Never ending knitting week

It's been a busy week of travel this week including; Leeds, Bury, Manchester, Birmingham, back to Manchester, back to Leeds and finally back to Birmingham! Consequently most of my week was spent either packing or unpacking, on the M1, or on the train between Manchester and Birmingham.

As I am extremely overdue with a cardigan promised for my great niece I had planned to spend as much time as possible knitting - and hoped to complete it by the time I arrived home, exhausted, Friday night.

After furiously knitting for the first half of the week it was growing at a terrific pace (its knitted all in one piece), but a nagging voice in the back of my mind kept drawing my eye to some uneven tension ("I'm sure it will look better after washing..."), and the odd split stitch ("I'm sure no one else will notice..."). By Wednesday night I surrendered and pulled back the entire thing

this is where I got to before pulling it all back

 

I decided as it's now over a month late, and after re checking my tension, to start over at a larger size too. After what I'm now writing off as a practice run, I'm much happier with how it's looking.

 

I may just need to buy myself some more train tickets to catch up again though.



Only 52,668 stitches left to go

Three years ago I bought a beautiful cross stitch pattern of Gustav Klimt's, The Kiss from Scarlet Quince. I go through stages of stitching every minute I have spare for weeks, and then not touching it again for ages. Recently I picked it up again and made a few changes to my set up that have sped up how much I can stitch in a night.

The biggest improvement has come from colour coding the pattern sheets - this pattern has 30 A4 sheets representing 93324 stitches, using 139 colours/combinations. I use a technique called parking and prior to colouring the sheets would spend so much time between stitches, poised with needle in hand after a stitch, scanning the page for the next appearance of that colours symbol. Add in the occasional glance at the TV and some nights I would maybe only achieve 20 stitches. Now after colouring the sheets I can see the next symbol quickly and last week amounted to something near 3000 stitches!

Secondly I started using a music stand to prop up the pattern sheet, hold the highlighter (which I use to mark off completed stitches), and hang my scissors from one of the arms.

this is roughly the area completed last week

For the first time I believe I may actually finish this cross stitch in the near future - well within 12mths maybe - after all I've only got 52,668 stitches left to go till it looks like this

and then I can start another!

Sketchbook visit to Leeds Gallery and Museum

I've been spending a bit of time in Leeds lately, and having spent many weeks in the city centre previously, I can struggle to be inspired into anything creative here - and keep myself away from shopping. I visited the Leeds Art Gallery, for an afternoon with my sketchbook in hand.

sketches from the painting Scotland Forever by Lady Elizabeth Butler

I always enjoy seeing this painting, and if you have the chance to visit the Gallery, be sure to check it out, and the Leeds Tapestry which includes a tiny scaled embroidered version of the painting.
Ultimately I long to become a portrait artist - so I'm always keen to investigate other artists work and try and learn from their techniques. I came across 'Portrait of Thomas Hardy 1897' by Sir William Rothenstein, which fascinated me as I couldn't fathom achieving a likeness at this scale with so few delicate pencil lines. So as an exercise I attempted to draw it to the same scale.

 

The next day I filled a couple of hours at Leeds City Museum, it's quite limited in taxidermy (my museum addiction) so between a lack of interest, a screaming headache and a poor decision to visit the museum during school holidays I really had to force myself into drawing anything - but went through the motions for a couple of squirrels.



Of course I can't mention Leeds City Museum without including a picture of the Leeds Tiger. This poor guy was displayed as a rug in London after being shot in 1860. In 1862 it was mounted and presented to the Leeds Philosophical and Literary society. Each time I see it I think of generations of Leeds kids who've grown up thinking this wierd shape is what tigers look like.

 

check out those cankles

 

I'm back in Leeds next week, and have already booked in for a life drawing session - so that will guarantee some drawing next week.

 

Oh, and I went shopping and spent too much money.