This is about all I can show you of the five pictures in production, or of the roughly 16 thumbnails on the storyboard. Soon I can at least post a teaser picture and tell you what it is I’m up to exactly, but first I’ll have to finish that picture. And I know you’re eager (so am I!) but you can’t rush a picture. It shows, it’s uncomfortable, and it’s not fair to the picture.

There's a very important phase of painting called sit back and take a look. It's a phase I'm in the middle of with three of these, and a phase I really struggle with. To start a picture, I find, doesn’t take much discipline. I tend to jump right in. (Which sometimes works, sometimes doesn't.) But removing yourself from the process of creating in order to regard your painting critically, in order to see where it’s going, to decide whether it’s working, whether it’s going to work. That takes a lot of guts. And far more discipline, because my first inclination is to shove forward when I encounter a problem. And that also can mean starting over, or running a good painting into the ground. Over-painting something. I struggle a lot with allowing myself to sit back and take a look. I tend to get nervous about the time ticking away.



It’s one of the reasons I was so excited to find this book at the library not long ago: Picasso Paints a Portrait. It’s a photo-essay published in 1996 from a collection of photographs taken in 1957. And it is exactly what I wanted it to be: it depicts, simply, Picasso painting a portrait.



Moment for moment.



Line by line.



I love the progress pictures of the face itself, absolutely. I love the glimpse inside his studio.



What I love best about it, though, is the acknowledgement of this all-important step. The stopping and looking and considering where to go next.



It helps me so much that Picasso has a path he’s following, and that he gets a little lost sometimes.



And that he waits. He lets it happen.







For as long as it needs to.



I am immensely comforted by these pictures.

.

I just like this. These are two of the many old CD cases I use as pallets for my big paintings. They could be paintings all on their own.

For some reason my future-phone's camera is only taking pictures in a pinkish sepia, not the colors that usually cause me to whip out my camera in the first place.



But of course it also means that in reflecting on the images later I appreciate the light that much more.



This spunky guy lives at a client's house. I have had many fish in the past and I find them to be (fairly or unfairly) somewhat lethargic creatures. Yet this guy swims right up to me as I begin to dust the mantlepiece and opens his fishy little mouth.



Again and again. And he swims all around, follows me as I move, and apparently watches as I vacuum the floor below his lofty perch. He has a such wonderful energy that he makes me want a fishy friend of my very own.



And I suppose through the magic of drawing-on-the-easel, I do have a fish of my very own, in a way.



.

Whilst reading Leif Peng’s blog, Today’s Inspiration a while ago I saw a title that grabbed me: Forty Illustrators and How They Work by Ernest W. Watson. It was, I assumed, the inside scoop from mid-century illustrators and designers. Yes please.

The library didn’t have it, but they did have another book: Creative Perspective for Artists and Illustrators.



The first night I had it home I positively pored over the thing. Watson writes about perspective from the angle of a designer-illustrator, which is not often the angle one receives. It’s lovely to read about, since illustrators have a unique place somewhere in between reality and abstraction.

In reality, no picture -- photographic or otherwise -- can duplicate what our eyes see. For one thing, the camera picture is recorded on a flat plate of film; the retina of the human eye is concave.

(the illustrator’s) function, usually, is to depict the facts and events

Illustrative skill involves considerably more than the training of the eye and hand to see and record the correct appearance of things observed, essential as that is. There are those who can make reasonably good drawings of things they are looking at, but who are lost when they try to construct objects “out of their heads”. They have a photographic eye, but they lack imagination.

it is this conflict that fascinates me most about the problems of perspective. I have been particularly taken lately by the cubism-influenced illustrators, who stretch things flat and let one see as much of the scene as possible.



Yet when I stumbled upon Peter P. Plasencia’s pictures in that book, I was dazzled by his brilliant use of space within his little tiny box. And, frankly, I was a bit dumbfounded. How did he do that? He’s clearly obeying rules, but when? In what circumstances?

Conflict between design and perspective in picture-making ...his picture actually may be more convincing when his lines do not conform to photographic reality.

