Drawn Together
First up, socks! I made two more pairs of socks this month, using the same recipe I used for the pair I made last month. Remarkably, I’m still not tired of it. I would love to have a drawer full of socks like this, in different fabulous variegated yarns.
Something I love about living where I live now is that there are more interesting happenings. I joined Wendy MacNaughton’s Grown Up Table last fall, because I love her illustrative style and because I never got art lessons as a kid. It was a gift to my inner child, and my future self. A few weeks ago she was actually in DC, at the National Gallery of Art. I wasn’t able to attend her Friday evening lecture, but I did brave the pouring rain (if you know me, you know that this is big deal) for a Draw Together Strangers event the next morning. I sat at a table and stared at someone I had never met for sixty seconds while we drew blind contour portraits of each other, and exchanged them afterward. I also shamelessly asked Wendy to write on the certificate that was our last assignment for the 30 day drawing challenge she did at the beginning of the year, and lovely human being that she is, she did and acted like it was just as exciting for her as it was for me. Sometimes it’s actually delightful to meet your heroes.
Much of the month has been drab and dreary (although less so than January and February, thankfully), and the hibernation instinct of winter is giving way to the emerging antsiness of spring. When I came across an origami rocket tutorial on Instagram on a rainy day, I promptly folded up a fleet of them and left them on the dining table, with straws. One by one the kids found them and asked what they were, and eventually they were all standing at the foot of the stairs trying to launch them all the way to the top (and then racing up to collect them). I made an extra to keep for future reference, since the fold was about as easy as a paper airplane but the slightly different launching method added a sense of novelty.
I love my Fillion (leather journal cover), but because I do everything in my bullet journal, I’ve never been quite sure what to do with the second little book-holding cord. I’ve used it for a nice little pocket (which I kept until it got raggedy), and then for a smaller notebook. Most recently, I thought it would be fun to make a book sleeve. Initially I thought I would knit it, so it would be stretchy, and then I thought about sewing it, so it would be more durable—and then I realized that if I just folded a bandana, I could adjust it to the size of the book, change the print (I have a lot of bandanas), and also solve the problem of how I was going to attach it.
And finally, in my ongoing mending/fixing quest, I knit chunky little chair socks to keep the floor from being damaged. I’m not sure how well they’ll wear (I might need to felt them for better durability) but they were a quick project and are working well enough for now.
Done with socks for now, I started a circular blanket using left over sock yarn because my scrap sock bag is nearly full and I don’t currently have a circular blanket (I seem to end up giving them away whenever I make one). I also have plans for a spring sweater, but that will require a field trip so I’m saving it for a nice day so I can make a quest of it.