Making Things – amo vitam

ArtWalk 2025, a Recap

It was ArtWalk this weekend, and as per usual, it was fabulous. I got an excellent spot, on a tall counter (the top of a bank of lockers) in the hallway in front of one of the gyms. It meant that the thousands(!) of visitors all walked by my display TWICE, once going into the gym to look at everyone else’s amazing art, and once coming out again – up one side of the display and down the other on the return trip, and having the counter so high meant that my tiny detail work was right at people’s eye level.

The setup on The Night Before ArtWalk (when all through the school/Not a creature was stirring,/ they’re all much too cool…)

The night before it started, I was lying awake at 3am, worrying (as one does), and I came to the conclusion that I probably wouldn’t get a lot of sales – people would just walk past my display instead of stopping to linger and look. It was a hallway, after all. Fine, I thought, so be it. It is what it is.

Hah! I couldn’t have been more wrong. People stopped, they looked, they lingered, they oooh’d and aaah’d. And they bought. And bought!

“On Top of the Mattress” – the newest in the Fairy Tales Bookends series. And you see that red dot on the card? That means SOLD!

I’d brought a little group of mice (apparently that’s called a mischief?), sitting on cheeses. Last year, I had a cat with a companion cheesymouse, and people kept trying to buy just the mouse, so I thought I’ll try a few mice on their own this time. They flew off the shelf – the first one sold within ten minutes of the opening!

Hilariously, the flock of Tiny Gnomes that were so popular last year were, to begin with, completely overshadowed by the Cheesymice – they only started selling once all the mice were gone. They got lots of attention, though (“Look at the tiny gnomes, Mommy!”, “Oh my gosh, so cute!”), so it’s all good.

The theme this year was “Colour Unleashed”. If you’ve met me in person, you know that that’s right up my alley. I would have worn my rainbow Ali Baba pants anyway, but as is, I looked like I dressed on theme! And it gave me an opportunity to bring my super-bright splashy abstract pieces (I call some of them “Kandinsky cups”), and to my surprise they were really popular.

Sporting my colours and chatting up the customers

Not much more to say. It was a fun weekend, quite exhausting, quite exhilerating. Now to go into hibernation for a couple of weeks, and then back into the studio to replenish the stock!

Life, the Universe, and my third time at ArtWalk. If you’re interested in adopting a Tiny Gnome or getting your very own Mousepresso cup, give me a shout. I’ll be over here on the couch, having a nap.

What’s Coming to ArtWalk

Here’s a few pieces that are coming to Lake Country ArtWalk with me this weekend:

And then there’s this flock of Tiny G’nomes that materialized in my studio recently:

They haven’t told me their names yet, but they’re a very friendly sort, and they’ve moved into the village of fairy houses and picture pots. But I’m sure they’d be more than happy to come live at your house, too! Maybe with a fairy house or a picture mug, so they’ll feel at home.

That’s Life, the Universe, and Lake Country ArtWalk 2024! Will we see you there?

Gaeli’s G’nomes

I just sent out a newsletter (are you subscribed yet? You can do so here), and I told everyone about Gaeli’s G’nomes. And then I thought, hey, I don’t think I’ve ever introduced them on the blog, either. So it’s time to remedy that situation.

Gaeli’s G’nomes, as I told my newsletter readers, are the family of gnomes who live on my living room cabinet—well, the ones who are still home. Several of them have moved out already, and all of these ones are perfectly willing to do so, too; give me a shout if you’re interested in adopting one. They’re made of stoneware clay, so they’d be happy to live outside in your flowerbed over the summer. Oh, and all of them are about 8″ (20cm) high/long, give or take.

Their family name is spelled the way it is to make sure it’s pronounced with a hard G on both words. Technically they should be “Geli’s Gnomes” (Geli, prounounced “gaily”, was my childhood nickname), but they’re not “Jelly’s Nomes”, as most people would say it if it was spelled that way; hence “Gaeli’s G’nomes”.

Here’s the current family, all hanging out in my living room. I’m not sure what their conversation is about, but as a rule they get along quite well.

Now, if you’d like to meet a few of them, we’ll start with Gordon. He’s a mellow guy, likes to be quiet and just hang out with his bug, who’s gone to sleep on him.

