This and that

Nei, Helene, norsk er erkelt! Eller det er ikke sa vanskelig, compared with some other languages I've learned so far, like Russian or French. ^^ I just need to learn a lot of words. ^^
Thanks for the TV link, I'll watch it even if I won't understand most of it, I will listen to the pronunciation, that's a great learning aid! *^v^*


Fashion Challenge - day 7 (which was on Monday, but I didn't post the photo yet).
- black top, H&M
- dress I made last Winter
- Drops Jacket I knitted
- tights & shoes

It was fun to look through my clothes and see what I made/re-made, I may repeat this challenge next Summer, when there are warmer days for sleeveless dresses and tank tops with skirts! ^^ (Unless I make/remake a whole bunch of long sleeve blouses up till then, you never know! ^^).

Here is the shot of me wearing my Drops Jacket, taken at my parents' place.


Today I went shopping and visited a Second-Hand Books shop, where I bought some old tattered books for my art journal - I've never tried to add any book scraps to my pages, it might give a whole new range of possibilities, yikes! ^^ I must say I'm really into the drawing and painting again, but I must flip through my teenage pencil sketches and find the courage to doodle more, to let the shapes and colours flow freely from my fingers... I'll be working on it this weekend. ^^

Just when did we stop being artists?...

Or, when did we start judging what we create and reject it as not good enough?...

Remember, when you were a child and you sat in front of a piece of white paper - you would TRY everything - crayons, paints, nail polish, smudging with fingers, stamping with a carved potato, gluing scraps on, stenciling, blue horses and green piglets, anything was possible and perfectly used in your art piece.
And it was good.
And I'm not talking about the mama's and auntie's comments of how great your art was - because they said it not because they liked what you did but because that's what you say to a small child. And it's fine, encouragement is a great thing!

But I'm talking about the COURAGE to TRY anything and NOT BEING SCARED of every line or colour. And NOT COMPARING our works with the works of others. The moment we learned to compare, we lost the ability to create. We started to think our art's not good enough.

I have to RE-LEARN those skills once more, because I lost them, too. I was drawing quite a lot when I was a teenager, and every time I was drawing, I heard my parents say: "She's playing." opposite to "She's learning." Playing was wrong, childish, silly, learning was good, goal-oriented, proactive (oh, how I hate that word!...).
I never drawn realistic figures or landscapes because I didn't know how. I never attended any art school or course. Perspective was one big mystery to me (it still is up till now, but I'm not bothered anymore!.. *^v^*). I was just taking a pencil in my hand and sketching something, adding new elements, smudging the shades with my fingers. But the more I compared my art with others' the more I didn't like it, and gradually I drawn less and less, and then I stopped drawing.
Now, my revelation moment --> Because I felt I wasn't good enough in CREATING, I took up RE-CREATING, I mean, the cross-stitching and sewing. When you do the cross-stitching or sew something from the Burda pattern, you don't really make something from scratch - I mean from the very scratch, you repeat the given pattern - yes, you may use different colours or fabrics/buttons, but the result will be very similar to the original.

When I started my art journal and saw many art journals of yours, I realized I CAN create art. Even if it's only in my journal, just for me to flip through the pages in a year or two (or 10! ^^), and see what was happening in my life then.
And I noticed that the more I paint/write in my journal,, the more ideas come to me day by day. They may not be the "Mona Lisa" ideas or "Guernica" ideas, but they fill the pages of my journal as I go through another day. ^^
I may even share with you some of my teenager drawings, I just have to scan them once more (I somehow lost the previous scans)... ^^


Now, off to my journal pages:
First of all, I made some new artistic aids - I bought a bunch of the cheapest rubbers and cut them out into stamps: numbers and some basic shapes! *^v^*
(I also bought the date stamp but for this one I'll have to wait a bit till it comes by post).

Beginning of this post in my journal. *^v^*

I would soooo like to live according to those wise words, so I put them into my journal so I could go back to this page and remind myself about this TRUTH! ^^
The lady is glued here, but I added her some wings so she could fly when no one's watching her at the moment. *^v^*

I saw this view from my bedroom window, on Saturday morning when Robert got up and removed the curtains - the curtain of leafy green and gold! ^^

You cannot see it properly but it has "math" written all over with a grey metallic gel pen. I've always loved math, I wonder why I never followed its path...

This is my response for the prompt from d'Blogala, "what I want to be when I grow up".

