summer again

It's vacation time again. Historically, the solitude and downtime look good from a distance, but once they become a reality, things seem slow and very quiet. As my mother used to say, "You can only be happy if you make art." So that's exactly what I intend to do.

Already I've made a couple of hats. The first one was a sampler of fair isle patterns. It's small and fits Grant, who wouldn't wear it if his life depended on it because he's overheated all of the time. The second one was for John who wanted one that had a lot of green in it. It has

a few mistakes, but it's a nice looking hat and I learned a lot about working with value in fair isle design. He tried it on yesterday and it fits him well.

I've been dyeing a lot of Knitpicks fingering weight highland wool yarn to add to my stash for fair isle knitting. I started a cardigan and I'm not sure how the color combinations are working out. I'll give it a little more time.

Collaging has become one of my new interests. I have been inspired by Eric Carle's method of preparing painted papers. I've been combining those papers with little block prints and other materials. I made Luiz a cityscape collage for the gift book the visual arts teachers presented to him. I think it looked really nice.

Things are going well for the first week and I have a lot more ideas so Happy Summer!