It feels like I worked on this beanie for an eternity, hence the ingenious name The Eternity Beanie (TEB for short). In actual fact, however, I started it before Christmas, went on until about 90% and then stopped. I got hit hard by the Terror of Finishing a Work and Realizing the Yarn Will Run Out (or TFWRYWRO for short; a devastating, mind-affecting condition documented in various medical publications).

So in the end, I probably worked on it only for a month at best, since I finished it in like two hours. I was ecstatic when I realized I won’t even run out of yarn - there is still at least one meter left. I’m truly pleased with this beanie, as I’ve always wanted this kind of slouchy beanie. I couldn’t find a good one in stores, so I had to make one.

The pattern is called the Sockhead Hat by Bohoknits. It only requires 100g of sock yarn, so I thought my two skeins of 50g Teetee Pallas yarn would be perfect. I fell in love with this beautiful variegated yarn and I think it suits the beanie perfectly. The pattern was very easy for a beginner knitter such as myself, so I strongly encourage any other beginners out there to start with this pattern. I only dropped one stitch and my decreases didn’t go all wonky. Yay me.

Without further ado, may I present my fairly recent painting:

I made this during the autumn semester of my painting course. I didn’t plan on it at all, it just happened while I was waiting for Amoena’s portrait to dry so I could finish it. With oil painting it is basically a must to have several projects underway at the same time, or you will have to take irritating breaks from painting altogether.

The male was supposed to look like a photographer whose work I’ve been admiring for a couple years now, but it doesn’t look like him at all, hence no reference picture. The female on the other hand was based on Noomi Rapace, the actress from the Swedish film The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. She’s really stunning. I think I may have to paint her another time and make a real effort to try and make her look exactly right.

For once though, the characters were not the main point about the painting. I wanted to create something colorful very quickly, so I speed-painted it within an hour. But at the time, Tuomo the professional painter and painting instructor had just introduced a new painting technique to us novices. It’s called glaze, or lasuuri in Finnish. It was the perfect opportunity to try this new and slightly intimidating technique on a painting that I didn’t feel very passionate about.

A glaze in oil painting means that you choose a transparent kind of color that isn’t too rich in pigment - titanium white is a no-no, but lemon yellow or viridian green, much better. You thin the paint with water or turpentine, depending on whether you use water-soluble oils or not. I do, which means I can thin my paint with water without the hassle of turpentine. The paint should be very thin, almost like water colors.

Then you apply the extremely thin and flowing paint on the whole surface of the painting, preferably with a large brush so you can avoid too many brush marks. The point of a glaze is that you shouldn’t be able to notice it. It is simply a layer of color with very little pigment, but enough so that when light reflects from it, the other colors in the painting will get a different hue. You can add several layers of glaze as long as you let the layers dry in between so you can achieve a wonderful effect of depth to the painting.

There’s only one layer of glaze in my painting: I used ultramarine blue on the left just trying it out, but went with lemon yellow for the rest. The imprimatura color is a rosy pink, but it looks more earthy after applying the yellow glaze, and bluish purple on the left, aptly demonstrating the striking difference that a glaze can make. The two faces really seem to pop out from the background - they look like they are floating in the middle of nowhere. The effect is so cool that I am definitely using it more from now on, probably for every painting.

There is one difficulty with a glaze, however. If you do not know your color theory through and through, it can be difficult to predict how the hue of the background color will change from the glaze. I have spent a fair amount of time pondering on which color I should choose for the glaze with my latest painting in progress.

In the end, however, I have never felt like an unexpected color change actually does any harm to a painting. I have no preconceptions of what colors my painting should have or what color my subject-matter should be. I simply go with the flow, using colors that please my eye. That may sound like a cop out, but the truth is I can’t bring myself to be too determinate about colors. As long as the colors work well together within the painting itself, I don’t care if a face of a character ends up being green, pink or blue, or any other color for that matter.

The painting course starts again this week after the long Christmas break! I haven’t signed up, so I will just waltz back in on Friday morning and hope there’s still room for me. If I don’t still have a job in February, I’ll even pay the bill for rest of semester (50% off for unemployed persons!).

