Where To Begin

**Warning: Last picture may be NotSafeForWork....Sorry!**

Well, first, I oughta' say that there are times when it's just plain better to live your life than to wonder when and how you were next gonna post about it . Having said that, no major life dramas have unfolded since I left the blog to collect spiderwebs and dust bunnies, well, I did wonder if my very elderly lawn guy was dead for a coupla' (ahem...six) weeks. Turns out, he's not. Phew. Secondly, I really must admit that I got so thoroughly hooked on Bloglines to keep me invested in the private lives of others that slacking got easier every day that I didn't post a little somethin' somethin'. That's all. Mystery of my universe solved. Voyeuristic slacker mom keeps secret life as real person secret. Hmm.

Bianca's Jacket, Interweave Knits. In KnitPicks, Main Line, Butter Pecan.
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Anyhoo, I have been knitting. A lot. Well, a lot, for me. I'm slow and am covered with children like an oak green with lichen. Slow is my standard operating speed. I knit a sweater (my first!), two and one quarter pairs of socks, a rocket, a mini-rocket, a few rows of the really lovely blanket, and started a skirt for my daughter. I even, hold on to your seats, typed up a whole...half of a pattern. The mini-rocket. I started to feel poorly about the effort however. I suddenly got the feeling that if I were to write a pattern for everyone, I oughta' make it a good one....not a mini-one. You know what I mean? So, I'm putting it back on the shelf for now. *

From "Favorite Socks", in KnitPicks, Gloss; Monkey Socks, in Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sock, Golden Hills; and another from "Favorite Socks", in Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sock, Baltic Seas.

Okay, here's the bit I'm really excited about. I...signed...up...for...a...FIGURE DRAWING CLASS!! Yay! Short story...approximately eleven years ago I was living in New Orleans, working on my degree in illustration, madly in love for the first time and enormously pregnant with my first child. I was at a fork in the path, juggling all the great possibilities of life at once. Career, love, family. I happily skipped along the path as it took an obvious turn toward staying at home with the kids. Heck, I still got to be madly in love and to finish the degree I was already working on and to get pregnant again...and again...and again...and again. It has been a good path. However, I never shook my fondness for drawing...people...who stand still for extended periods of time. (I once considered medical illustration as the thing for me, if that gives a clue to my tendencies.)

Hip in Hemp skirt, in Elann.com Esprit.

Over the years, I have tried off and on to draw my kids. But as luck would have it, I can't even get a sleeping baby to stay still. And well, later, knitting happened. So this year, after a mini-emotional meltdown (not to worry, I have them all the time), it finally dawned on me that for the first time in years I was not gravid with child, nursing, or without available baby-sitters. Cha-ching! Put myself in the figure-drawing class through the continuing education dept. of our local university and I LOVE IT!

Best of the bunch, I think.

It's been two (shortish) sessions, but I'm finding my zen again. My goal is to become more natural with proportions, quickly, so that I can get on to doing completed drawings, with decent composition and backgrounds and all that jazz. It's taking some serious concentration on my part, but time has a way of working these things out. In the meantime, watch out for more "Naked People" posting. Woo hoo!

*P.S. Does anyone have any advice on PDF files? I could really use it.

I knit on..

...as Venom lay dying at arm's length. It was tragic. Truly.

Originally, I was gonna brag on all the super fantastic knitting I've gotten done in the last month or my sudden shift back into figure drawing, but how could I compete with such an inspired staging left for me by my child? It did strike me, however, that this is a bit like a cat dropping a dead bird at your feet. Hmmm.....