Knitting and Crochet Blog Week - Day 7 3KCBWDAY7 "Balanced Crafting?"

Hullo! I'm back... Shit rained on me (not litterally, thank god) during this week, its a shame I couldn't participate in all the days :/
But fuck it, lets not focus on the negative and lets talk about this day's topic: 

Crafting Balance Are you a knitter or a crocheter, or are you a bit of both? If you are monogamous in your yarn-based crafting, is it because you do not enjoy the other craft or have you simply never given yourself the push to learn it? Is it because the items that you best enjoy crafting are more suited to the needles or the hook? Do you plan on ever trying to take up and fully learn the other craft? If you are equally comfortable knitting as you are crocheting, how do you balance both crafts? Do you always have projects of each on the go, or do you go through periods of favouring one over the other? How did you come to learn and love your craft(s)?

I can both knit and crochet, and I tend to have at least one project of each going on. However I find really hard to "read" my crochet or, the yarn gods help me, follow a crochet pattern. A peek at my projects will probably tell you that I seem to have a little problem when it comes to using equally both crafts...

For me crochet its only for doing toys and for doing small lace pieces, like doilies, even though I've seen all those beautiful crocheted garments, I can't seem to wrap my head in the idea that you can actually make clothes with a hook. In the other hand I tend to use knitting for making all the other stuff that aren't toys or  doilies...

Want Evidence?

Exhibit A- Crocheted doilies

Exhibit B - Amigurumi = crocheted  toys

Ignore his lack of eyes, I'm a very lazy person...

I should rename him to Pascal xD

Crocheted clothes/gloves/hats/dead raccoons:

Now, what If we look into my knitted projects?

Hats

a cardi

A few pairs of socks

shitloads of scarves

With a cameo apeareance of Momo the cat...

See???

Well dear readers ( you guys exist right?) This marks the end of my first KniCroBlo, it was fun,and I would've liked to participate more, next year I'll try not to be a slacker and get things done before hand... Now I need to start catching up with all the blogs that participated....

If you want to read more posts about balanced crafting (or the lack of it) click the first pic  of the post...

Knitting and Crochet Blog Week 2012 - 3KCBWDAY2 "Photography Challenge"

Today's topic was actually a sort of challenge, we're suppossed to take creative and inspirational pics, related to our crafts... Technique wasn't important here, creativity and imagination where supossed to guide our mighty camera lens into epicness...

Now, yours trully, even thought likes to boast about having a great creativity, was baffled by this challenge (I'm gonna stop talking in 3rd person now, I'm already doing my best writing in crappy english). In had absolutely now fucking idea of what to do... Maybe something related to the evil and scratchy scarf of doom? or maybe something involving my cats? What, in the name of everything wooly, could I do for todays challenge???

The Inspiration came, once again from the water... Specifically from this cute yarn...

I had this awesome visions about water lilies and ponds made of yarn... I was a genius! This would work perfectly!!

Sadly, my mind is able to create really intricated things... Things that my clumsy hands not always can mimic... Before showing the pics, I'll say that in their original form, they are really crappy... After almost an hour of sheer frustration, because I couldn't put together what I had in mind, I decided that Photoshop would make up for my clumsyness... After all, everything looks better woth photoshop right?

The waterlilly, came up looking like this

And after playing with it in photoshop, it came looking like this:

It still looks like crap...

After the waterlilly fiasco, I tried again... The original pics are still crappy, but the photoshoped version, don't look THAT bad... 

From, this

To this:

And from this

To this:

They kinda look like children's drawings... And I kinda love/hate them...

Wanna see more blogposts with awesome and kickass pictures that put mine on shame? click the first image of the post :D

Knitting and Crochet Blog Week 2012 - Day 1 3KCBWDAY1 "A Colorful Mind"

 "Colour is one of our greatest expressions of ourselves when we choose to knit or crochet, so how do you choose what colours you buy and crochet or knit with. Have a look through your stash and see if there is a predominance of one colour. Do the same with your finished projects - do they match? Do you love a rainbow of bright hues, or more subdued tones. How much attention do you pay to the original colour that a garment is knit in when you see a pattern? Tell readers about your love or confusion over colour."