Anyways, I’m very pleased with this painting. I started the course with it and took my time to make sure it actually bore some resemblance to Amoena. Behold and judge for yourself:

(Painting of Amoena…)

Now that I can see them side by side, my suspicions are confirmed: her eyes are slightly off and too small in the painting and her mouth slants the wrong way. But by the time I had fixed the position of the eyes, it was too late to change them, or I might have done irreversible damage. Painting with amateur skills is like that sometimes. Her jaw is also more angular in the painting than it should be, but I think the overall look is similar enough to see who it’s supposed to portray.

(..and Amoena herself.)

The teacher, Tuomo Rosenlund, had an interesting interpretation of my painting. He saw symbolism in my color choices - red implying there’s something evil or devious behind that apparently innocent look on her face. This was highlighted by the way I divided the background into two colors and made the left side lighter and the right side darker red. After having said that, he concluded that painters often unknowingly paint people they know in a way that the view them as persons. In other words, I view Amoena as an apparently innocent but actually devious person?

Yes, she’s pure evil. She likes to knit, crochet and watch reality tv. She even coos about her dog Papu all the time and posts videos of the doggie chewing carrots! That’s evil and devious on so many levels, I’m sure you’ll agree!

They’re huge! They’re shapeless! They’re absolutely ridiculous!

I laughed out loud when I finished the first one. I can’t wait to see the expression on my dad’s face when he uncovers these. I bet he’ll need a minute or maybe ten to figure out what they are.

Good thing though, I used nearly three 150g skeins of Novita 7 veljestä on these slippers, yarn which I didn’t have any other use for. I think the mismatched colours go well with the general ridiculousness of these slippers.

If for some completely strange reason you now feel the urge to make a pair of your own, I used the pattern by Gabriela Ordenes, Peter Pan’s slippers. They were easy and fairly quick to make, one of those brainless-projects-for-watching-tv.

In other news, my yarns are even better organized now, thanks to Deniselle’s generous gift of these pretty canvas bags:

She got these by attending some religious happenings or events. The black one has a slogan which has the idea that people have even chances of finding happiness. (I’ll get a better translation as soon as Deniselle wakes up, she’s a better translator than I am.) And the white one on the right has a cool drawing of a church from Leppävirta, with the slogan “strength from the stream of mercy” (again, horrible translation).

Aren’t they really cool? Deniselle asked me if I wanted them on the spur of a moment and was surprised and amused that I jumped at the chance. I had been wanting some canvas bags for my yarn, and I got these for free, with pictures and text too!

I’m a very unreligious person, but I think for that reason it’s wonderfully random and funny to have religious yarn bags. Amen.

The pattern is very simple and allows for brainless tv-knitting, yet it creates this nice ribbing effect.

Puro is 100% wool, loosely spun plies, so it feels soft and warm. Some of the colour choices are quite weird and not really my cup of tea, so I had no other choice but Revontulet. Even so, I wish there were more yellow and orange and less red and blue. My ultimate dream would be to find yarn that only had yellow and orange, changing softly as in Puro! One can always wish… Another problem was that I had to use two different colour batches for the 4 skeins, but I don’t really mind it so much.

I also like the blue/green/pink Tundra, but I don’t have any ideas what I’d do with it. Puro is quite expensive and I already have more yarn than I can knit or crochet in the near future. If only I was richer, I’d fill my small apartment with much more yarn. Maybe it’s a good thing I’m not rich.

I had a slight problem with the skeins escaping my yarn bag, so I got a brilliant idea. I stuffed my souvenir conference bags with yarn and hung them up on show!

That’s my old yarn bag, still full after delegating some of it into the conference bags. I like the Liverpool conference bag  (from Corpus Linguistics 2009) with the grey, white and purple. And here’s my ICEHL conference bag from summer 2008:

I realized I should have more hooks on my walls. Anyway, now I can have my souvenirs out from the dark closet so I can look at them more often and they’re useful too!

Right now I’m crocheting another scarf in the Skunk-Punk style with three different light blue yarns for my cousin, because my mittens turned so ugly and she likes blue more than I do. I also started on another knitting project, the Heelhead Scarf, with the result that I can now knit cables without an auxiliary needle!