What’s clear to me is that what reality looks like and what actually works in an illustration are two very different things. You do HAVE to stretch that road flat sometimes to fill up the picture. You do need to show something from an impossible angle occasionally to keep something interesting.



I’m not sure if this is where Watson is going with “creative” perspective, but he is at least coming to this stuff in a non-traditional way. He, like everyone who knows what they’re talking about, writes endlessly about the need to just sit down and draw. Technique is taught quickly, but executing that technique in an effective way is something nobody can teach anybody. It all comes from drawing. Drawing, drawing, drawing. Drawing every day.



I recently got back in touch with a high school art teacher and I have been trying for three weeks now to articulate why it is that I am so hungry for this stuff. When I knew her, I wanted nothing to do with the color wheel, perspective, the elements and principles of design. At the ripe old age of fifteen I felt I’d mastered the basics. I had plateaued. It’s what happens when you stop exploring, when you refuse to grow. When you decide you don’t need any more learning. I once without a trace of humility informed a drawing teacher (this same drawing teacher) that I couldn’t think of a single thing to improve on.

I had no goals, but I had no shame either. That’s not a good combination.

I think part of this was the vast difference between having confidence and assuming you are The Greatest Thing That Has Ever Lived. One is that drive to push through the hard stuff, the other is deciding you don’t need to go through the hard stuff because it’s beneath you.

I was too firm in thinking I was The Greatest, and it took a portfolio rejection and essentially being barred from taking art classes at my University to make me realize my mistake. No. You are not the greatest. In fact, you have a lot of work to do.

Rather than fighting the system I took a step back and got an English degree. I don’t regret it. I think I needed to jump into a completely new field to learn to be open to ideas; new and old. To learn how to learn again. And anyway at that art department, I could not have learned. What I wanted to learn was the stuff I was learning from this book the other night -- about the hinged box and doors and how to measure proportions with squares. What they were teaching was two point perspective. Rigidly, I might add. Frustrating to the observer in me who was, without realising it, seeing things with many, many vanishing points.



Distance made me hunger for more. I started collecting fragments of design, keeping track of things I liked and why. Slowly but surely I was developing my own weird pathology of How To Make Pictures. Noting what details to pay attention to. Pushing the perspective. Pushing the colors to certain family groups I’d grown fond of. Now when I find books on topics I’d previously snubbed as being beneath me I pore over them with a fanatical zeal. Anthony tracked down a book on color theory a few months ago and I’ve been devouring that book just as eagerly as this one on perspective. Maybe moreso. Something about scholarly writing on the qualities of certain colors is just electrifying. It’s like finally taking preschool 201 (Or really, more like preschool 988). Colors! Shapes! Interaction!

These books lead me to things I may or may not already know, and they get there on paths I’d never heard of. And once these paths are taken, they are much easier taken again, and can lead to even more places.

There is a peculiar feeling that I have now. The more I learn, the more questions arise. The more facts I find, the less I know in a way, because it just spurs me on to keep searching. It is so important to keep the mind receptive. To never close the flood gates by feeling you have complete knowledge of something. The minute you do you cease to evolve, cease to grow, and cease, essentially, to LIVE.

Do live. And learn. And practice. Practice, practice, practice. Practice every day.

Connections

Okay kids. Wow. I think I got it.

You remember my recent breakthrough with the easel and the drawing board. Since then I have with a few exceptions begun my mornings with a quick crayon session. Even a couple unrelated scribbles helped me get out of that weighty am I really good enough nonsense you sometimes encounter as you approach your desk, and instead you are transported into that magical observant place where you can just notice the shape of things. And all you want out of life is to copy them down.

This inevitably led to my bringing crayons and the drawing board with me to the Oregon Country Fair, and resulted in those big crayon studies of what I saw. The result was not necessarily better than my attempts to capture journeys in the past -- things were not nearly as detailed as they needed to be to really be accurate -- but it was a LOT more satisfying. What I was seeing and feeling was BIG STUFF. So it was nice to record things in a big way.

