Published again

I've been holding back some news for a few weeks, but now I can announce it - another of my short mysteries was accepted into an anthology! Before we talk about that, let's take a moment for some eye candy:

You may have spotted an anomaly on the right side of that run of stitches. Yes, I'm actually casting off a completed knit (if you don't count the braided drawstring I have to make next.) Two things to celebrate this week!

The new short story will be in the anthology for the 2023 Bouchercon World Mystery Convention, to be held August 30-September 3 in San Diego. All the stories had to be set in southern California, ideally in San Diego, and while I did my research I have to say: I got plenty smitten. San Diego looks so lovely and omigosh, the weather! Never too hot, never too cold, never too rainy or dry. From my little house in Toronto it looks like paradise. I'm still hoping I can attend the conference and see it in person.

 

The anthology looks fantastic, too. Check out that author list! I gotta admit, I got a little teary when I saw the company I'll be keeping. MURDER AT THE MARINA will come out late August and be available from bookstores and libraries as well.

August is still a dream for me, though it was warmer here today. We still have patches of snow. I haven't needed a hat but I haven't put any hats away, either. There's still hope I might find a use for my red stripey hatcowl before next fall.

It's been so long since I've had to cast off, I keep looking at the neat line of finished stitches like they're entirely new to me! I guess I really have been knitting nothing but socks. Those get a toe graft instead of a castoff, because I make them top-down.

Not to make this a weather-centric post or anything but - we've had some sun this week! And that means interesting light on the clouds and trees outside. I always get so excited when the sun reaches through our gate to paint stripes at our side door:

I don't have the same fine painting hand as the sun, but I did sit in on a fantastic art demo yesterday with Jens Huebner, who was showing how he uses Faber-Castell products for urban sketching. It was so inspiring, with all kinds of tricks for laying down colour and/or lifting it strategically. I haven't had much opportunity to do any urban sketching lately. But I do like to take a notebook and a couple of pencils outside and draw whatever happens to be going on with the birds or slow-moving squirrels or dogwalkers who've stopped to chat with a neighbour.

I'd like to do more of that and incorporate watercolour, which Jens talked about in the demo. He uses a watercolour pencilcrayon to lay down some colour, then wets it with his water brush (which he helped design!) and - eureka - rubs his finger over it to mute and blur the colour while drying the paper so he can rush to the next set of lines. In urban sketching, speed is key, but I'd never thought of this.

And... ugh. He demonstrated how to sketch out daisies in a meadow. He broke those petals down as simply as you could imagine so we could all follow along. And I still couldn't produce a recognizable flower.

What is it with me and not being able to draw or paint a plausible bloom?? I'm starting to feel cursed. I know I should be grateful I can come up with cartoony versions, but yeesh.

Here are some other flowers I didn't produce:

This little bouquet was on a card I received recently. Quilling is not something I've ever thought of doing but I think this is just beautiful don't you? And perfect for the first week of spring.

Thanks so much for popping by and reading what I've been up to this week. Hope you have a marvellous weekend and I'll see you next Saturday!

These socks don't quit and neither do I

The other night it was SO cold for the walk to the grocery store, I slipped into some serious, heavy-knit, mohair socks before I put on my Blundstone boots. They were heaven.

I am telling you: handknit socks are the best gift you can give yourself.  Must be why I keep knitting them! Practically in my sleep no less because I keep finding more pairs I started and finished and forgot about grafting and running in the ends on.  In fact now that I think of it, I started knitting myself a pair in undyed alpaca as a Christmas present sometime back in November.  I wonder how far I got with those?

It's late to be wishing you all a happy New Year, but allow me do that now, with enthusiasm. Did you make resolutions, or clean up some critical part of your home, or otherwise solemnly mark the shift to 2020?

I cleared off my tiny desk and moved all the previous year's paperwork to longer term storage so I'd have free space for whatever exciting new things occur to me to try my hand at.  But the most important thing I did was to ask myself:

What do I do about Hugs For Your Head?

Ugh, I've pondered this SO many times, here and in my own head. I've tried and tried to go back to posting daily, even weekly, and felt terrible about failing.  I haven't been able to pay it the attention it deserves since we started renovating our house and that is a long, long time.