Its the first day of this year's Knitting and Crochet Blog Week... And I'm bouncing of excitement! This will be my first time taking part in it... I hope to somehow manage to get all the posts ready in time -I had this unrealistic vision of myself having all the week's posts done by last saturday-. Now, lets get this done :D

Today's topic was about color, how we relate to color, and how we use it in our knitting (or crocheting)... We were encouraged to look into our knitter-ish soul (our stash)  and our projects, to see if there was a predominating color...  

So, how about if we ask to my stash, and projects, about my favorite color?

this is the first picture I take to my stash... Its bigger than I thought,
but still,  small in comparison to others I've seen

Its pretty balanced right? There is a lot of blues and greens...

And a fair amount of reds, pinks and such.... 

I even have a bunch of whites, beiges and nudes or whatever they're called now...

The browns and yellows seem to be the minority here... probably because I'm not very fond of those colors...

Now, if we look into my projects, you'll see a bunch of toys, freeform blobs, and mostly stuff I've made either to sell or to give as gifts... yeah, I'm not much of a selfish knitter... There isn't a lot of "me" in there...

Now, what if I look into my wardrobe?

Shitloads of T shirts, either black, or in dark emo colors... I don't pay a lot of attention to my clothes, I guess I should, but meh...

Lets take a look to my archaeological records, the skein of memories... Mostly pinks and reds

with splashes of the other colors

According to my stash and projects I'm a fairly balanced person in terms of colors right?

LIES!!

The truth is that I'm pretty obssesed with two colors, although, properly speaking, its actually a whole family of colors, that I've started to arbitrarily call Oceania family (teal, aqua green, and blues) and the absense of light (black). Acording with some theories about color, black isn't actually a color, but the absense of light, and white its actually the absense of color... Cool isn't it?

The black its a reminiscense of my teen years as a pseudo goth... And the "oceania family" its my new found love, ever since I joined Ravelry I've been obsessed with them... A quick google search about these colors, will tell you about healing, fertility, elegance and other stuff, that while might be true in some level, I don't think it applies to me, at least not entirely... The reason why I love all these colors it because they remind me to ponds and seas. These are bodies of water... Acording to Jungian Psycology, the water its the representation of our subconscious mind... There you have it, my love for these colors talks about a reconnection with my subconscious mind...

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On a less intense and existentialist tone, I think my usage of color in my knitting has to do a lot with both the fact that  in my country there isn't a lot of choices in terms of colors, so until I can afford to buy things online, I have to settle with what I find around. A trip to a LYS can be pretty frustrating: 

-Me: Excuse me, do you have any tonal yarn?

-Tonal yarns? whats that? Here, have some variegated acrilyc yarn

-Me: hhhmmm, okay, how abou Self-Stripping yarns?

- Self-Stripping? How do you eat that shiet?Why don't you buy some variegated yarn?

-Me: and Self-patterning sock yarn?

-Self-patterning sock yarn? Stop fucking around and buy moar VARIEGATED YARN!!

-Me: No ma'am I don't want anymore fucking variegated yarn!!, if I ever buy more variegated yarn I'll simultaneously explode and implode creating a black hole of variegated doom!! Stop offering it to me!!!!!

But, as they say, necessity is the mother of invention... I've managed to succesfully create a somewhat crappy self-stripping yarn, all by myself...

kiss my ass Kauni!

It looks pretty cool right? Once I get the hang of the trick I think I'll make one with really long color repeats...

Ok, I'm gonna stop now... I gotta save a bit of inpiration for the rest of the week! Click the first pic of the post for more colorful blogs, You're a Genius Eskimimi!!