I have gone to some really amazing places in the last couple years. Ireland with my Mother in 2008, a two-week camping holiday in Canada a year later, San Diego a year after that. Travel has always been a deep love of mine, and all the while I have secretly hoped someone might pay me money to go places and experience them and then report my findings to whoever would be interested in the sort of things I notice. So whenever I've gone somewhere I always feel that anxiety -- perhaps even more than you do -- to capture the experience.

I say perhaps more than you do only because I illustrate things. In a way that's really my job all the time. I capture experiences, feelings, emotions. All those things cameras do not capture.

Furthermore during the trip to Ireland I learned something -- cameras are not fast enough. My mother and I both had cameras with many memory cards, but we often lamented that the thing we'd wanted to take pictures of was usually just after we got it in our head to press the button. We had internet available at every place we stayed and adequate downtime every evening set aside for emailing loved ones back home to give them a day-by-day account of events. This morning we caught the bus outside the pub in Cork, changed buses in Tralee. Ate dinner at this place outside Bunratty Castle. All true but it somehow doesn't capture what the three-to-five hours on the bus was like. Rushing past rolling hills and stone walls straight out of a storybook. The alarming skinniness of the roads. The thrill of seeing bilingual road signs, placed in places that made no sense to our American brains. The tiny towns passed through, with tiny shop fronts and Easter egg colored houses. Buildings crowded around the road. A man in a check cap and patched trousers walking with an ancient terrier. And these things were addressed in the occasional prosey email, but there was still so much missing. The color of the stone walls and how it matched the man's jacket. The sound of people muttering to each other. How can you capture it all?

The next adventure was Canada, and I tried doggedly to document everything. Snapshots of anything that seemed promising, sketches, painting on the fly. I even had a gluestick and collage paper with me, and I faithfully kept every single piece of paper we were given or came across. It was a mess -- way too ambitious for the timeline we were on. And of course in the end the car window was smashed in and I wound up mostly only talking about that, and it's a shame because that was one of the most beautiful trips I have ever been on.

After that trip it was clear that I needed to simplify my capture approach. In San Diego I only brought my pen and notebook. And with the exception of the Museum of Man, which I badly wanted to sit in front of and paint for a few days, I actually did really well. But I ran into a new problem.



My simple pen studies had a satisfying feel to them all on their own. But whenever I tried to iron them out, or add color, or turn them into a more polished painting, I was somehow never able to capture the charm of the original drawing. I've had this problem a long time actually, in several other facets of my drawing-life. Different stages along the way. It was something I wanted to confront, but something I never got around to. Other things kept demanding attention.

Since then when I go on journeys I take nothing more than a pen and that at least solves the anxious burden of Capturing Everything. It helps you let go when your supplies are limited. It also helped me hone in on Which Details Are Important and get a grip on how I saw things, so that eventually I was able to do things like paint that picture of the Tillamook Cheese Factory without taking any pictures or any written notes at all.



So at this point I have these stories I want to tell, these pictures I want to make, about these bigger travels. They are all backlogged in my brain and keep getting pushed behind other things. Added to this we are constantly going on little weekend excursions. Constantly. Remember, Anthony lived in Eugene for two years before he moved in this summer, so there were many, many weekends spent on the road. The baby cooler is in constant use, the roadmap is marked up with highlighters and tattered from the number of times it gets stuffed down between the passenger seat and the gear shifter. Now that Anthony lives up here we are able to explore east and west more often. We go on more walks into the hills and take little mini-vacations to the rural countryside. Make our own minor discoveries. This is a beautiful state and I am pretty strict about not working on weekends, preferring instead to go out and explore.

I guess what gets me is: I am really good at going on adventures. My last trip to Colorado was a 72 hour affair in two different cities with three different groups of people and it was as slick a little operation you could ever hope for. I just wish that my digestion of my adventures was as solid.

So. With all this bubbling around my head, in the far and distant background. This next thing happened.

