how it goes though. If the jumper fits well then I already have the wool to make another (thank you John Lewis sale!), maybe next time I’ll alter the pattern a little an try decreasing instead, will see how the seams look when I put it all together... :s


And here's the finished piece...

There’s a lot of fluff stuck to it which makes it look a little messy, might have to take a roll of sticky tape to it!

I ordered all the threads and the aida for another project today too, I found a super awesome cross stitch pattern which I’ll be using to make a wedding present... though I have 3 weddings coming up so who knows who it’s for!... well I do, but I won’t be giving it away, obviously! Does mean that I can’t really blog it though. I might do some sneaky peak photos though then post all the progress snaps when it’s all finished.

Still waiting for my Print Gocco to arrive too, and not even sure whether it’s getting delivered to my London address or back home in Durham!

So this weekends plan... 

*Start on another piece of the jumper, can't decide whether to just get the other sleeve done or to start on a stripey bit.

*Buy some more pins for all these pieces of jumper!

*and if all the stuff for my top secret-wedding-craft project arrives tomorrow then I may be unable to resist starting that too!

And so it begins...

... by "it" I mean the jumper I'm knitting!

I decided that by next christmas I want to be able to knit my own christmas jumper 'cause I've never found one I like that fits (well I did this year but it wasn't meant to be).

I was going to start from scratch and work my way up to knitting the jumper by working through all the basics, but I was looking through my stitch'n'bitch books and came across a pattern for a jumper that is pretty basic and I already know all the techniques needed to make it so I thought I'd give it a shot.

The jumper in the pattern is made of different shades of pink which isn't really my colour, so I've decided to go for navy and white with a little bluey grey in there too. I decided to start with the sleeves first as they were smaller and I wasn't able to get enough skeins of wool in the colours I wanted so I couldn't start on the striped body, and I wanted to be sure I could make complete pieces while I wait for the rest of the wool to arrive.

So here's the first photo of it having cast on and knit/purled one row, I have a little more now but will post that later...

As well as going on a mission for Rowan Cotton Glace and knitting this weekend I had a wonder to Brick Lane and Spitalfields market where there's a stall selling lots of printing press letters. I really want to buy some but haven't a clue what I could do with them...

This evening's plan is to do a bit more knitting and maybe make a new background for my blog, I want something that matches the new title more. I'm thinking... bunting!

OOH and I bought a Print Gocco y'day, just waiting for it to be delivered, I'm super excited, can't wait to have a play with it! 

Remember this guy?...

...well he's back, and this time he's turquoise and is forming the new background on both my blogger and twitter... though turns out I didn't quite make it seamless as when I've tiled the background it's a little off, and I think I might have preferred to use the version with the suckers on the tentacles. oh well, it'll do for now...

TWO THOUSAND AND ELEVEN...

Well I said I'd keep updating my blog after college and... well... I didn't. Not very often anyway... but...

New Year, New Start!

So I'm making it my resolution to update my blog at least twice a week, and as I've given myself a list of projects to this year I *should* have enough to keep it up! I've got a few illustration projects (just for fun), a bunch of stuff to knit, and two lot's of bridesmaids duties which include designing a set of invitations and making two lots of wedding toppers!

So for a start here's a few photos I had knocking about...

My lovely ex housemate Charlotte bought me an awesome calendar for Christmas; every month has a picture of a zombie which also comes flat pack with the calendar so you can build it yourself. After building the first one I realllly wanted to make another, but I'm going to be good and do each one on the first of every month. I do love a bit of paper craft...

One of my housemates took up knitting before Christmas, and as I'm always banging on about how awesome the Stitch'n'Bitch books are I thought I'd buy her one and put a little knitting kit together with some nice wool, bamboo needles and other useful bits and put them all in a bag, so I bought a blank canvas tote and made use of some fabric paints I bought a good while ago and sat down one afternoon to make it all look pretty! 

I cut a piece of scrap cardboard to put into the bag to stretch it out and keep it flat so it was easier to work on, and to stop the paint going through onto the back, then drew on the image in pencil. I mixed the fabric paints to get the colours I wanted and then filled all the large blank areas with colour...

After the first lot of paint had dried I added the writing and the detail to the balls of wool with darker shades of the same colours, then drew on the faces with a black sharpie...

Ta daaaa...

I have done other stuff, honestly, it's just either not that interesting or it's work stuff... which usually is't that interesting either.

This weeks plan is to get some wool so that I can start making a jumper! Though it seems it's going to cost about £40-£45 for the wool I need for it, so hopefully I'll not only finish it but it'll fit!

