Twinknit

Well… I don’t know what’s gotten into me.  The heat?  The travel?  The chaos of dissertation writing/life-living?  I’m not sure, but not much knitting has been going on here.  The New England sock is once again in time-out because I realized after turning the heel that I stopped the leg half a pattern repeat short of the correct length (is this what happens when you knit and drink?  I’ll never tell).  The yarn is a bitch to rip out, I’m knitting it on size 0s, and (let’s face it) I long ago lost enthusiasm for the project.  Lately, when I feel motivated to knit, I’ve been knitting on Icarus, a project I have never once blogged about (nor added to Ravelry).  Sigh.  I’m just not up to date.

I have, however, been crafting.  My friend Douglas is a pretty fantastico artist and I just recently started reading his blog (check out his notebook — the source of my current inspiration).  I found myself inspired to start making things again.  I used to be pretty creative, and somewhere in the last five years of grad school, I lost the motivation.  So this week, I started working on a “rough draft” (more like a test run) of a project I’ve had brewing in my head for a few years.  Things I have learned:

1. when you don’t have the ability/you’re too stubborn/you like the challenge of creating without going to an art store, it’s hard to find the things you need (case in point — CVS does not sell paint kits that include brushes).

2. when you move too often, you will inevitably remember where the thing you are looking for was located in your last residence, and yet be completely incapable of finding it in your current home (watercolor box — come out, come out, where ever you are!)

3. I think my creative abilities peaked when I was a precocious 12 year old, because my “art project” looks like it was made by a precocious 12 year old.

4. rubber cement, which I used to hold up as the model for all things sticky, kinda sucks.

5.  I have no where near enough “stuff” to make this project what I want it to be, which is why I am declaring it a “test run.”

My art project does include a little knitting.  This looks like a swatch, but I swear it was knit especially for this project.  It’s from the same (never ending) skein of Malabrigo that brought us Dante, the stuffed elephant, and the Target Wave Mittens.

Despite my inner embarassment about this project, when it is completed, I promise a reveal.  In the mean time… maybe I should be writing?