I have a new cleaning-client who has a house situated near a wooded hill. When you look out one of the upstairs windows, you essentially see what I drew as a crayon study the other morning:



I drew it because it's a beautiful view and I can't stop thinking about it. In fact I actually cheated a little and worked on this crayon-doodle for two mornings. The second morning -- yesterday morning -- I mostly just darkened some things, and colored in that orangey square in the foreground.

In that inexplicable way these things happen, that orangey color got my attention. I thought about it all morning. It pulsed urgently in my soul. I thought about that canvas that I'd played around with a few months ago when I'd thought again about big-scale painting. I thought about those vague scaffolding studies I'd done after visiting the fairgrounds. I thought, I know what I'm doing what I get home..



Thus it was.

And as I was wrapping up I began thinking...what else can I do?




What about that great image of the Sylvia Beach Hotel in Newport?




Yeah, I thought. Let's try that.



So that's what I did today. It kind of feels unreal.

This of course does not capture the detail that the little gouache paintings do. So there's more work to do. (Happily, there's always more work to do.)

The jury is still out about all those complicated things I was worried about yet failed to articulate about abstract art, fine art, etc. There's so much baggage there. But what gives me hope is that for the first time in a long time I'm not too worried about all that rubbish. What's important to me is that I have finally figured out how to make big things on canvas again. To make with the big colors. And I've connected those little expressive drawings to a way to make them as big and colorful as I want them to be. The static drawings can be lifted out of the notebook and rocketed up to a realm way, way beyond where they started.

It's so satisfying to arrive here. To make that connection. Now I feel like I COULD paint the Museum of Man building. Tomorrow. With nothing but my memory of the place and my feeble attempts to sketch it.

.

What I did with my Friday

God that felt good.

OCF: scaffolding

Fair. What can I say? It’s magic. And everybody says that. So what can I say that other people haven’t?



Well, as a picture maker I can say this: it was a sweet, blessed relief to be in a world that understands the need for whimsy. From the admission gates made to look like the heads of dragons to the simple shapes set up near the bank of the Long Tom River, aesthetic playfulness was there at every turn.



It was good to see playfulness. To see giant stars made of kite material lit up at night and in the early morning by Christmas lights. To see a bench surrounded by a wicker creature. To see people walking around in tree costumes. It seemed no visual field was left unadorned. Even the recycling kiosks were all distinct and interesting. There's a kind of acknowledgement of the spiritual there -- and I don’t mean just the knee-jerk hippie woo-woo kind of spiritual. I just mean that hunger for colors and shapes that we recognize in children. Grown-ups have that hunger too -- and probably need it even more than children do, in the face of their busy, messy lives. But rarely does one see it in quite the way one saw it at Fair, and it was lovely to behold.



I know a lot of people see Fair as a throw-back to Woodstock, but I don’t think it’s as simple as that. I don’t think it would have endured this long if it was just about a lot of burnt out hippies. All the pieces fit too neatly together. The dust gets bad, so there is a water crew that keeps the road sprayed down. There are barrels of water around for the vendors to attend to their own paths. There is a fanatical commitment to using every resource and not over consuming, so there is a truck that picks up wood -- old timbers, usable sticks -- and takes it to what is essentially a giant filing cabinet near the compost barn to sort them out. There are shelves for every kind of thing they find. So when the construction crew needs to build a new vendor-space, or fence, or recycling kiosk, the wood is ready and waiting. When de-construction pulls the extra things back at the end of the week, (the traffic control chairs, the extra fences, the sign posts) the wood goes back to the filing cabinet. Ready and waiting for next year.



I’m not ready to be back in civilization. It took me a few days to really click into the rhythm of the place -- it’s so different from regular life. Now that I’m there it’s hard for me to click back out. I sort of hope I don’t, actually. I’ve not felt so calm and wonderful in a long time. I didn’t do anything out of the ordinary, it’s just what happens when you are around a group of people that assume the best of everyone.

.

The wild and lawless days of the post-Impressionists

It will not surprise you that most of my fancies lie in the representational world. It may surprise you, as it did me, that I was so taken with this painting.

