Wednesday, April 13, 2011

WIP Wednesday

I feel like I've gotten a lot done lately, and also not a lot. Still no pictures because now I have a dead camera and I have to rustle up the battery charger. I do have links today to show you what I'm working on, but they are all Ravelry links (I couldn't find any outside links that showed what I wanted).

I was determined to start tackling my massive Ravelry queue with what yarn I did have, so I looked through my options and chose a neck pillow that called for a 5mm hook (the one hook I happen to own) and Red Heart Super Saver (the one skein I didn't know what to do with). So I started crocheting happily away. I'm not a fan of mindless miles of garter or stockinette stitch, but give me miles of mindless linear single crochet and I'm actually quite a happy camper. It's quite meditative and I've taken to working with my journal open nearby so I can capture all the random ideas I've had while just sitting and working and thinking. Until I looked down and realized my ball of yarn was now very very small and I was only just reaching the halfway point. The way the pillow is constructed is you crochet one big piece that looks like a E, then fold it in half and sew it up, so that lead me to the decision to stop at the halfway point until I could get more yarn. I'm thinking of getting a different color for the other half, but we'll see.

After wrapping that up, I was eager to get started on another peace sign granny square. I'm planning to make 30 squares (which will make me a nice big cuddly blanket) with the 6 colors of the rainbow, 5 squares each. I say 6 colors because Indigo is a real color, but it is not really a real rainbow color.

Tangent time: Rainbows are the full visible spectrum of color, but because of the way our eyes interpret light, we end up seeing broader bands of our basic colors, while all the other numerous colors sort of blend in and aren't as easily distinguished. When Newton identified the primary colors that make up a rainbow, he first identified 5: red, yellow, green, blue, and violet. He then later added orange, but the church said "That's six colors. We're uncomfortable with the number 6. Are you sure there isn't a 7th?" So Newton looked again and decided Indigo was his favorite and should be included. Not seafoam, not coral, not lemon or lime. It's probably what he saw in the spectrum most clearly. I tend to vibe more with yellow and green light so I might have picked the 7th color from that scale. And Wikipedia doesn't say anything about the Church's involvment, they say Newton had 7 colors because it corresponds to the notes of a musical scale. Or something. Their information is unsatisfactory to me, but I'm too lazy to dig for more right now.

ANYWAY, back to my granny squares. My first one was made in yellow with a black peace sign. I was going to switch up my colors and make a blue one next, but so far that hasn't worked out. The way the pattern goes is the first round you just single crochet in black, but in the second round you introduce the other color and double the number of stitches you have going around. And despite trying and ripping back no less than 5 times, I cannot make my numbers work. Because one wants the peace sign to line up correctly, one has to make sure the stitches go exactly where they need to go, and mine keep wandering. So I took a deep breath, ripped it all out, and put it away for a little breather.

I had wanted to intersperse granny squares with my other projects so I could actually get my blanket put together without feeling like it was the only think I was working on. But since that was stubbornly not working for the moment, I decided to cast on the Alice inspired mitts. They are supposed to look like the little mitts that Alice wears in the beginning of Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland. In reality the movie mitts are made of something really lightweight and sheer and chiffon looking, and these are obviously heavier yarn, but I still adore just about everything Alice in Wonderland. I've even got these Queen of Hearts mitts lined up in my queue.

I've even been designing a little bit. I figure it all good and well to want to turn these ideas into creations, but if I don't actually start drawing or charting, it'll never become a reality. I'm not actually a very strong artist when it comes to drawing. It takes a lot of concentration for me to make my hands re-create what my brain is seeing. I've been using graph paper to help me and I've nearly got my merkaba motif worked out. A merkaba is this:

It's one of the sacred geometries and is supposed to be a representation of a what a soul's spirit vehicle is supposed to look like. In other words, that's what your personal inter-dimensional energy space ship looks. If you've had any experience with psychedelics, you will probably have seen this form in some way. I really want to turn this shape into a stitch motif but it's difficult to express such a dynamic shape in 2D. I've nearly got my drawing worked out so you can actually tell what it's supposed to be. So back to my sketchpad.

5 comments:

  1. I have those alice inspired patterns in my library to make too. I love Alice in Wonderland, it easily is one of my fave books and movies.

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  2. Very cool post! Love that merkaba.

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  3. Great mitt patterns!
    Interesting, scholastic 411 on Newton and the color spectrum. The church disliked six b/c they thought it represented the Devil right?
    That would be one cool stitch motif to create! Good luck and you'll work it out!

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  4. The merkaba makes me think of an everlasting gobstopper.....

    But I likes it!

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  5. That is really interesting about rainbows. And good on you for stash busting with limited tools!

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