I really want to buy a Print Gocco too, especially for making the wedding invitations! Maybe I should treat myself...

2 posts within a week!? surely not!...

I finally had some time to myself this weekend! Hurrah! As i'd updated my laptop, and in the process lost my desktop image, I decided to draw a new one.
Obviously it was going to be something with tentacles.
LO AND BEHOLD!

I prefer to draw stuff by hand but the lack of a scanner at the moment is forcing me to draw straight into photoshop using my tablet, but I'm getting a little better with it, though I still find it difficult to draw smooth curves. I drew him out roughly and then played around with colours. I really wanted to make him turquoise, but every time I draw a squid or octopus (or make a giant one!) it's turquoise, so I decided to try a different colour for once!...

I built him up in layers just using blocks of flat solid colour, a pinky red colour for his main body and a peachy colour for the underside of his tentacles...

Next step was to add shading by adding lighter areas to the octopus. This is kind of the backwards way of doing it but it's just laziness as I just used the same paths that I'd used to create the main shape and just moved them around a bit and shrunk them down...

Once I was relatively happy with the shading I added his eye, I did this in the same way, building it up layer upon layer...

I don't know what I'm going to to with the background, I don't like having too much detail, so I just added a turquoise colour (I had to get it in somewhere) with a gradient on it. I might play around with some textures, maybe something like the ones I used on my final show photos/drawings. 

So this is where I'm at now, I've started drawing on some suckers which I'll probably just colour free hand rather than using paths.. 'cause it's easier... I'm not sure whether I should put something else on there with him too, I like to have clear space on my desktop for files and stuff, so we'll see...

POW!

Well, once again it's been a while since I updated! I will try and keep on top of things now that I'm getting used to my new routine! It's my fourth week at my new job this week (it's flown over!) and I've been pretty busy so haven't really had time to do anything creative for myself, let alone post it on here!

The new job is going ok though, I've still got a LOT to learn about the company, I haven't a clue what people are talking about at times, but I feel like I'm doing a lot of work and I'm even learning a few new PS tricks as I go! It's even prompted me to use twitter a bit more! 

Today I got to go to CAT (link below), there are a lot of people out of the office this week doing important things in other countries so I get the impression I was a last resort so as not to waste the ticket, and to be honest I was expecting to be sat there not having a clue what was going on and not understanding what anyone was talking about, but it was a great day with some awesome speakers and some mega interesting stuff so I'm chuffed I got to go, last resort or not!

http://creativitycat.com/index.php

The highlights of the day:

Stewart Smith - http://stewd.io/ - you should definitely check out his website, full of fun things he's created, he did a great video for Grandaddy which is on there too.

Chris Milk - http://chrismilk.sites.livebooks.com/ - this guy is genius, if you've seen the interactive Arcade Fire video then this is the guy responsible for it. If not then go here now... http://www.thewildernessdowntown.com/ 

Unfortunately it's a little limited when inputting your town, I opted for London (no Newcastle or Durham on there unsurprisingly), but the idea is amazing. 

He's also the guy responsible for this http://www.thejohnnycashproject.com/ which again is total genius, and although each frame is done by a different person, I love the idea of doing a rotoscope animation and using different media for each frame. *rubs chin*

As well as those guys there were a bunch of other cool folk there such as Iain Tate from Wieden+Kennedy (responsible for the Old Spice - The man your man could smell like ads! If you haven't seen them... where the hell have you been!? get yourself onto youtube and have a look, check out the twitter responses they filmed too) and Tommy Pallotta (producer of A Scanner Darkly) who talked about his new project http://www.collapsus.com/ which is a mixture of documentary, drama and gaming and looks pretty ace. There was a whole bunch of other cool things and interesting people too but I won't go on.

ANYWAY, it's pretty late and I have work tomorrow and I've rambled on enough for now. 

Here's an octopus with a monocle drinking brandy which I drew whilst watching Day of the Dead...

TTFN!

news news news...

Man it's been a while since I updated, been pretty busy with work and the bands stuff, and to top it all off I got myself a new job. A real, proper, grown-up-persons job! So now I have to start acting more like an adult... ish. The job is in London too so that means I'll also be relocating! Hopefully I'll manage to find time to do the odd creative thing in my spare time to update ye olde blog, but until then I have the bands video to finish so I'm sure I'll have lots to post!

You should all check out this animation too as it's pretty freaking awesome, and was filmed on the new nokia N8 using a Cellscope...



Equally as awesome is this, so you can see just how small Dot is! ENJOY!...