Definitely worth it for quality of life though.  I can't tell you how much I love looking out at this view on a snowy day like the one I am enjoying at this moment.

Just sets you up so perfectly for a cup of tea and something crunchy to go with it, don't you think?

When I started this blog lo these many years ago, that view was of cement slabs and patchy grass, and I was posting every weekday with pictures of textile projects I was working on.  Knitting, then spinning, then weaving, plus a little sewing and some basic embroidery which I have to say, I really love doing.  Blanket stitch forever! I lived in a tiny house and my days were comparatively easy, though I did have to move things around a lot because a tiny house is no place to have multiple interests.

Then there were disruptions.  The house sprouted a condo, and then blew up into a giant renovation project that lasted over two years.  I broke two fingers and couldn't knit for a while, and even now I can't knit as fast as I did, because they are still a bit stiff and unwieldy. The manageable home projects I used to do for fun became major time-intensive necessary undertakings, and my body informed me that five hours' sleep a day will no longer cut it.  I stopped feeling comfortable publishing knitting patterns, and couldn't see the point in designing them just for myself.

Also, I learned to paint, and I started writing novels again.  And that has been so amazing.  I love writing - it's all I've ever wanted to do - but at this point in my life I seem able to immerse myself in a story like never before, and I don't want to do anything to mess with whatever energy is flowing in that direction.

But I love Hugs too, so I've decided to keep it alive, rather than simply retire it and keep the patterns and past posts available as other bloggers do when they feel they've come to an end of a thing.  Still, as sure as I am that knitting will flow back to the forefront of my mind some day, I don't have enough to say to write about it now - certainly not as much as other inspired knitters do.  And I don't have the creative overflow to write something here every day the way I did - not if I want to keep writing novels, which are a huge investment of Brain.

See? There's still beautiful yarn in my life!

Instead, Hugs is adapting.

(and so will its banner, when I find time to remind myself how to change it.)

I will be posting here once every month - checking in, showing you whatever interesting creative thing I've discovered, and glad to hear what you've been doing too be it by e-mail or comment.  It probably won't be the same Hugs it was before, with nonstop textile tips.  But it will still be about making things and being happy. And it will still be me. Much of the feedback I've had over the years is that the me part was the real appeal of this place.

So, January!

This month I want to tell you about the amazingness of drawing with pencils while unskilled.

I know, I know, this is something you're supposed to notice as a teenager in a long boring class, using the cover of your binder or perhaps the surface of your desk.  But I was always surrounded by friends who could draw, and I knew I didn't have their eye, so I didn't bother trying.  Now I've learned that doodling is good too, and that you don't have to do anything complex to enjoy yourself.

Pete gave me a honking big hunk of soft graphite with some other art supplies at Christmas, and man is it fun to push around a page.  All I could think to try making was clouds over a rough sea, and I still love looking at the image I ended up with, but the best was the sound of the pencil moving over the paper, and the way the graphite felt crossing the surface.

Scribbles!

Coloured pencils are also a revelation. I always thought of them as being good for colouring, and they are, but I'm not super interested in that so I missed out on their other merits.  As it happens though, I can produce a passable piece of fruit with coloured pencils.  All you have to do is layer colours - sometimes unexpected colours - and you get something that looks like your clever artist friend did it while everybody else was taking chemistry notes.  But again - scribbles also produce recognizable shapes.

What I've noticed as fallout from these tiny drawing exercises, which take about as long as a commercial break while curled up near the TV, is that I'm seeing the world around me very differently. I watch for shapes now, and the way light falls, and what colours look like and how they contrast and complement each other.  The other day I had to stop walking in a boring strip mall space just to take a picture of these amazing clouds over a sun patch:

I find it really exciting to see so many beautiful and inspiring and positive things wherever I go. If you aren't in the habit of doing it already, I can highly recommend being more noticing about what's around you, and also, picking up a pencil and drawing something badly just for fun.

In other news: Pete saw a bunny in our front garden recently.  Just as a break from raccoons it was a treat, but also - BUNNY :^)


See you next month - take care till then!