Gabby is a chatty individual who likes to tell stories, and fortunately for her, her bug likes hearing them.

Gabby’s twin brother Garth is a dreamer; he and his bug like to find pictures in the clouds.

And here’s Goldie, who’s the youngest sister. She’s a busy and cheerful kind of person; I think she’s just spotted a butterfly and is quite excited about it. Her bug, on the other hand, isn’t so sure about it; he likes her to pay attention to him, not to some kind of fluttery thing in the air!

We’re hoping that over time, there’ll be more members added to the G’nome family, and will go out into the world and find new homes.

And there you have it, that’s Life, the Universe, and Gaeli’s G’nomes. They’ve enjoyed meeting you all!

Gaeli & G’nome (Self-portrait assignment from Digital Art Class, done in Procreate)

How to Knit a Teddy Bear

For some reason, the other day I found myself writing out the recipe for how to knit a teddy bear. I don’t remember where I learned that pattern; possibly in needle work class in elementary school. And then I tried out the instructions to make sure I remembered them correctly and they actually work. Which they do.

Knitting a teddy bear is easy. The only skills you need are knit stitch, casting on, binding off, and simple sewing. If you can make a scarf, you can make a teddy bear. (*For crochet instructions, see below – and here, too, if you can make a washcloth, you can make a teddy bear.)

For materials and tools, you need yarn (about one ball’s worth), knitting needles (optional: one spare one to hold stitches for a while), stuffing material, a yarn needle, scissors, a piece of ribbon for the neck, and either a few buttons or contrasting yarn for making the eyes, mouth and nose.

Teddy is made out of three squares, or five, if you want to be precise. Two small ones are the legs, which are joined together into one large square that becomes the body and head, and two more small ones are the arms, which get sewn on. The neck is made by threading a ribbon through the upper half of the large square and pulling it tight, and the ears are made from two corners of the head square.

You begin by casting on a number of stitches twice as wide as you want the legs to be—say, 15 (I did 10). Knit in garter stitch (i.e. knit all stitches, front and back) for as long as you want the legs to be, say, 20 rows (I did 13, and so on). Leaving a longish tail, cut the yarn. Put the live stitches on a spare knitting needle, or, if you don’t have one, thread a piece of yarn through the stitches to keep them from unravelling while you make the other leg (it helps if the holding yarn is a different colour).

Make the other leg exactly the same way. When you’ve reached the last row of the second leg, slip the leg stitches from the spare needle onto your working needle next to the second leg. You now have a row of stitches twice as wide as your leg pieces, and that’s the beginning of the body.

Knit across both squares, then continue knitting in garter stitch until the body and head are twice as long as the legs (another 40 rows). Bind off the knitting.

For the arms, knit two separate squares the same size as the legs (e.g., 15 stitches by 20 rows). Bind off the top edge.

To assemble your teddy, lay the body-and-leg piece in front of you with legs pointing away from you and the side of the knitting you want to be the outside of the teddy upwards. Fold the sides to the middle so the two edges meet. This will be your back and inside-leg seam.

Thread the yarn needle with a long piece of your knitting yarn. Start sewing from the top edge and go all the way down the back to where the legs meet, then instead of sewing the two edges together as back seam, sew the outside edges to the inside of each leg. Close the seam at the bottom of the leg for a foot. Turn right side out.

Sew up the arms: fold the arm squares in half lengthwise, right side together, and sew along two of the three sides. The third side is left open for stuffing and attaching to the body. Turn right side out.

Stuff your bear: stuff in filling, all the way down into the legs, the body, and the head, as tightly as you want it. Keeping the back seam in the middle of the back, sew up the head seam. Stuff the arms. You can either close the open arm seam like a pillow, or leave it open to sew directly onto the body.

Finish your bear: to separate the body from the head, thread a ribbon or a double length of yarn through the body piece about one-third of the way up, where you want the neck to be—just thread it up and down through the knit stitches, starting and ending in the front middle. Pull the ribbon as tight as you want, tie it in a bow. That’s the neck.

Sew on the arms on either side of the body.

