Life LackaDaisiCal

March has just flown by...the first quarter of 2012 has flown by! Every year we say the same thing.....that time seems to be going even faster.....how can that be? I know that having things scheduled makes you more aware of time passing.....I've already completed two 10 week Watercolour Courses!  I missed two classes of the Fall session while in Norway, and one class this session when we went to Vermont.....not bad reasons for missing classes I suppose! March is a celebratory month in our house - DH's birthday and our Anniversary.  They are relatively close so to celebrate one we went out for a lovely meal at a local restaurant, and for the other we had an at home event..... Steak and mushroom pie, with Chateauneuf-du-pap, 2007 - it was a good year! For all of my watercolour classes, I haven't got many paintings to show.......two sessions of classes, two instructors, two approaches to art, two totally different teaching styles. The first session was supposed to be a beginne

Project number three of the course is a tree, or a group of trees, in their autumn finery - bright red/orange/yellow leaves......this project is driving me crazy.....it's the rest of the inspiration picture that I don't like.....a scrubby piece of grass, a stick tree.....echhhhh......so I'm going to just totally ignore this one and go to our fourth project.....an Iris..... Don't ask me why, but the mat is supposed to be white.......it's white in I Photo, not sure why it isn't white here -- the rest of the picture is representative of the colours in the picture (on my screen)....hmmm... Well, anyway, this was a lot of fun - we drew the iris, masked it out, went to town with a crazy wet on wet background, with some drops of water, some sprays, some splashing.....I really loved the messy part LOL! Then came the iris itself - it's called glazing - when you put one layer of watercolour over another - and build up the layers - this was fascinating and I want to do

The second edition of Textisles is out, and along with the story of Betty Mouat, it is bursting with information on the history of the women's swim suit.  It's fascinating reading. Textisles also includes two original patterns, the Betty Mouat sweater , and the Betty Mouat Cowl (BMC) and when reading these designs, something jumps out at you!  Well, it jumped out at me.... K15tog! Knit 15 stitches together? EEK! Well, it's actually not as hard as it sounds, especially when there are videos to help you master the little things that will make knitting Betty Mouat so much simpler.  Check out the videos on the Needled Tutorials page; no purl garter stitch in the round, working with several colours when knitting the 3 shade section of the sweater, and a demo of the Cockleshell Lace maneuver which includes K15tog! So, while I'm contemplating Betty Mouat, I decided to cast on a "Color Affection" shawl by  Veera Välimäki.   Check our Veera's Ravelry Design page

The next Textisles.......oops, sorry about that.....here's the tease part .....

This is a 50' long "scarf" that has been placed on the Saltburn-by-the-Sea pier railing.....it isn't the first time a "guerilla" knitter has yarn bombed Saltburn.....my Hubby's home town.  Read all about it at the "Saltburn by the sea blog" Read about it here on the "Mail Online" reported by "The Sun" and even the "BBC" For more detailed photos, go to this page on "The Telegraph" Don't you just love a good mystery? Happy Knitting!

Rushes, that is......the subject of our second project in the Watercolour class....... I showed you the inspiration photo back in this post ...... "Bull Rushes" Thank you to Candice for sharing her excellent class notes with me...... I was in Vermont when this project was completed. I was having some self doubt about this whole Watercolour thing......but they I remembered the 10,000 hours theory....you need to pay your dues.....you need to spend a significant amount of time working at whatever to master it.......10,000 hours, that's 5 years of working at "it" 5 days a week, 8 hours a day, 40 hours a week"......that's a lot of dedicated time. When I thought of it that way, well, I realized that (as usual) I was being too hard on myself, after all, I'm such a beginner at this watercolour gig that I have to just relax and go with it.....enjoy it....not be so demanding on myself.....I was wobbly for a couple of days - I almost dumped all of my new art s