You may be familiar with this sheep

Lately I've been obsessing about learning how to draw. I used to think it was something people are born with, like a high school friend of mine who spent all his time reading comics and drawing superheroes, or a university friend who could do detailed drawings of anything architectural.  Now I think their natural talents, though considerable, were mainly brought to excellence because of observational skills, and a lot of practise (much like knitting?) I have come to suspect that if I am willing to settle for 'appealing in some way' as opposed to 'so realistic people will think it's a photograph', I might be able to draw too... which is how I got these sheep.

You might recognize the sheep.  You might, in fact, have the same sheep tape measure I do in your knitting bag.

Today I followed up by drawing spoons, but they aren't done yet so I'll spare you that.  The connecting factor between them is going to be Faber-Castell Polychromos pencilcrayons which I'm hoping will allow me to more colourful drawings than I am getting with the Faber-Castell Watercolor Pencilcrayons I used for the sheep.  My plan for those was to draw the outlines with a waterproof Micron fine-tip pen, then colour them in with the watercolour pencils, then soften all the colours with a fine wet paintbrush, then go over top with the pencilcrayons when they finally arrive from the shop where I ordered them.  Because going over and over the same drawing is the best way to get past having very few ideas for pictures.

Here is what the sheep looked like before I added water:

I find it ironic that the colours look more washed out without water, than with!

When I've gone over it all with the top layers, using much sharper pencils to fill in all the white bits in the paper, this little sheep scene should be downright vibrant... as well as more detailed in the flower department. A girl can hope, anyway.

The notebook I used for this is a very small Moleskine watercolour pad.  It's not something I needed or would have considered if I were shopping online, but I saw it a few weeks ago in a local art store and it just felt so nice in my hand I couldn't leave it behind.  I didn't know if I'd have the courage to put pictures in it because the pages are sewn in and not perforated for tearing out if you don't like them.  So far though, I have been using it, drawing something with the Micron pen or with pencil to be coloured in afterward, or improvising a scene in watercolour paint.

It's been a good test of character, I think, risking imperfection like that in such a nice book, and such a good boost to my sense of artistic self to find that I enjoy flipping through the pages to look at what I've made so far.  No cringing yet.

However, it's also been a learning experience, because the Moleskine paper is super textured and not really ideal for pencil sketches. I think after I've finished the spoon series, I'll focus more on watercolour paints for it and maybe even get a second book for sketching.

In other news: while I've been distracted by pencils and paintbrushes, my socks have been WEARING OUT!  Actual holes in the toes and heels... I never thought the day would come, my socks have served me so well for so long.  And here I am with another half-dozen pairs waiting for their ends to be run in so I can put them into the rotation, waiting at the door for pencilcrayons instead of getting the job done... I guess I know what I'm doing this weekend.

(running in ends, not darning.  i mean, c'mon.)


Hope all is well with you and that there are no holes in your socks!




 

Watercolour paint

Because my friend Ady is a watercolour artist I've never considered the possibility of making pictures, or working with watercolour paint.

I mean, she's just so good at art… her paintings are vibrant and beautiful and lifelike and unique to her. Oddly enough, I also never thought I could knit socks because her sister knit her so many beautiful ones and Ady made them look so elegant. I think an art form has to look achievable to be immediately inspiring to others, don't you?  I'm so glad I finally got over that and starting producing socks at alarming rates.

One day this past fall Ady was in town and needed art supplies so we arranged to meet at the art store. She pointed to a small watercolour set and told me that's what she packs when she's traveling. It was not expensive and I thought, maybe I could try learning with those paints. Just before Christmas I bought the set for myself along with some paper and set it aside as a Boxing Day present. And not a moment too soon, since I was at that point just a few days away from breaking some fingers!

I started small, as you might recall – just colouring in a few very tiny drawings I made with a pen. Then I painted the trunk of a tree and some leaves. Then I got a little more ambitious and tried a vase of flowers. Then I sketched out this cottage, and since then I've finished a few more whole scenes.  It is a completely addictive art form and I love it.