I saw it at a client’s home a few months ago. I am usualy very strict about NOT sharing things I find in people’s houses directly -- privacy and all that -- however in this case I feel okay about this blurry snapshot. It really was not about the other things in the living room (which were equally engaging) but all about this painting, about two feet tall, with such beguiling depth and detail that I honestly had trouble working around it; it was so captivating. They have a sofa perpendicular to this thing and oh how I long to lie there in the evening and consider that painting.

Abstract art is such a difficult topic. It’s honestly hard for me to get “into” it because I think the openness of the genre (that “pfft I could do that!” feeling) has made room for a lot of stuff that is not good. And something being not good itself has been incorporated into the aesthetic, (What is “goodness” anyway? Who’s to say this is good and that is not?), so it’s sometimes hard to tell the blowhards from the curious explorers. And because of that, because of the pretentiousness of some painters I have known, and for many, many other reasons, I have to say anything Jackson Pollack flavored has always turned me off, because it’s just so hard (for me) to tell if the artist is trying hard or just, well, going through the motions. If you will.

(I should hasten to point out that I’ve never seen a Pollack in person. And also that I am glossing over a LOT about intent vs. result, pictures to look at vs. pictures to make a gut reaction vs. pictures to tell a story, skill vs. happenstance, training vs. talent, Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, polished fine artist vs. folk artist, artists painting for other artists vs. artists painting for an audience, relevance of painting in the 21st century, et cetra. Many other things. Come over for coffee or a glass of wine and we’ll paint the town red.)

(I should also point out that I love cubism and those “abstract” forms that take what one sees in life and plays with what can be seen. Illustration is, in a way, abstraction. It’s simplifying what you are seeing or dealing with and squeezing them down into something a bit more manageable, making the scene pleasing / dynamic / challenging to the viewer. I am clearly not voting for absolute stoic realism. It is not abstraction I am objecting to, it’s those paintings that don’t move you. For me that category becomes very wide. And I don’t think I’m alone.)

It had been well over a year since I’d painted anything on canvas, but seeing this painting made me get my messies out and tinker that very night. Because I’d seen that and thought: that’s wonderful. I feel like I can do that. I want to do that.

And it was interesting to try. Because no, as it turns out, I can’t do that.

Well no, that’s not true. I can apply paint to canvas and make layers and use colors and shapes and lines. But my method of doing this has become so different from the canvas-based method. I’m thinking of the base player in my Mom’s church choir who once brought his guitar during a particularly thin choir turn out during the summer. I remember being fascinated by his playing, because he didn’t strum chords. (And guitar mass is a pretty chord-strummy affair.) He would pick each note separately from the six strings. He played guitar just like he played base. I came to painting having drawn all my life, and for lack of any teaching I would often paint just like I draw. My technique is a bit more sophisticated than that now, but it’s still very much suited for the kind of thing I do, and not the kind of thing this unknown painter is doing.

A few days ago I stumbled upon Michelle Armas’ work, a lot of which is also refreshingly substantial. I was delighted to find she is doing her part to dispel that pfft I could do that feeling by posting a blog entry about the steps she goes through to make a painting. (Or, more specifically, how painting commissions work.) I love the way she talks about her process, the fact that she acknowledges the stopping, the stepping back, the self-evaluating. (A very, very important step. One of the key reasons why pfft... gets dispelled.)

Somehow her work, that blog entry, that painting I saw; it all has me thinking about interplay of colors, shapes, lines, spaces and all with a vividness I haven’t felt in a long time. I find myself scrutinizing with renewed attention the colors I see in all the flowers blooming in the neighborhood. My early morning crayon warm-ups have taken a much more gestural quality, and I’ve shifted from starting with sleepy contour lines of the tree out my window to scribbles of light color and experimenting with different colors and line thicknesses on top of that. None of it is worth sharing, but all of it starts my brain off on a good receptive direction. It ensures that I will remain a bit more hungry for Good Art Things all throughout the day.

