Inspiration Notebook 4

Yellow, greens, and purple greys.

Euphemia White Van Rensselaer by George P.A. Healy. 1842
Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY 23.102

Inspiration Notebook 3

Walton Ford, Tale of Johnny Nutkin 2001
hardground and softground etching, aquatint, spit-bite aquatint, and drypoint

Inspiration Notebook 2

Alex Katz, Big Red Smile

Inspiration Notebook 1

Greens, yellows, & browns with a bit of orange

Van Gogh, The Church at Auvers, 1890
Musee d'Orsay, Paris

Orange, brown, & periwinkle/grey

Gustave Baumann, Cottonwood Tassels 1943
 woodcut

Gold, chestnut, & black

Fayum Mummy Portrait, 2nd century

Dark plum, gold, jewel tones, and pearl.

Empress Theodora mosaic, 6th century
Basilica of San Vitale

Clockwork

While traveling to and from Rhinebeck I did have a slightly larger project with me than just two hats.  It was my Clockwork scarf, and it provided the exact amount of attention/inattention I wanted for lots of travel time. The tons of garter stitch were perfect for touch-only knitting - especially important if you happen to be the navigatrix from time-to-time, and then small amounts of increasing and purling just to keep you on your toes.

By finishing up Clockwork in October, I have now worked through 11.5 skeins of sock yarn in 10 months, and that is a great feeling.  My sock yarn stash is quite large, and could use a bit of cleaning out. Each skein I counted was based on a 100g weight, and so those 50g skeins counted as half, hence the peculiar number.

Pattern: Clockwork by Stephen West
Yarn: Pagewood Farm Chugiak, in Fruit Freeze, and Claudia's Hand Painted Yarn in Black Walnut.
Needles: Addi US 5 lace needles
Mods: None.

I really love the combination of these two sock yarns - the Berry Freeze varies from a lovely deep red to a slightly orange color, the Black Walnut moves from a red-brown to a deep charcoal grey. My art history training often plays an important roll when I start playing with color. This time I was thinking of the Flemish painters, like Jan van Eyck, and the rich, dark colors they used.

Jan van Eyck, Portrait of a Man in a Turban, 1433
National Gallery, UK

I love how the brown of his fur collar emphasizes the deep red of his turban.

All-in-all a really successful project, one that I am sure to enjoy this fall!