To make the ears, sew across each of the two corners at the top of the head. You can catch a bit of stuffing in each ear, or not, as you like—stuffing makes the ears rounder and more bear-like; leaving in no stuffing and keeping the corner as pointy as possible looks more like a kittycat.

Sew on three buttons for the eyes and nose, or embroider eyes, nose and mouth.
Tuck all loose yarn ends inside the body.

Then give your bear a name, and give him a hug to welcome him to your family.

*PS: If you want to make a bear in crochet instead of knit, just crochet two leg squares (like two small washcloths); join them together into a big body and head square; and crochet two arm squares. The assembly is exactly the same as the knitted version.

PPS: If you want a written pattern, here you go:

KNITTED TEDDY BEAR

Gauge: doesn’t matter
Legs and body:
CO 15.
k across, turn, sl1 purlwise, k across, 20 rows
Put sts on spare needle.
Repeat.
Join first square to second (30 sts)
*k across, slipping first st purlwise*, for 40 rows.
Bind off.
Arms:
CO 15.
k across, turn, sl1 purlwise, k across, 20 rows
Bind off.
Assembly:
Sew together back, leg, and arm seams, stuff, close open seam, thread ribbon through for neck and pull tight, sew on arms, sew on buttons or embroider for face.

There Is Not Just One Way

Last week, I was watching the online graduation ceremony of one of the Offspring. The university did a lovely job, complete with cheesy “photo op” with the university president (he paused for a minute, smiling at the camera, with an empty space beside him so the graduates could stand in front of the screen and take a selfie).

One of the things that stuck with me was the speech of one of the valedictorians. He talked about how weird it was to address his talk to a camera rather than an auditorium of smiling faces; how different from what he had expected. He had expected one thing, but had to do it quite differently. And then he issued a challenge:

“Let us dispose of this idea that there is one way of doing things.”

One way of doing things. The only way. The right way. And if we can’t do it this way, we might as well not do it at all. Isn’t that’s the way it works?

I learned how to knit when I was in Grade 3, or maybe 4, in needlework class in school. Well, actually, I think I already knew some of it before we got to it in class; my mother had shown me. But that was all right, because she knew the right way to do it, so I didn’t have to unlearn anything.

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There is, of course, only one way to knit. You feed the yarn through the fingers of your left hand, hold the index finger up with the yarn looped around it, grasp the left knitting needle with the remaining fingers, take the other needle in your right hand, insert it into the stitch, and scoop the yarn through. That is the way to knit, the right way. Everybody does it that way – my mother, my grandmother, my teacher, all my friends… That’s how I learned to do it. That’s how knitting works.

And then I came to Canada.

I still remember the first time I saw a Canadian knitting. At least she said it was knitting, and she had knitting needles and yarn. But what she was doing seemed really weird. Awkward. She was somehow trailing the yarn from her right hand, poking the needle into the stitch, then picking up that trailing yarn, looping it around the needle, and pulling it through. With every stitch she did that loop-around thing. So odd, so slow. She’d obviously never been taught how to knit properly, poor thing…

But you know what?

That very weird and awkward style of holding yarn in your right hand and looping it around the needle with every stitch – which, incidentally, is called “English knitting” or “throwing” – is not only a perfectly legal method of knitting, but it produces a piece of knitwear that is indistinguishable from one done the “right” way. Honest to goodness! Take any handmade sweater, toque, mitten, sock, or scarf, and I defy you to tell just by looking at the stitches whether the knitter held the yarn in her right hand or left hand, whether she was “throwing” her stitches or “picking” them in “continental style”.

Furthermore, English-style knitters are just as capable of producing vast quantities of knitwear with just as many variants in patterns and colours and fancy stitches as us continental-style knitters. True, continental knitting seems to be faster, on average, and, once you learn it, run more automatically. But really, what it comes down to is how you learned to do it, and what style you prefer. Left hand knitting or right hand, it’s your choice.

But wait! There’s more! Yes, there’s English (or American or French) knitting, and Continental (or German) knitting. But then there’s Western style (needle inserted in the front of the stitch) and Eastern style (needle inserted in the back)! Needle held under the hand (standard American) or above the hand (British English or Parlour style)! Portuguese! Norwegian! Russian! Shetland! Combination style! Picking, flicking, throwing! Looping your working yarn through your fingers; wrapping it once, twice, three times; just letting it hang loose!