After I got about this far, I found out that watercolour is meant to be a difficult medium... but I'm not finding it difficult at all. All I wanted was to find a way to put paint on the paper that doesn't mimic Ady's style, or Jan's (Jan also paints in watercolour, and makes her own greeting cards for Christmas and birthdays), and I've managed to do that, so all the rest is just fun.  Apart from the paper curling, which I've googled and can correct, my expectations are so low I'm getting exactly the results I'm looking for, even with just one hand and no ability to hold the paper still while I work.  Although if I'm honest, I did some serious learning on this little sketch.  I wouldn't put a fussy Tudor window like this on a stone cottage again, and in future it's got to be either cartoon flowers and trees or blended mottled ones, not both together.  Now that I'm getting better at this, I can afford to be picky.

My favourite thing is how forgiving watercolour paint is – unless you've drawn in your cartoon flowers and trees with permanent felt pen before you even start, you can just put on another layer any time you mess up or change your mind. And it's so tidy, it just wipes up with water. It doesn't even smell, like oil paints do. And best of all I have discovered I do tiny images very well, and bigger images not well at all. That means my paper supplies and finished projects can be very compact, which is perfect for my tiny house.

Have you tried anything new to stretch your creativity lately? If yes, do tell, and if not - maybe this weekend is a good time to give it a go!

New yarn and new paint

The postal service does not observe tact protocols for the temporarily unable to knit, so this charming yarn turned up in the mail this week:

Vesper sock club, Christmas edition: "Comfort and Joy"

And I had less wistful flurry of excitement when I spotted an email from KnitPicks about their new square knitting needles made from wood, too... only to have my hopes dashed when I found they are using U.S. sizing for them.

My current square needles get SO much use they are wearing down, and they made such a difference to my hands I am not eager to go back to round ones... But their maker changed over to a material that bothers my skin, so a wood option would have been a welcome chance to extend the life of the original needles.  Not to mention freedom to pack sock knitting for a big trip! Because if my needles were in fact confiscated or lost, they would be replaceable.  However... U.S. sizing versus metric.

In U.S. sizing, one needle covers both 2.25mm and 2.5mm.  And since you go up a size for square needles (or anyway, I do, because of my gauge) I could effectively be using 2.0 mm needles for my 2.25 mm Vesper socks.  As I have learned to my cost, 2.0 mm needles produce a VERY different size sock than 2.25 mm ones!

But oh, who am I kidding... I will probably try a set anyway, just in case they lean to the larger size. 

One thing that has not let me down this week has been the magical balm of watercolour painting. As one would indulge an irritable newly-injured child, Pete bought me more paper and a second set with more colours in it - Winsor & Newton's Cotman 24 half pan plus - and I spent a happy afternoon watching him unwrap the little paint packs (definitely not a one-handed job) and setting them all up myself.

I'd read a tip about softening the paint with a drop of water...

... which I would have done with my old oral syringe but that's hard to fill with one hand. Thankfully I remembered that eyedroppers do pretty much the same thing and also, that we had one all tucked away on a shelf Pete could reach.  It is very satisfying to create patterns of tiny droplets, the better to mix paint or clean a brush later, and the eyedropper is very pleasant to use.

Once I'd sorted the colours into an order that makes sense to me, and painted this chart of what they all look like once they're on paper...

... I was ready to paint something special.

Do you know the mantra of Julian of Norwich?

All shall be well

And all shall be well

And all manner of things shall be well

Jan taught it to me a few years ago and I find it very helpful. I paired the last line of it with a tree trunk mostly because I like them, but as a bonus it reminds me to change my perspective when I don't like my situation. If you put your back to the trunk of a tree and slowly move around it, you are going to get very different views of what lies ahead.

(unless you are lost in the very middle of a forest, but let's not go there.)

Hope you have a wonderful weekend! And no getting list in forests either.

A good outlook for the new year

Happy new year, you guys!  I've been busy doing creative things since I was last here with a new Hug, and I'm hoping you have as well, even if it's been creative tidying.  I mean it can't all be an exciting round of eating/remorse/treadmill shopping, right?  Here's my prettiest New Year's project:

I gave some friends little watercolour sets for Christmas and decided to buy myself some paint and paper while I was at it.  My only real memories of painting are Finger, in kindergarten; Something On A Thick Paste Brush, in high school; and Brush and Roller, as a homeowner with shabby old furniture to make over.  It was time.

