Switching gears….

My focus lately has been more on colouring than wool but with winter here, my feet are cold! I made house socks.

I based them on a pattern by DROPS (with edits on the ankle and toes) and will likely make more edits on the next pair. I might even change the cable pattern. The yarn is Magic+ by Bergere de France – 50% wool, 50% acrylic, aran weight and very warm. I think I would also like them to be a little longer. The warmer my feet are the colder my ankles and lower legs get. The human body is weird. Or, at least, mine is.

This doesn’t mean I haven’t been colouring.

My husband spoils me. I can’t remember if I asked for a surprise or for something specific from CassArt but he came home with a set of Chameleon markers. I have been wanting a set of these markers since I first saw them and had them on my Christmas list so I was delighted to get them.

The Chameleon Color Tone markers are an alcohol-based, twin-tip marker with a bullet nib at one end and a brush nib at the other. Each of the 20 colours comes with a mixing chamber that feeds a colourless toner into the coloured nib so that you can use one pen to colour from the palest hint of colour to the original colour of the marker. The longer you have the nib in contact with the mixing chamber, the larger the area you can shade in.


Today I finally did a full design test page. I missed out using a couple of the palest colours in the set of 20 and didn’t use the black but I like how it’s all come together. Well, I say ‘come together’. I wasn’t as careful with colour placement as I would usually be because it is just a practice piece.

The markers take a little getting used to because markers don’t normally change colours like these do. They’re fun though and the colours are good.

 

The Trouble With Scribbles

I’ve been very busily not colouring lately because I’ve been very busily drawing. I’m still tweaking most of these but this is what I’ve ‘finished’ so far –

I’m trying to decide if I should continue and perhaps self-publish an eBook. I’ll need at least 20 for that I think so I’m doing well in that regard.

The first one I finished was the paisley one on the top row, second from the right and you can print your own copy to colour. Please share photos if you do.

They are all hand drawn and without any computer editting and the last time I had any tuition in drawing was back in high school so I’m feeling pretty pleased with my efforts so far.

The Great Cataloguing Adventure 2015 – Colouring Pencils Edition

In case my absence hasn’t made it obvious, I’m struggling at the moment. My head is not a happy place right now and my son has just gone back to his grandmothers after the summer holidays. I miss him. It’s lonely here after 6 weeks with his constant company.

My husband took him on the coash (no car!) yesterday so I decided to finally sort out a final, expandable version of the Big Book Of Colour (BBoC) for my pencils. This is the third version because I keep adding to the collection and the book isn’t big enough to hold everything anymore. Also, I want to record the colours in their brand groups as well as in their colour groups.

There are many swatch books/colour charts available online but they all either have space for colouring but not for colour names or are for ‘grown-up’ pencils and I don’t have any of those so I had to make my own. I used an Open Office document to create a simple table with squares for colour and space for colour names and numbers beneath. As I’ve said before, I flit between crafts which means I have a lot of things that can be repurposed and this time was no different. I knew I had an A5 folder on a shelf and was preparing to cut some printer paper down to size when I found some A5 sized card and A5 plastic sleeves, which was perfect because pens won’t bleed through card and watercolours won’t warp it either.

Print your own blank pencil swatch chart – A5. Check that your printer is set for A5 sized paper (half an A4 page) and that your borders are at 1.50cm for top, left and right and at 1.3cm for the bottom. You can also print this 2 to a page.

It took me about a day to finish but with a total of 492 colours (336 coloured pencils, 83 watercolour pencils and 73 markers & pens), it was a big job (set up the printer, print 50 double sided pages, sort pencils that aren’t already sorted, label and colour as appropriate).

Want to see more?

This is the third version of the BBoC I have made but because this one is expandable and easily added to, I am unlikely to need to make another version.

I have pages for each of the brands/lines that I have and will be making a section for the coloured pencils that shows the colour groups. When I have more watercolours and more pens/markers, I will do sections for them too.

I’m also going to make laminated, oversized pages as dividers but I want to make them pretty so they won’t be done quickly.

And of course, I hadn’t finished this post before my husband got home so I get to tell you how awesome he is – he brought home a set of 12 Inktense watercolours and 24 Polychromos. So very very delighted! I have a few Inktense already but there are only 2 repeats so I now have 16 individual colours. And Polychromos… sooooo beautiful! They are my first set of proper ‘grown-up’ colouring pencils and they are even more gorgeous to use than I thought they would be.

There is a lot of hype about Prismacolours and Polychromos, and there are many of each but they are also prohibitively expensive. And you know what? I love my Crayola pencils so as much as I wanted to try the fancy pencils (and they are fancy) I was ok to wait for them. But now I don’t have to!

I am very very spoiled. My husband will say I am very very loved. He’s awesome and I love him regardless of the fancy pencils.

