Tuesday, November 07, 2006

Some Days the Bear Will Eat You...

Watercolor is HARD! I mean to relax and just let the medium flow...I want to control it and tell it where to go. I worked on the first watercolor and started another. I promised myself I'd loosen up for the second one, but it still is too tight. Next time I'm going to start with wetting the entire sheet of paper, and letting the colors bleed together. I think I want to use more arbitrary color as well. One good thing I did was make the figures larger on the second one.

I know these pictures aren't very good, but you can see that the first one just got tight, and the second one is looser, but kind of crappy.





I finished the first of the Manly socks for my dad. It's a pretty simple pattern, so I just flew through it. Here's where I was with it yesterday afternoon.



The yarn is Cherry Tree Hill in Java and I just love the colors. Here's a closeup:



The problem is there is supposed to be enough yarn in one hank of this stuff to make a pair of socks, but the 1st sock used up a little more than 2 oz. of the 4 oz. ball. I weighed the remaining yarn before the sock was finished, and there was just a little over 2 oz. left. Now there's just a little under 2 oz. I ordered another hank of the Cherry Tree Hill, but I know it's going to be a little different.



The same thing happened with my husband's Manly's, except, I had almost finished the second sock before I realized I wasn't going to have enough yarn. I ordered another hank of yarn for him (Fleece Artist Merino in Ebony) and it arrived a couple of days ago. The color is slightly different, but it's OK for the toe.



Should I go ahead and start the second sock for my dad, and finish up the toe when the 2nd ball of CTH Java gets here, or should I wait and knit the entire sock out of a single hank? I'll probably go ahead and start it. I think having one toe different and having to weave in a few more ends is better than having the entire sock be slightly different.

2 comments:

Susan said...

Damn watercolor won't stay where you put it! Can you tell I'm an oil painter? I really want to explore watercolor and "go with the flow" of the medium, but I haven't gotten around to it.

I think you're probably right about the sock. That's what I'd do.

vtwopoint5 said...

I know the first painting isn't what you were going for, but I just had to say I love the trees in it!!

Socks look great too!