Here is the story of my life: "All my life I lived on the 8th floor, I could have my windows wide open and even without the curtains if I wanted. Now I live on the ground floor, trees block the light in my bedroom and people keep staring into my living room. I need air..." It's all true...

And here was my working space from yesterday - at that moment it was on my bed. Can you see my new plastic container for the paints? I must keep the stuff organized, definitely in containers, in other case things start crawling around the flat and it's getting really messy. ^^
Also, on the lid of the box, just above my journal, there are my brand new rubber stamps - I'm very happy with how they work! I tried to make a stamp out of a wine cork but it just crumbled in my hand. And here, the cheapest possible rubbers and what a result! *^v^*


Learning Norwegian makes me very frustrated...
Why?
Because I forgot how it is to LEARN a new language. I forgot the painful beginnings, when you know what to say but don't know how to say it in a new language... When I read the English texts I understand 100% or 90 %, when I read Norwegian blogs, I catch single words - "I", "have", "no", "eat", but the rest is still unclear to me. I know it's always like that at the beginning, it's normal, it's called "learning". But it makes me angry and gives me the kick to learn more.
I really must start memorizing the dictionary, or something... *^v^*

One more thing - thank you guys for your kind offers to buy me Patons knitting book, but I thought things through and I've come to some conclusions: I really really cannot buy any pattern book I spot on the Internet, because:
1. I planned to buy Rowan 41&42 and recent IK, so I must save money on these first,
2. it's not a good idea to buy many patterns and then let them stay untouched for eternity, because I have only 2 hands and 24 hours per day.

I did some cleaning with knitting projects today - I finished the Zebra socks (photos soon) and frogged the Ukrainian Socks from "Folk Socks" (wrong gauge, I may come back to them one day).
I also tried to knit a bit of the Mystery Stole III, but something happened and I was one stitch short in a row I was knitting. I just added one stitch but then I was again one stitch short in the next row. What the heck?... I'm doing something wrong, and I haven't figured out what it was. Phew...
Looks like it's high time for another cardigan! *^v^* (next week - yarn shopping! ^^).

Texture is my middle name

Now, this really made my day!
Although I was generally pleased with the Purple Belle, the button band crisis took away some of the pride and joy of knitting that cardigan. But with Drops Jacket it's a completely different story! *^v^*
I am as happy as a peccary in a monsoon, as my friend used to say. ^^
I love everything about this cardigan:
- the rough texture of the recycled wool yarn (rather uneven threads, so it stayed uneven even after wet blocking, but I love it!),
- the off-white/ecru colour,
- the high collar (I just couldn't get the directions on the collar so I gave up and made my own version, love it! ^^),
- the thrifted leather buttons I bought last week (I checked - the price for those three buttons used here was about 25 cents! *^v^*),
- the length of the sleeves = veeeery long - I was afraid I didn't have enough yarn for the long sleeves but I still have quite a lot left, yikes! ^^
- the Double Moss pattern
- the speed of knitting with bulky yarn - 12 stitches per 4 inch and 7 mm needle, started last Wednesday, finished on Sunday, give me more patterns like this! ^^
I made one change - I moved the buttons towards the edge because it would be too tight on my bust if I had them further into the lapel, as in the design. But I think it makes and interesting symmetrical front. I thought about knitting the pockets but in the end I decided they would spoil the shape.

Next sweater project - it was supposed to be Starsky, but it depends on the yarn I'll be able to buy (I'm going shopping next week). If I get some nice white wool, it'll be this one, and if there is a stunning green yarn - I'll start Mariah. ^^ Plus I'm going to buy black wool for a turtleneck for Robert (promised some time ago, so It's high time I started it...).


Linguistics again: Hilde, thank you very much for your help, but your comment brought up another question - I assume that one house is hus but on Wiktionary I found the following possibilities:

hus n. (definite singular huset; indefinite plural hus; definite plural husa/husene)
So, huset = the house, hus = houses, husa/husene = the houses, am I right? Why those two forms - husa and husene?

I'm lost again...

And art journal pages later, because they deserve a separate post. *^v^*

While waiting for the jacket to come...