Today is my birthday (Well, Sunday was)…

Since I last wrote, I have been tweaking the Lilia design so all that typing made me think I’d already blogged this week. Obviously, I hadn’t. Oops.

But I finished version 2 of Lilia today and thought I’d share.

I’ve named this particular doll Veronica. No particular reason, she just looks like a Veronica.

I made a couple of minor shaping changes and added ears with this version. I doubt anyone else will notice the changes (except for the ears) and that’s good. I’ll make another doll to check that I’ve recorded everything that is needed in the pattern and that my maths works.

Bad maths in patterns is a pet peeve so I make an extra effort to be sure it’s right, no matter how simple the pattern. Having worked with a friend on a knitting project recently, I realised that not everyone even bothers with the numbers. I don’t get that. I don’t want to rip back so I count to make sure I have the right number of stitches as per the instructions. I am grateful that I have enough experience with patterns to be able to make corrections when things don’t add up.

It’s been a peculiar week, emotionally. Sunday was my birthday and for the first time I can remember, I spent most of the day asleep. I love my birthday – it’s the one day in the year I can justify insisting everyone pay flattering attention to me. Husband and Son were here and there was yummy breakfast and a roast for dinner and presents (one of which was delayed and only arrived today).

I got a Derwent Carry-All and a pair of extra leaves taking the potential capacity from 132 pencils to 220. Because some of my pencils are extra thick I have fewer than that but all my favourites are in there.

Well, they were until my delayed present arrived today.

I lovelovelove Crayola pencils. The colours are vibrant, the coverage is good, they sharpen well, the ‘lead’ can take a lot of abuse before shattering in the pencil, and they aren’t expensive. I already have a set of 36 but several of the colours are more rapidly shrinking than the others (red, green, pine green and black in particular). So today Hubby brings home a set of 50 new Crayola pencils!!! Sooooooo happy!!

Of course, now I have to reshuffle the pencils in my case. It’s such a chore to play with organise my colouring pencils.

So, emotionally peculiar week. 6 years ago, our dogs produced a litter of puppies. All but one of them went to friends and family. Late last week I was told that one of them had been taken to a shelter because his family couldn’t keep him anymore. Then on Monday I was told that he had been put down because it had been decided that they wouldn’t be able to rehome him. He was only 6 and there was nothing wrong with him and I’m struggling with irrational guilt. He was one of my fur-babies.

My human son is 13 nearly 14 now. It’s starting to show. I don’t do shouting but trying to get him to wash or eat or go out… well, I’d rather have teeth pulled. It’s emotionally taxing. He’s awesome and the worst I can say about him is that he’s stubborn. It’d be nice if he could be stubborn about things I don’t ask him to do though 😉

It may not seem like much but it’s been an unpleasant rollercoaster. For example, finishing the doll feels awesome, but then I crash hard because it’s done and now I have to choose a new project. Birthday = high, no phone calls = low. This is among the worst I’ve been. The highs are so short, and the lows are so deep. I’m ok and I can get through each ‘episode’ but it wears me out. I’m doing the things that help – colouring, meditation, crocheting – and they do help so I’m doing something right.

On the subject of things that help me feel better, this week I coloured one of my most favourite pages in the ‘One Year Wiser’ book.

Green, and blue, and purple too

So, today has been productive. Actually, the last 48 hours has been productive. I’m feeling really good as this week comes to an end.

Lilia is finished!

She stands about 20cm tall (just shy of 8″). I’m planning to make her some more clothes, although not all of them will be seperate from her body like this dress and shoes. Trousers would be almost impossible to get on over the feet, the same can be said of sleeves and the hands. That’s not to say I’m not going to try it at some point…

Anyway, I am delighted with how she has turned out. I’m going to try the pattern with larger yarn and needles to see if it scales well then I plan to release this pattern. I think I am going to make some pirates with this basic pattern so feel free to prod me in the comments occasionally.

I have 3 nieces. The eldest is in her 20’s. She is a writer, and a photographer, and an artist. You can find some of her work in the Australian Geographic – photos and articles (the link is to 1 article on the website).  She’s very awesome.

She has begun drawing again and today shared a stylised feather she had done.

I got to colour it! I’m very pleased with this too.

I limited myself to a red, an orange and all the greens, blues and purples in my pencil box. There were many.

It was really refreshing actually. I haven’t done any colouring for a few days. It was nice to return to it.

Now for the best part!

Do you see that?! It says we’ve raised £500 for Macmillan!!!!! Thank you again to everyone who has donated.

If you can, please share the page address. They fill an ever growing need in our society and need as much help as we can give them.

Now to return to my pencils, but this time to put them away….

All The Things!!! or I am a Collector of Crafts.

I obsess. It is something I do unwillingly. I obsess over my family. I obsess over my thoughts. I obsess over actors and movies. I obsess over crafts. I think even my anxiety could be deemed obsessing in some ways.

