Thursday Art Walk

 

Sketches Are Fun!

It was incredibly gorgeous yesterday. I'm talking 60℉ (15,6℃), sunny, breezy and gorgeous. I took a long walk downtown and wandered from shop to shop hoping to pick up a not-too-expensive sketchbook the size of a small hardcover or trade paperback. I wasn't successful with that, but on my way back I stopped at our local library, a massive granite building partly funded by Carnegie back in the day, and sat on a bench in the sun to sketch in the big sketchbook I brought with me.

Instead of continuing the Happiny saga, I ended up creating a character!

"Cooper"; graphite & Pigma pen, 2022

Cooper is a new character who doesn't quite have a story yet. I know some things about him - he's missing an eye and has various glass eyes he likes to wear with fun pupils or weird colors, he's unselfconscious about his scarring, he likes to wear incredibly fluffy jackets and faux fur, he's a mechanical engineer, and he dresses as a ridiculous copper-colored marabou velociraptor named Copper for fun.

I'm 99% certain he's gonna end up in one of my modern Steampunk-esque stories about sentient automatons from Wales. If I can figure out a way to simplify his characteristics, I'd also like to draw comics of him!

Now as for why I brought up the weather earlier... it was 16℉ (-8,9℃) and only got to about 24℉ (-4,5℃). Tomorrow we'll have snow (up to 18" or 45,72cm) and it will be maybe about half as warm as it got today. That's why I'm currently wearing an outfit made of wool and fleece and all of my blankets are on my bed lol. It's also why I am planning on taking all of tomorrow to make more art!

We'll see if I actually follow through, though, because I'm notoriously lazy as heck on snowy days!

Anyway, that's today's sketch/drawing. I think I'll work a little more on him later :)

Go Enjoy Something!

And Stay Safe.

FC

Fiber Monday 232: 13 Weeks of Skull Shawl

We're 13 weeks in on this shawl!

Over the last 13 weeks, I've learned a lot about myself and about using lace weight yarns. First, I've learned that I love lace-weight yarns, but they're very tedious to work with. Second, I've learned that I don't have as much patience as I thought I would. I've also learned that threat weight yarn snaps under the weight of an excitable cat's curious chewing. Thankfully, that was early enough on that I didn't lose much length!

It was a beautiful morning for working, too - 68℉ (20℃) and breezy! My toes were actually cold as I settled in to crochet some more rows on the ol' Lost Souls shawl.

Apologies for the... uh... it looks like a pantyshot and I did not see that when I took the pic...
Oops.

We've reached over 43" (109cm) in width and 19" (48cm) in length on this project with approximately 17 skulls across. My next row will be a brows/increase row. I'm still enjoying this project, and I'm still working on the purple shrug, but I think I'll have to give up on the Micaela shorts because I cannot wrap my head around that pattern's verbiage :| oops.

If you're wondering what my favorite tapemeasure is, btw, it's either the green one I picked up at my local fabric shop (the one I was using last week) or this one:

It's tiny, it's brown, it's retractable.

I love how tiny this Dritz brand tape measure is. My only complaints are that it makes a very loud ticking sound as you pull the tape out and it has about 3 inches (7.6cm) on the Inch side where there's just... nothing.

But being able to push a tiny white button and have the whole tape roll itself up
is so. freaking. useful. I've had to measure things that were 60" wide and believe me, rolling that
by hand would've been a nightmare. Retractable tapes ftw!

I think I will leave you with this peaceful image of the hellion cat taking a nap on the couch as I worked.

And yes, she slept through the flash.

And as a bonus, here's a giant hole in the sidewalk that I walked past yesterday. No reason, I just wanted to take a picture of it. It's maybe 6" (15.2cm) wide and at least 18" (45.7cm) deep.

That sheer wall is the drainage, I think. Wow.

That'll about do it for me today!

Go Enjoy Something!
FC