Fashion Challenge - day 6
(I know, I didn't post a photo yesterday, but I didn't leave the flat at all and the day was lazy, so I wore a tracksuit pants and white tank top all day...A girl needs a break from all that fashion, you know... ^^)I got tired of the stiff serious poses! *^v^*
- Tomato top knitted by me, Knitting Daily pattern
- cotton skirt sewn by me ages ago
- red knee-high socks and shoes
- Creative MuVo (in my hand) with a Norwegian language course on it! *^v^*


Linguistic question: how can you say in Norwegian: "Let's eat at my place/at your place." There is a phrase in my course that sounds like "hus mi/hus di" but I'm not sure if that's the correct way of saying it. (I assumed it because hus=house, please help!). ^^


Tomorrow I will show you my finished Drops Jacket (oh, I cannot wait!), and maybe tomorrow I'll post some art journal pages I've been working on for the last several days (and my new art supplies box I bought today! ^^).

One more thing: in case you want to watch something really cool, see the Black Sheep movie! It's great! Knitters will love it, it's all about the sheep! And zombies. I mean, sheep zombies!... *^v^* Really! ^^

A linguistic question, a knitting question!

I got scolded by Helene for learning Swedish before the Norwegian, and she's got the point, I have more Norwegian blogs on my bloglines than Swedish ones, and some of them are only in Norwegian. That settles the matter: I'm starting to learn both of the languages at the same time - it will give me an opportunity to compare them since they seem to be similar. *^v^* Be warned, I'll be asking linguistic questions and maybe even write some sentences in those languages on my blog! ^^

All right, Norwegian bloggers, first question: I've just found out that there are two official languages in Norway: Bokmaal and Nynorsk, so which one do you speak, and which one should I learn?!... (and let's not talk about Sami in the far north, I'm not considering learning this language in the near future...)


Today a new portion of my journal pages - I finished them last weekend.
This one was inspired when I was going on a bus and a little girl with her mother were sitting behind me. They were talking about this and that and sudenly the girl saw a huge flock of crows in the street, and exclaimed with joy and astonishment "Wow! Mum! Birds!". Which left me thinking about the child's ability to be astonished on every step, no matter what, no matter how many times that girl saw birds before, she would still shout it out. ^^

One day at the cottage I got into melancholic mood. I quoted here a poem called "Melancholy" by Krzysztof Baczynski, famous Polish poet.

That's an evening inspiration, with a full moon, starry sky and a poem called "Night" by Polish poet Boleslaw Lesmian (I love his poetry! ^^ Watercolors and white acrylic.
That's the belated reaction to Inspire Me Thursday's topic DNA. I printed out my recent photo, glued it onto a page, then worked with watercolors and pencil crayons.

This is a reminder that sometimes I talk too much, without thinking first... Well, I must learn to keep my mouths shut. ^^

That's the second part of the "Wow, Mum, birds" page - this is a quotation from Marillion's "Childhood's End?", my teenager's favourite band, which I dug out recently. I've been listening to this song when I heard the little girl shout on the bus! *^v^* In fact I think I may choose this song as my theme song (remember theme songs from "Ally McBeal"? ^^).
Funny thing, when I painted the magpie, I forgot these are the very runny watery watercolors, and white and black places intermixed with splashes of water, yuk...
But then I kicked the perfectionist in me in the butt and said, that it's my magpie and I made it that way, and it stays that way! Period!
It would have been so easy to rip out this page and try again on another, but it's just my journal and nobody will measure the magpie's white and black areas with a ruler or something! ^^ It's just for fun!

I must say that I am so very flattered and happy with all your comments on my journal pages, keep them coming, please! This is a new way of expressing myself and I'm learning how to do it, any words of encouragement is very welcome! *^v^*


I also have an urgent knitting question (to those knitting Silver Belle or anybody who can help me! ) - I'm stuck! I cast on for sleeves last night and I don't know how to knit one stitch, the one highlighted in green , which is described as "k1, p1, k1 into next stitch". I tried many combinations and I'm several stitches short at the end of the 16 stitches sequence (the next direction after this stitch is "k 3 tog"). i know I have to make three stitches out of the one, but I don't know how!...
Please, help!!!


And because it's my nameday today, I'm spending it fruitfully - my best friend Anna came this morning to help me clean our balcony, and then we took her to the train station (she was going outside Warsaw to get a second tattoo done, yikes! ^^), Robert took a day off, we went to the art bookstore to buy me a present (but it was closed, wrrrr...), then we went to the swimming pool and sauna and then for a lovely fried fish dinner. Now we are home, with some bubbly in the fridge! *^v^*
Happy nameday to all Joannas! *^v^*