Thursday, June 26, 2014

Tangled Thursday/Needlework Tuesday - Begin Again

                               

Poor old Michael Finnegan ... begin again...

I'm sure I watched that Wee Sing in Sillyville video at least a thousand times in the mid 90's.  It was a gift from Grandma and the kids loved it.  We sang many, many verses about Michael Finnegan and his whiskers.  The unending tune has come back to haunt me this week - both in Zentangles and stitching.

Last week I reported progress on my knitted "Flag Afghan".  This week -- not so much.  I have started and restarted this project countless times because I was auditioning various stitches, or I made a mistake and had to unravel a portion.  I finally settled on a basic knit stitch, worked out my tension issues, and completed one of the five sections . . .and I don't like it.  So, begin again.  

This time I'm using a looser stitch that more closely resembles the crochet in the inspiration picture.  I didn't bother to take a picture, because so far it looks like an 8x15 red rectangle.  Not picture worthy.  Dave just shakes his head at my many restarts, but I assure him that it's a good thing.  This may be the world's cheapest craft project, because I could be knitting the same skeins of yarn indefinitely.

My Tangled Thursday attempts were along the same lines.  Elaine challenged us to create a drawing using String 109 from tanglepatterns.com.  No brilliant ideas struck me at first glance, so I copied and pasted the string onto some practice sheets of regular copy paper, so I could try various options without redrawing the string.  Good thing, because I had to frequently "begin again".

I finally had several partial ideas that I liked and combined them into two drawings on higher quality sketch paper:

Technically, I think I used the string upside down, but it just seemed to inspire more ideas that way.  

Tangled Thursdays and Needlework Tuesday are both hosted by Heather at Books and Quilts.  Feel free to join in with either one - it's a fun group and no pressure challenges.



2 comments:

  1. Nice work, Tami! I love your copy and paste idea. I actually really like some of your "practice" tiles. They contain some really cool patterns. I like your finished ones, too.

    As for beginning a project again, I sometimes find that if I put the project down for awhile (a day, a week, a month, a year ??) I find inspiration. Or sometimes it's just that my mindset is different or I can attack the project from a different angle. It can also dangerous because in the meantime I start work on another project and the first one becomes an unfinished item.

    Good luck with your afghan. I hope we get to see a finished photo...one day. ;)

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  2. copy and paste, wow, great idea. When you print, set your printer to grey scale or draft so the lines are as light as possible.

    I don't think it matters a bit which way you position the string, it's your work after all.

    well done. your tiles look so neat and crisp, I like the blackness of them.

    Thanks for linking up with Tangles Thursday and the update on the afghan.

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