I had no idea. I was taught how to knit one way, and a very good way it is, too. I can make sweaters and socks and mittens and even little hats to put on boiled eggs to keep them warm*. But, contrary to what I used to think, it is, by no stretch of the imagination, the only way.

“Let us dispose of this idea that there is one way of doing things.”

Life is better when you like more things – and life is better when you can think of more than one way to do things.

I recently taught myself to knit and purl the “awkward” English way. I still prefer continental style – I’m literally twice as fast at it; I timed it – but now, when my shoulder starts to ache from knitting with the yarn in my left hand or I get bored, I can just switch to the right and fall into another rhythm for a little while. The slower pace and slight awkwardness that still remains makes the process that much more meditative, and at the end, I can’t tell which parts I knit continental and which parts English.

“Let us dispose of this idea that there is one way of doing things.”

The students to whom this valedictorian’s speech was addressed via a Youtube livestream are just as graduated now as they would have been if they had listened to it in a big auditorium, shoulder to shoulder with their fellow graduants. The times required that the graduation was held differently – with the yarn in the right hand, as it were. But it’s just as valid this way.

Life, the Universe, Graduations and Knitting. There is not just one way of doing things.

img_20200622_141949754 *This is an egg hat. In case you were wondering.

It’s Been a While

It’s been a while, hasn’t it. More than three months, to be precise. Steve and My Man and I went to Europe at the end of February for another family-event-with-stopover-in-London-on-the-way. While we were there, Covid-19 started ramping up, which did spoil the fun a bit, so when we came home in early March, we hunkered down with the family and pretty much stayed put.

I’ve been spending a lot of time ever since making things. Getting my hands into clay and garden dirt and bread dough (not all at once, silly! I do wash my hands in between) helps my soul stay grounded and cope with this very, very strange and disconcerting time.

Here’s a few pictures:

IMG_20200222_144453896_HDR — The British Museum,

IMG_20200225_112705532 — where I saw 5000-year-old spindle whorls from Troy. (Five! Thousand! Years! Old!)

IMG_20200223_110038773_HDR — At the Tower of You-know-where. (The Yeoman Warder was hilarious.)

IMG_20200223_145113504_HDR — Random kettle on London sidewalk. Because you never know when you’ll need a cuppa.

IMG_20200228_141045550_HDR — In Germany it was spring.

IMG_20200316_080447496_HDR — Then we came home.

IMG_20200327_101236272 — and I spun yarn

IMG_20200406_161403683 — and I grew seedlings

IMG_20200516_150346749 — and I made bread

IMG_20200417_190528676 — and I had glaze failures

IMG_20200415_160435262 — and I drew wonky pictures

IMG_20200427_204740674_MP — and I made weird poetry.

IMG_20200424_073121117_HDR — Steve was there, too.

And now it’s almost summer; the garden is growing and so are the dust bunnies in the corners of the house; I’ve almost run out of good clay and need to reconstitute the dried-up stuff I’ve been saving up for several years; I’m part-way through editing a novel I wrote during NaNoWriMo a few years ago; and Steve is telling me I ought to get back to writing some stories with bears in them (he’s a stuffed animal of a one-track-mind).

So now you know. How’s things been with you?

Life, the Universe, and Coping in the Time of Covid-19. Making things helps.

#CreateDaily

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It’s Kevan‘s fault. He just sent around a newsletter announcing a new project of his that began with a determination to “Create Daily” – in his case, write a blog post every day for the next year.

For some reason, that really struck me – “Create Daily”. Lends itself so well to hashtaggery. I had a lot of fun with #inktobe r this year, and of course right now it’s #NaNoWriMo, which you absolutely can’t get done unless you work on it every day or nearly every day while it lasts.

Having a motivation to do something every day is a good thing. So, Create Daily … something. Something small. YOU’RE ON, KEVAN!

But being an inveterate overthinker, I started ruminating about it. Do I really want to commit myself, in public, to do something like this? Every day? For a whole year? It’ll just create pressure again, performance tension. Which I need more of like I need a hole in the head.

