Label matters

I know I´m not the most unbiased person to say this, but aren´t these labels cute? (Please indulge me on this one!)

Another happy customer.

Naked men, again

Last week there was a holiday on Monday (holidays are usually shifted to Mondays here) so we didn´t have our weekly painting class. After two weeks, then, it was more than time to go back. I did feel I was a bit rusty, though!

The exercise was to compose two paintings, each with two quick poses. We have a group discussion in the end, to assess progress and basically just find out new things about ourselves.

I can´t say that I love the two resulting paintings, but I think I did succeed in the forcing myself to try something different chapter.

More photos here.

Great Ocean Road sweater, now totally, fully, a 100% complete

Maybe it doesn´t show (ahem...) but I absolutely love this sweater. It´s based on the Victoria Yoke Pullover, but very much modified: a zipper instead of the row of buttons the pattern calls for and long sleeves instead of the elbow-length ones.

The wool was bought during the Handicrafts Fair here in Buenos Aires, directly to the producer. It´s hand-dyed and hand-spun and it was a pleasure to knit with. I started it here, then took it with me to our honeymoon in Australia and the long, long rows of stockinette stitch were done while in the car, looking at such amazing landscapes such as the ocean in the victorian seaside. The blue of the wool and the sea made me - probably not very creatively - name it "Great Ocean Road", like the beautiful one there. My mind just wanders when I think about the smell of the sea and the taste of salt in the wind! Can you tell that I miss terribly being near the sea? A girl from Lisbon like me certainly has a hard time here in Buenos Aires when it comes to the need of a blue horizon!

While knitting it, the idea of adding a zipper instead of the called-for buttons gained shape and uopn my return to Argentina I was fortunate enough to have made some new friends, who gave me their opinions. And this - having friends with knitting opinions - is such a luxury, not only because most of my friends don´t knit, but also because most of them live somewhere else.

Then, another of my lovely new friends offered to help me with the zipper.

And finally, the Little Red Riding Hood ribbon from Retrosaria arrived in the mail and I could put it over the back of the zipper.

And... guess what I´m wearing today!

More photos here.

Sketching and subtracting

These past few days have been busy sketching and developing and studies with cut out illustrations. Doing these studies has been a major part of the satisfaction a project gives me and I feel that it is being very helpful on my search to finding a "voice", or a "style" for these characters. I´ve been repeating and repeating studies, trying different combinations of "full" areas (not cut out) and "empty" ones and learning a lot from this process. It´s amazing how much the relationship between shape and background can vary with tiny little changes in what gets subtracted from the paper and what doesn´t.

Really, I´m having a grand time working on this, can you tell?

More pictures of this process here.

World wide knit in public day

Last Saturday was WWKIP 2009. There were two meetings here in Buenos Aires but the weather was just too nice to stay indoors, so we headed to one of the gardens in Palermo, sat by a lake and enjoyed the winter sun. I knitted this hat (free pattern here) in less than a day - and I´m not a fast knitter - which means that despite the great look of those cables, it is still a very easy and straight-forward knit. It´s perfect for a present, actually. I´m looking forward to wearing it!

Otherwise, we had a long weekend, filled with preparations for my german exam, knitting, cooking and generally lazying around. There was a really, really good documentary on BBC, Cocaine diaries: Alex James in Colombia. I urge you to check it out. (If you read portuguese, I wrote about it here).

And now, fully rested, it´s time to go back to work. Have a nice week!

Sketching, sketching

Another tiny bit from the project I´m working on. These are some cutouts that were going to go to the trash bin. I´m glad I saved them from my after-cutting-cleaning fury!

This weekend is a long one (again) here in Argentina, as monday is a public holiday. I hope to use the extra free time to study german and to knit. Speaking of which, tomorrow is Worldwide Knit in Public Day! Yay! I stocked myself earlier today with a visit to a couple of yarn shops here, so it can now be cold and rainy: I´m all good and prepared!

Have a nice weekend!

My so called Hemlock Blanket post-blocking

My very own version of the Hemlock Blanket is now blocked and sitting produly on the couch - or my back, in fact. The energic blocking was effective and it is now flat (-ish), wonderfully soft and I just feel like hugging it the whole time. Once again, after the owls sweater, this wool (Pura lana from Milana, a shop here in Buenos Aires) has proved to soften up and become wearable - almost next to the skin.

I love my new blanket and I´ll consider giving the pattern a second go, to see if I ever get the feathers and fans right. Still, I totally love my blanket - I love it a lot more than I thought I would!

More photos here.

A life of his own

Yesterday was the third and last session of our fixed pose series and the main goal was to finish the painting, that is, looking at it and feeling there was nothing else to add, and nothing else to take. The moment I finished it, I felt like "my baby" had left and gained a life of his own, and that´s why I took it to the park and photographed it under the warm light of the winter sun.

More photos of session one, two (and all of them).

My so called Hemlock Blanket

My Hemlock Blanket doesn´t look like a Hemlock Blanket at all, I should change its name. I could say I made some modifications to the pattern, but basically I think I "created" a new one. Despite all this, I´m happy about it, just wondering a little if a good blocking will be enough to flatten it down. So far, it has kept me warm while I knitted it, and that´s already very good for me knitter´s heart.

Twenty years later...

...has the situation in China changed?

Twenty years ago, on this date, the tanks rolled up on Tiananmen square. It was a Saturday morning, a regular school-day at that time, but a typhoon nearby raised the alert and classes were suspended. We were at home, as outside the wind ssemed to be nearly breaking our windows. We watched the news in disbelief, feeling it couldn´t be possible such a move for the chinese authorities. It did happen, though, and it was an exciting day - because something was about to change - but mostly a sad day - because, knowing how China is, probably nothing would change.

Looking back, has it changed? Probably yes, but the claws of censorship are still there and all we get to see are the good parts. China and its people deserve more.

Last Monday

This week´s painting class was the second session of a fixed pose. I worked a bit on the volumes and then it was time to "throw myself into the pool", as argentines say it, and start working on the background.

Backgrounds are terrible difficult for me. Mostly because I don´t feel like making a room-like situation, complete with furniture or not. I´m not very keen on drawing lines to make a room, I have no idea why. I like to see it when other people do it, though, but I don´t seem to find a way of doing it myself. Maybe it is not that I don´t like it; maybe I just don´t know how to do it.

So, how do I work a background? That´s a good question for which I have no answer. I basically try and let go the fear of ruining, and then I can paint.

Let´s see where this background takes me.

Viñetas Sueltas, Buenos Aires

Inspite of the cold and rainy weather - Winter is here! - we decided to "venture out" during the weekend to visit one of our favourite Buenos Aires restaurants, Osaka, and then to visit the second edition of the local international comic festival. We didn´t attend any of the talks but the exhibition itself was quite inviting, with quite a wide range of artists on display. It was good to see our favourite artists again, as well as to get to know new ones. The fanzine factory and the fanzine market were two of my favourite corners of the whole exhibition, though I have no pictures from it.

And the best part of having such cold weather?



Getting to wear my hand-knits!