It's these sorts of paintings that make my heart sing most. Paintings that without the use of any objects of any kind still manage to have me on my toes and squinting, getting lost in that sea of color and shape. Is it just the applicability of the picture-field? Like watching clouds? There's a shape, now there's another, or maybe it's something like this. Those choral pinks and teal-green colors make me feel a little edgy. But that pale grey-blue keeps it contained, I think. Isn't that strange how those greens drip but that one does not? It almost looks like a crowd waiting in line doesn't it? Oh really? It made me think of diving into an ocean. Maybe footprints. It's making me think of what we were talking about the other night, remember? Thinking about how things can never stay the same but always move into something else, away from where they are. You know what I mean?

These paintings. The catalysts. Paintings that engage, ignite, that encourage reaction. Paintings you'd want to explore for hours. Singing paintings. Canvas that says something. I'm waking up to these sorts of paintings again, and I'm glad.

.

The Importance of Being Earnest

Occasionally as I'm working I'll pull up a recent painting, just to set the tone. Today it's been this one, which is the latest thing I've finished for the Cyborg Project. I am up to my elbows in notes, reading things about Flow and Interaction Design (.pdf), watching my favorite TED talk that mention synesthesia, and trying to figure out what a jet pack should look like. Heavy stuff, sort of.

In the background I'm still thinking about knitting, starting the painting that I'm going to sneak into that last entry, thinking about Why People Ought To Do Things. Mostly it always boils down to: people can. We get kind of tripped up in adolescence and start thinking we can't do things.

I'm not talking about big things, just little things. People say things like, "I can't draw," people with fingers and hands and arms and adequate access to paper and pens. It's strictly untrue.

Of course they can. They're just self conscious and won't. But I wish they would. I don't think it's good for a person to limit themselves, and I also think that things like drawing, singing, messing around with dough or clay, jumping...all those things we did in preschool or as children are really valuable still. It contributes to How To Live Fully.

I was thinking about all this when I received an email from a friend. I'd told her earlier that she'd been in my dream last night, wearing a skirt made of that poly-fill stuff (that cottony mess that comes in a plastic bag at the fabric store), and that we'd talked about weird-shaped dogs.

She sent me this in response:




So now THIS is up on my monitor, becuase it makes me unbelievably happy. Pictures help. Everybody should draw pictures.

.

On top of everything, I want to learn to knit

Winston Churchill wrote a tiny little book that I think will be my stock birthday gift from here on out until all of my friends have a copy. I had no idea I liked Winston Churchill -- though I'm partial to orators -- but when I picked up this book by chance in a bookshop in Berkeley I knew we'd be firm friends.

Many remedies are suggested for the avoidance of worry and mental over-strain by persons who, over prolonged periods, have to bear exceptional responsibilities and discharge duties upon a very large scale. Some advise exercise, and others, repose. Some counsel travel, and others, retreat. Some praise solitude, and others, gaiety. No doubt all these may play their part according to the individual temperament. But the element which is constant and common in all of them is Change.

Change is the master key. A man can wear out a particular part of his mind by continually using it and tiring it, just in the same way as he can wear out the elbows of his coat. There is, however, this difference between the living cells of the brain and inanimate articles: one cannot mend the frayed elbows of a cost by rubbing the sleeves or shoulders; but the tired parts of the mind can be rested and strengthen, not merely by rest, but by using other parts. It is not enough merely to switch off the lights which play upon the main and ordinary field of interest; a new field of interest must be illuminated.

He goes on to maintain that the mind will go on working no matter how hard you try to rest it. I think anyone who has ever dreamed of work will sympathize. No, "just" resting isn't good enough for your brain. It wants activity. The thing to do, to rest the parts that are tired, is to use different parts by focusing on a completely different activity. By having hobbies.

Churchill weighs merits of common hobbies like reading, which he says is good, but:

1. Reading-as-leisure can lead to that dread of knowing you will never read ALL there is to read.

2. To truly enliven a new part of the mind one would need to learn another language, and master it enough to read in it. (He actually heartily recommends this.)

