Just finished an acrylic on walnut little painting for my cousin of his little girl. Shh, it’s a surprise!
-
-
Check it out! I knitted some loafers! And finished the cotton triangles blanket. But, it’s going to have to go into the “hope chest” as in, I hope someday to have a clean house where chocolate milk and otter pop spills don’t happen on the hour.
-
Thick books and intense knitting projects don’t intimidate me but knitting a blanket with tiny little stitches is a little nutty. This is the Purl Soho Embossed Triangles Blanket. I’m about 2/3 done at this point. I keep putting it down for a week or month before picking it back up, drawing out the whole thing. To makes this worse (or better!) I keep feeling like when it’s done, I might embroider some simple Scandinavian style geometric botanical stuff on there. Or is the simplicity better? My mother-in-law saw what I was knitting, and she said something like “you are making heirlooms that people will actually want.” What a nice compliment!
-
My friend Caity in Seattle just sent this amazing Elliot Smith/Buffy crossover. I love it so much AND see that cool painting? That’s one of mine! (Wardrobe 2001 Oil on Canvas 24″ x 36″) It is a crossover too. The white silhouette is the old Salt Lake City Public Library where I worked at the time that is now the Leonardo Museum, and the squiggly things are the clothes in my closet.
Buffy has been in the air lately. I started rewatching from the beginning a few months ago because I felt the sensation that it had been “just long enough”, and it was time again. I’ve seen a few episodes many times (like the perfect season 6 back-to-back episodes Once More, With Feeling and Tabula Rasa) but have watched the whole damn thing maybe 3. This revival led me to the Rewatcher podcast witch is a delight. There is talk of a Buffy reboot on Hulu and I recently watched Dexter: Original Sin mostly for the Sarah Michelle Gellar bits (which didn’t disappoint, it was fun to see her and the rest of the show was okay too.) Then, there was the news of the untimely death of Michelle Trachtenberg. woah
-
It feels like a waste of time, but I decided to make a big ol batch of finger puppets. Back when I had a store, in the Frosty Darling days, I made hundreds of these. They were great sellers because they were cheap and have a lot of personality or something. This time around I was trying to make them a little better- a little bit 2.0- but they turned out just as wonky. I’m thinking of clever ways to package them, or I might bag the whole idea of making more of these little beasts again altogether!
-
Another sweater is done, and all the hours it took (oooh so many), are already forgotten. It’s very soft and comfy. This one was a pain though. To create this kind of fabric one has to switch between the two different yarns for every stitch so I wasn’t able to zone out as much as I would like. Also, the pattern was frustrating and didn’t explain how to do the raglan decreases in a way that was considerate to others sanity.
-
She blinded me with pseudoscience.
I did this watercolor this weekend. I like how the faux bois countertop looks but not lovin’ the cup. Anyhoo, there is a reason, that is not 90’s nostalgia, that I felt compelled to paint Saturday’s cup of coffee. I am not a person of faith- of any kind. Lately though, I’ve been a little intrigued with magic and witches. And lately, when I pour cream into my coffee I’ve been apparently seeing beyond the veil. One day there was a perfect old timey moustache, the next a capital G and the next a lower-case g. Oh my! the cream is speaking to me! So, every morning I’m scanning my coffee for the grim. But whether a blob of cream makes a shape that kinda looks like something or not, the swirl of varying colors and densities of liquid is beautiful and taking a moment to notice that is nice. That morning it looked like the cosmos, and I felt like Carl Sagan was sayin, “hey Star Dust, come back to reality please.”
-
This was an exercise in “jumping in with authority even though you are super rusty and haven’t used watercolor in a while.” It turned out fine. By the way, these sneakers were even more worn out than the painting suggests and were taking up room in my shoe cubby. So, the moment after I got them sketched out and took a reference pic, I threw them right in the God Damn Trash Can and it felt really good.
-
just finished a line drawing in bed with a heating blanket and a cat, cozy. Going to add some watercolor to it tomorrow- so it’s a 2 part Chuck Taylor Adventure!
-
working on a painting of Mary Beard
Gentry Blackburn 