I’m so happy to learn new things with every project. On the one hand, I like having a brainless project which I can work on while watching tv, but on the other hand, I don’t want to repeat something I’ve already done before. The skunk-punk blue scarf has been boring because of that, and I wouldn’t have gotten it this far without tv! There’s my justification for having more than one project under way at a time - you can always do something, depending on how you feel at a given moment.

I’m very happy with how it turned out! It’s very soft and warm and thick. For a while now I’ve been yearning for a black-and-white style in my clothes, so I figured this would be a good way to start. I call it the Skunk-Punk scarf because skunks are black and white, and black and white stripes are part of the punk style. (Something I learned from Avril Lavigne.)

The yarns I used were Novita Kaarna and Novita Marjukka, both off production by now (couldn’t even find a decent link to Marjukka), so they were on sale. Kaarna is 50% wool and 50% acrylic, Marjukka 100% acrylic, hence the softness. Plus Kaarna is superbulky and I’ve grown quite fond of bulky yarn. It makes for a very fast project if you need something quick. And I did, since none of my scarves seemed to work with my new winter jacket and its generously opening neck.

I was so proud of myself when I came up with the “technique” for this scarf. It shows I’ve understood the basics of crochet and I can perhaps experiment and improvise more in the future. It’s very simple and obvious: start with a loooong chain of chain crochet stitches, then continue with single crochet stitches and leave fringes at both ends. I know that’s super simple but it was a revelation for me, the n00b crochetress.

I also got this Estonian yarn from Obiskus as a belated birthday present:

It’s Artistic (or similar) by Aade Lõng, an Estonian manufacturer. It’s 100% wool in three colours: fuchsia, burgundy and light purple. The colours don’t change very quickly along the length, so it will be interesting to see what it looks like on a finished project. There’s 250 grams of it!

I have been brainstorming about what I’m going to make from it. It’s a little coarse, so it wouldn’t be nice to spend a lot of time on something I’m going to wear close to my skin and not be able to wear it because of itching. Well, maybe I’ll just knit a gauge patch to get a sense of how it feels against skin.

I’ve had plenty ideas for blogging, but I couldn’t let myself. I had to finish my literature essay and write a research plan for a grant application, and when I’m on a mission, there’s little room for anything else as creative.

Don’t get me wrong, I have been crocheting and knitting and painting too! Just not taking photos nor blogging about it. This may come as a huge surprise, I mean it really is an absurd idea — but I do have a life outside blogging.

I’m truly enjoying my painting classes on Friday beforenoons.* I’ve learned a great deal about techniques and equipment. The teacher is Tuomo Rosenlund, whose paintings I saw last year in a summer exhibition that I blogged about. He’s pretty good at giving tips and evaluating works. He takes rounds around the class, stopping by each of us and giving advice. He’s not hyperdogmatic, which is good. It’s more about intuition and his knowledge from experience about what works and what doesn’t.

(My first draft of Amoena, trying to decide which colours to use. It looks nothing like her.

You don’t have to click to make it larger! I did it for you!)

I’m a little special among the people there because I use water-soluble oil colours. Tuomo didn’t actually know anything about them beforehand, so he asked me to find instructions and print them out so he could take a look at them and instruct me! I was amused by that but obeyed anyway. Based on my google-research on water-soluble oils, he concluded that water-soluble oil colours are basically the same as traditional oils, except you can thin the paint with water (and not turpentine) and wash the brushes with water and soap too.

There are similarities as well: both traditional and water-solubles can be thinned with a painting medium, you just have to buy the right kind in the store. I’d never even heard of painting medium! It’s usually a mix of linseed oil and turpentine, sometimes also resin to speed up the drying process. Fascinating, innit? The painting medium seems to make the paint more transparent, I don’t quite have a handle on it yet so I’m being careful with it. I prefer thick coats of paint in any case, which is a problem, I know.