3. If it's anything similar to your real work doesn't really count.

Me? Well. One could argue I don't need another hobby. I cook and bake. I make quilts, napkins, lunchbags and other things on the sewing machine. I am an eggheady naturalist, and can identify a bewildering variety of animals and birds. And of course, above all else, I go on adventures. Maybe I'm just Greedy For Activities. That's fair. But in order for real mental repose one must do something one does not initially know how to do. And then master it as best one can.

Churchill chose painting.





As I cannot choose "British minister" or even "influential political orator", I have (without strictly meaning to) chosen knitting this time.

To explain: my usual clothing regimen is button up shirt+sweater, in most all weathers. (Luckily I live in drizzly Bridgetown, which is only summery for 3.5 months of the year.) I am frightfully picky about both items which saves me from buying too many things. But in this weird transitional period of weather where I am both hot and cold in the same day, when all the new colors peep out of the ground and my activities change from Resolutely Indoors to Let's Get Some Air Into Those Lungs, I sometimes get the dragon-sickness and desperately search around for new clothes. And this time was particularly aggravating for some reason, because I tend to look for colors or shapes independent of what is actually available. And the available options at present are, for me, not options. I layer. I am hard on clothes. I need something that will last for many years. I need something I can wear under a jacket without needing to fold up weird flappy sleeves, I need something that will actually keep me warm. Something I can mend when it starts to get shabby. Et cetera. I'm insufferable.

I had a similar problem last summer when I could not for the life of me find button up shirts with short sleeves that were long enough. (What? I know, I know. But see, most girl short sleeved button-ups have ridiculous capped sleeves, or else just end abruptly at the thickest part of the arm, and I find such sleeves grotesque.) I solved this problem by converting some of my beloved-yet-not-often-worn 3/4 length sleeved shirts (those false-roll-up type shirts). I cut off an inch or two of fabric, hemmed them, et voila! Suddenly the shirts were wearable and beloved.

The sweater problem is not a matter of conversion, it's a matter of creation. Somewhere along my feverish searching quest I found a knitting pattern that was absolutely spot on. It was like a match being struck in the dark. I went from never having the slightest inkling of putting needle to yarn to knowing that I would be making a sweater. This sweater. And that by doing that I would open the door to many, many other makable things.

*

The prospect of the veil of ignorance being lifted is incredibly thrilling. Think of the possibilities! Why suffer the anguish of losing a favorite garment or accessory on vacation when you can merely make another just like it? How many times have we looked at that favorite pair of pants, just before it disintegrates, and think, if only I could clone you. Then life would be perfect.

But also think of the modifications! I like that sweater but wish it came down to here, not here. I wish this color came in a v-neck instead of a crew neck. Why doesn't anyone make a decent sweater vest anymore? These are but piffley details from the knitter's privileged perspective.

Today for the first time I went into a yarn store. As with fabric and art supplies, there's something thrilling in being around raw materials, especially in this giddy mindset I am in right now. I can MAKE something with this stuff!

Add to this my big illustration project making me particularly aware of every fine detail there is ever to be seen. Add to that my scouring the internet just before, thinking a lot about yarn and what makes different textures and trying to gauge homespun consistencies through a monitor. What a joy it was to pick up a skein and feel it in my hands! I felt so fortunate to be able to reach out and TOUCH this stuff.

Of course it must be said: this kind of empowered thinking would not be possible without the volumes of knowledge available at ravelry, where hundreds of people have already made the sweater I'm about to attempt.

*

If anything I am feeding these starry-eyed sentiments by noticing each and every detail of the journey and taking it slow. This way, when I really do push off into the choppy seas of Really Beginning, the wonder will sufficiently carry me through the storms of disappointment. It took me many, many attempts to make the cloth lunch bag I use every single day. Retracing steps, struggling, taking it slow does not really daunt me. I may be singing a different tune a few weeks from now, but for now I am just awash with excitement.

Just LOOKING at the ball of yarn in the basket next to me makes me terribly, terribly excited.

.