It happens when I am mentally well. Sometimes it causes the lows. Sometimes I can exert some sensibility over my behaviour and thoughts. Other times I have to ride it out.

For example, I will watch a movie I like until I never even what to look at some of the actors again (or friends and family want to choke me with the dvd). After the 3 months in hospital last year, I obsess over what certain pain means. When I take up a new craft I must have ALL THE THINGS!!!!!

You saw the spinning fibre, the pencils, the colouring books. You haven’t seen the yarn stash yet. When it comes to crafts, I am a collector.

Though I didn’t need the additions, I got three new colouring books this week and they’re lovely but I am trying to finish some incomplete pages before I start on anything new but I have collected a lot of downloaded pages and will be printing them out soon so really, it’s moot.

The thing is, I do eventually get through these obsessions. The heat of obsession will cool off and the new crafting collection will slot itself into the ever expanding rotation – beading, cross-stitch, knitting, crochet, loom bands, colouring, bobbin lace, spinning, sewing, etc. (You’d be surprised how often the materials for these crafts cross boundaries.)

The downside to this personality trait is that I go through extended periods of not wanting to do any of them, which is accompanied by a weighty feeling of dissatisfaction because I have all these things, and I’m good at them, and I don’t want any of them but I don’t know what I want. I just know that I don’t want to do the things I’ve done before and I don’t want to seek out something new.

It’s a whirlpool of irritation. I don’t like these feelings. I don’t like being unhappy and I don’t understand why it happens.

Maybe it’s a control thing. I don’t know.

Right now, I have some knitting and crochet need to finish and I don’t even want to look at my yarn; my electric spinner is finished and I’d rather use my handmade (chopstick and bathroom sink stopper) handspindle; I want to colour but there are too many lines on the page to make sense them.

I’m planning to go into town tomorrow (for heavier printer paper), maybe that will help get this under control a little. Sometimes it’s just restlessness.

I don’t really know where I was going with this. Sorry.

All the colours! I must have them.

I have never understood why I had to give up my crayons. In fact, most people who know me will tell you that I didn’t. I knit, crochet, cut, glue, pin, sew, colour, and glitter, because it is within me to create. It always has been. My mother tells of how easy I was to occupy with paper, pencils, glue and scissors.

I haven’t gone far really but I suppose that when you find the thing that sings in your heart, you hold onto it no matter what. Or maybe we don’t because the voices of ‘others’ tell us the things we’re supposed to want. I think that is one of the roots of depression – no one wants to be wrong or strange or peculiar so we put away the things we love to fit our round peg into the square hole of social acceptance.

I’ve never been very good at staying with the proverbial pack. I never saw the point. Obviously this does not silence their voices or stop my own insecurities but it does give me something to come back to, and time and again I have seen society learn what I already knew – arts and crafts are good for the soul!

You have no idea how much I love that colouring for grown-ups has become so popular. So many books and no one thinks it’s weird when I buy the biggest box of Crayola colouring pencils I can find then buy a second, smaller set for my son.

I have a lot of pencils. No, really. I even dug out the Duct tape and old cardboard boxes to make a container to sort them into colours. I think I hit the 500 mark this week though I have thinned out the ones I keep in my box to just the ones that I use (the ones that produce good colour and coverage) so there’s only about 200 in the box. But with this many colours I needed to catalogue them.

Yes, I am this OCD.

And just like with my yarn, I think I have more colouring books than I have years enough to complete but that’s ok. Some of the pages are too ‘busy’ and just looking at them makes me feel tense so those don’t get coloured. Other pages I just don’t like. The vast majority of the pages in each book will get coloured but I have so many for a reason.

There’s even a couple just for my handbag.

So far, I use coloured pencils exclusively though I do have some markers/pens. I’m still experimenting with them though.

Psychologists and psychiatrists recommend colouring as therapy. Even Carl Jung, one of the founders of modern psychology, recommended it.

An npr.org article titled ‘For Adults, coloring invites creativity and brings comfort‘ quotes clinical psychologist Kimberley Wulfert (everydayhealth.com):

“In coloring, you’ve got this physical sensation of the tool you’re using touching on the paper. You also have the feeling in your hands and fingers holding this tool, and moving in different rhythms as you fill in the space,” she says, adding that “you’re being mindful, and when you move in a rhythmic fashion for an extended period of time, that becomes a meditation.” 

To fill in the space, you have to think about it even if you treat the lines as optional. While you’re thinking about it – the individual colours, the overall look – you can’t be thinking about something else. Colouring takes you away from yourself for a little while and when you’re done, you’ve got something to show for it.

In the last few months I have created a gallery I like well enough to want to put some of them up in my house. Find my virtual gallery is at deviantart.