Which brings me to the next thing I learned. You can use acrylic paint on the bottom first! The pigment in acrylics isn’t as rich and versatile as in oils, but it dries almost immediately. That means that you can make a quick sketch and continue more carefully, taking your time, because it’s dry and won’t mix with new layers of paint. I have some starter’s kit of acrylics somewhere, and I plan to use them for my next painting at the sketching stage. Water-soluble can dry in a week (between classes), but not if the paint is pasted too thick.

(And I did it again! This is my monochrome version of Amoena.

It was the first assignment, with the purpose of familiarizing ourselves with light and darkness with only one colour.

It looks a little bit like her.)

Another thing I learned: if you want to draw a very careful draft of your work before you start painting, you should use charcoal, not pencils. Regular pencils will show from underneath thin coats of paint, and bright colours like yellow and white. I actually knew that before from experience, but I didn’t know that charcoal could be covered with even lighter colours. What’s more, you can even refine the lines with charcoal again after you’ve started painting, as long as the paint is dry! That’s very useful. It’s frustrating when you make a wonderful draft on a blank canvas, then lose all that work when paint covers all those little details that took so long to get right.

With these tips and the special time dedicated to painting and nothing else, I’ve already finished Amoena’s portrait and finished another painting the last time. I will post the portrait when I get it from the workers’ education centre and get hold of a my parents’ camera. (I really need my own some day..) It turned out pretty good I think, not very grotesque, but at least it looks like her. The other painting has two floating heads, modelled after a private person and Noomi Rapace. Next I’d like to try painting some building and a portrait of Dichen Lachman, from the Dollhouse.

I’m not entirely sure how that’s going to work out, especially since I’ve never really painted buildings before. I bought masking tape so I could make straight lines. Other than that, I simply don’t know how to approach the subject. I’m definitely not going to paint anything with a vanishing point, or god forbid several.

All in all, I’m really glad I took that class! If I hadn’t, I probably wouldn’t have painted at all during all this time because I’m always supposed to be doing something more worthwhile. I hope one day I can take another class as unemployed so I get 50% off the fee!

*beforenoons was still used in the 19th century I believe. Why would people stop using such a useful expression?

I know I’ve been a bad, bad bloggeress. Two weeks since my last post, and they passed by so fast. I’ve been crocheting like a maniac and it shows: my blanket is about one square metre big right now. I’ll post pictures later.

I figured a way to tie the hexagons together, differently from what the pattern proposed. Instead of crocheting them together as I go, I’ve been joining the hexes with slip stitches. They make these shallow ridges between the hexes and I kinda like the look of it, plus they make the blanket feel sturdier. Now I just have to keep up with it and decide how big and how many is enough.

I finally did what I’ve wanted for years now: I took up a painting class! It’s at the workers’ institute and it costs a little something, but I don’t care because my mum pays for it. She thinks it’s a great thing for me and she wants me to develop my painting hobby as much as I can. Nice to have support!

There are both watercolour painters and oil colour people in the group. The teacher started from the basics of oil painting because we’re mostly beginners there. Yesterday we made a little rehearsal of blending a single colour with white, trying to create as many hues as possible. Then we applied what we’d learned from mixing the paints to a painting of some object. The others painted some vases and boring stuff like that, but myself  I just started sketching Amoena’s portrait. I felt inspired to paint her, even though I thought I would paint La Roux at first.

I’m very happy with what I got, at least everyone else was impressed and said it looked exactly like the photo of Amoena. The perfectionist that I am, I’ll say not quite photorealistic, but I definitely got something right. You’re not ugly and grotesque, Amoena! Not yet anyway. Heehee. That was just a rehearsal, I’ll start on the final painting perhaps the next time.

I’m so happy to be painting again. I’m so happy that my darling Pretty Head rescued me from the sauna bathroom. He’s got such lovely eyes. I also went to a drawing class on Thursday, but I lost my nerve with drawing. Drawing isn’t painting, and that bugs me out so much. I need colour! Lots of it! Being a good drawer definitely pays off when you paint, undoubtedly, but I can’t bring myself to draw. Perhaps when I develop some patience one day in my life.

Well, now that I got this off my chest and over with, I can take another break of two weeks from blogging! Let’s hope not.