And then I read something in Brené Brown’s Daring Greatly*: There’s one bit where she calls herself “a recovering perfectionist and an aspiring good-enough-ist” (p.128). And a couple of pages later, she says that “one of the most effective ways to start recovering from perfectionism is to start creating” (p.135).

Put those two together, and you’ve got the perfect (haha) recipe for how to approach this #CreateDaily thing.

Because creating can itself very easily fall prey to perfectionism. If I say I’m going to create daily for a whole year, the first day that I don’t, I’ve blown it. Aaaack! Perfectionism trigger! But, if you apply good-enough-ism to it, you’ve nipped perfectionism in the bud.

So, I’m going to approach the #CreateDaily thing in the spirit of Good-enough-ism. Start here, right now. With small (very small) acts of creation; maybe every day, maybe not; for a while (I’m not going to give it a specific time limit). I’m not even going to call it a “project” – more of a “practice”.

I’m defining “creating” as “intentionally making something that wasn’t there before“. So here’s some things that might count:

-writing a small, not-very-polished blog post

-writing a fiction fragment of three sentences

-knitting a few stitches on my current project

-playing half a song on the guitar or recorder

-taking a photo with my phone

-taking a photo with my big camera

-writing two-and-a-quarter lines of a poem

-cooking a pot of soup

-spinning half a metre’s worth of yarn

-making something in clay

-doing a five-minute sketch or doodle

-baking a batch of brownies

-growing a seedling, or a tray of sprouts

-writing a letter…

Of course, there are also the “big” creative things, like working on a novel (I’m still in the throes of NaNoWriMo at the moment), organising an event, completing a knitting project, baking a fancy cake, etc. And there are a hundred other small creative things one could do (Making ink! From walnuts! Or making soap! Or writing a song! Or arranging pebbles in the backyard in a spiral! Or learning a new cat’s cradle pattern! Or…).

All of that counts. And perhaps, even, what might tie into it is the celebration of other people’s creativity, like going to an art show or a stage play, or listening to a wonderful piece of music, or applauding someone else’s short story, or appreciating a lovely piece of homemade cake accompanied by tea in a handmade pottery mug. Because almost invariably, when I see other people’s creativity, I’m inspired and propelled towards my own.

Which is exactly what happened when I read Kevan’s post. “Go ye and do likewise.” Create Daily.

Life, the Universe, and Creating Daily. Thanks, Kevan, I will.

*Brené Brown, Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent and Lead. New York: Penguin Random House, 2012.

**Another book that very much ties into this is Craftfulness: Mend Yourself By Making Things, by Arzu Tahsin and Rosemary Davidson, which I impulse-purchased this spring in the gift shop on the Vancouver Island ferry and have been living on ever since.

#Inktober and the Myth of Talent

I let myself be inspired by some friends on Instagram to participate in #Inktober: an ink drawing every day for the month of October, prompts provided. (What is it with October that lends itself so well to this “hashtag-something-tober” thing? #socktober, #inktober… For some reason we never do that with April or June. #sockril – hmm, yeah, maybe that’s why.)

I’m already late starting on #Inktober, so I definitely won’t do the “every day” thing, but regardless, it’s just for fun anyway. I do a little sketch, with a fountain pen with royal blue ink (i.e. ordinary German elementary school kids’ writing ink), and use my newly impulse-purchased waterbrush to blend it. And then I post it.

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And boy, am I glad I didn’t actually look up the hashtag before I posted! Some people on there are ridiculously talented (like this, or this, or this). My little five- or ten-minute sketches look – urgh, so amateurish (I did a drawing of a wonky Lego brick for the prompt “build”, for crying out loud!). I don’t have that kind of talent, obviously. Had I looked at those highly accomplished drawings before I started, I never would have dared.

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But then – “talent”. What is talent, anyway?

The standard interpretation of the word is usually something like “ability”. “You’re so talented” means “You’re so good at this.” And I, for one, used to think that “talent” is inborn – you’ve either got it or you don’t. People like Mozart and Van Gogh and Goethe have it, and people like me don’t.

But I’m starting to think that that idea is nothing short of a myth.