Ady mentioned she has this little travel tin from Daler and Rowney (complete with a thumb ring for painting at an easel) so I felt it was a good place to start:

But in hindsight, I should have treated myself to the larger set which comes with grey and black, both of which I really missed while I was planning out my project.  Black pen to the rescue!

Watercolour is not something you can just pick up and do well - you have to experiment and thank goodness for the internet and Youtube, which in the end I didn't bother with because I found the wonderful site The Postman's Knock first. This is the sort of wonderful artist's rabbit hole where you can dive down and lose yourself for hours, but I particularly enjoyed the posts on laurel wreaths and beginner water colour painting.

My mind doesn't really work the way it has to, to be able to make art in this medium.  Artists think about composition and placement, whereas I am more about the overall tactile and emotional experience that comes from different colour and texture combinations.  This makes me a shoo-in for knitting and other fiber arts, but kind of a hopeless blob for paint.  What on earth would I do with these fun new tools? 

One thing I did know: I didn't want to draw flowers because it would just be depressing with so many of Ady's gorgeous paintings for comparison and contrast.  That realization deepened some thoughts I'd been having after reading Laurel Bern's New Year's posting (which is excellent, by the way, you should really read it as well as the link she shares, if you're looking for encouragement in your own life.) 

My takeaway was how important it is NOT to listen to the voice in your head that says you shouldn't even bother trying to reach your goals, because somebody else will always get there first and your own talent is crummy anyway.

Do you hear this inner voice?  I know practically every writer does, no matter how successful.  Lots of artists do too.  I am guessing it's universal and is just louder when you're actually trying to achieve something, leaving some of us more vulnerable to it than others.

Anyway: I decided to use my watercolour set to decorate a catchphrase I could use to drown out the negative self-talk when I'm trying to write this year. 

I did some brainstorming on my own and then with friends and came up with various ungainly options, such as:

Don't try to be the best, just try to be YOUR best

Others may be better, but nobody tries harder

Try now, panic later

All of which are probably useful but I didn't like the negativity.  I mean, 'trying'?? I try like I breathe - all the time. I don't need reminders for that. 

Finally I said The trouble is, there are just SO many books out there, and who am I to think I have anything new or useful to say?  I need to believe there will be room for my writing, with somebody, somewhere.

Everybody liked that idea and one person said, "There's always room for you."  So that's what I decided on.  It's an open-ended sort of positive phrase and if it works for your situation, please do feel free to use it!

I did a first draft with the very tiny pointed brush I'd bought and learned some interesting tricks that I quite enjoyed. 

For example, my set comes with little basins for mixing paint colours together - but I mixed several different combinations in just one basin because all you need to create a new paint is a drop of water, and it turns out one drop is easily separated from others thanks to the type of plastic used for the tin liner.  To add minimal drops I used the syringe I kept for some reason after having my wisdom teeth out and being told to use it for jetting water into the spaces left behind.

Also, I learned to let my brush sit for a moment in the area I wanted to colour, so that the water would seep onto the page.  After that I could move the water around within the black pen borders for a while, until it dried. 

Here's my experimental page, where I worked at getting just the right green for my laurel leaves (the final version was a mixture of two greens, a dark blue, and some brown):

After I did this draft I realized I would have to write freehand on the good copy - my ink didn't flow properly over a pencil tracing.  Also, that my little house needed a window, and I should draw bigger socks, and do a black outline on everything and not just the lettering.

Which left me with this:

A house to remind me that I know how to coordinate building one; two socks to remind me that not everybody can knit those and I have many grateful sock-recipient friends to prove it; and a hat, to remind me how many people appreciate my hat patterns (especially the chemo caps.) 

There's always room for somebody who can do what I do, and that means there's always room for me.  And I can guarantee that there's always room for you, too.

I have no idea what I'll paint next but I know it will be something, because it turns out, painting with watercolour is incredibly relaxing.  It's hard not to feel optimistic about personal victories, however small, when you start the year with another tool for your workbox.  Hope this gets you thinking about a way to give yourself an encouraging pat on the back, too!