I’m sure you know the story that Jesus tells of a man who goes travelling. He calls his employees and hands out some talents to them – five to one, two to another, one to the third. The first one does business with his five talents and earns five more; the second one makes two more talents; but the third guy just takes his talent, digs a hole in the ground and buries it. When the boss comes back, the first two guys give him back the talents with all the extra they earned, and he’s pleased with them, but when the third guy comes along with his freshly dug up dirt-covered bundle of unused talent, the boss is not impressed. “You could at least have put it in the bank,” he says, “then it would have earned some interest!”

Of course, the “talent” this story talks about was something a bit different than what we think of when we hear the word – it was a measure of weight and therefore of currency, i.e. weight of silver; Jesus is talking about money (and a great big whack of it, by all accounts). But as with any good story, there is more than one way to look at it. And in this case, you can take the word “talent” literally in its modern sense, and come to some interesting conclusions.

The worker who was given five talents went and used them, and at the end he’s got five more talents. The guy that only got one and was miffed because he got shortchanged never used his talent – he stuck it in the ground, left it to tarnish, didn’t do anything with it, and in the end, nothing came of it.

And that’s the thing about “talent” – yes, some are given more of it than others (some a lot more – see above re. Mozart, Van Gogh, Goethe etc.), but in the end, what matters is whether you use what you’ve got. I’ve heard it said that ability is 10% talent, 90% effort. Even the ones with big talent – the five lumps of silver – still need to put in the time practising it for the talent to grow. And even the ones with small talent can grow their gift by using it.

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Back to #Inktober, if I had seen the “talented” people’s posts first, I might have let myself be scared off. But that’s nonsense – it’s exactly contrary to what this event is meant for. It’s not a venue for showing off your gifts, but your efforts, which is meant to help you grow what you have. Whether that’s big or small doesn’t matter; what matters is doing it.

And anybody can do it. Well, okay, most people. You don’t think you’re one of them, at least where art is concerned? All right, there’s actually a test to see if you have what it takes. You didn’t know that? There is! You want to take it? Okay, here goes:

First you need some equipment. Find a pencil and a piece of paper. Any paper will do – the back of an envelope or a grocery receipt, if you can’t find anything else. If you don’t have a pencil, use a pen or a marker.

Put the paper on a flat surface. Take the pencil in your dominant hand.

Put the tip of the pencil to the paper.

Now write your name.

Got that? Done it?

Take a close look. Did you write your name? Yes? Not your next door neighbour’s name? Or your first-grade teacher’s poodle’s grandmother’s name?

Fantastic! Congratulations!

You have made purposeful marks on paper. Therefore, I can now tell you without a shadow of a doubt that you can learn to draw, and you are qualified to practise your gifts. You can even join #Inktober if you wish.

Yes, okay, I’m being just a tad tongue-in-cheek here. But only a tad. You see, people have told me I’m talented. They’ve even said it about my #Inktober posts (yeah, I know). But it’s really a learned skill. Some twenty-five years ago, I started taking art lessons, after someone told me that you don’t go to art school because you’re good at art, but because you want to become good at art. That comment revolutionised my thinking, and allowed me to go after the dream I had of being able to paint. I took lessons, read library books*, watched videos, spent countless hours hanging out on sites like wetcanvas.com, generally obsessed on art, and this is where I ended up.

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And that’s why I’m being somewhat facetious about this “talent” thing. Don’t let yourself be scared off by the myth of “talent”. Do you want to draw, paint, write**, play the tin whistle, dance ballet in a tutu? Go for it!

It doesn’t matter how big the talent is that we’ve been handed, what matters is what we do with it. That way, even a small talent can grow into something big. And when it does – when a talent of any size grows up into something – it’s a joy to behold. Even if that “something” is only someone having fun with pen and ink on an October morning.

Life, the Universe, Inktober and Talent. What could you be having fun with today?

*My two favourite books for learning art were Betty Edwards’ Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, and Rudy De Reyna’s How to Draw What You See. I’m glad to see they’re both still in print; they’re well worth it.

**If drawing isn’t your thing, and you’re more into, say, writing, I have one word for you: NaNoWriMo. It’s coming up – just three more weeks!

#WordlessWednesday: Untitled, or: What’s She Got Into Now?

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