I finally have some pictures to show of my knittings!

I have knitted:

• a helmet liner for my handsome ninja-wannabe beef
• TWO heelhead scarves!

My first heelhead scarf, which I affectionately like to call the Steelhead scarf (because that’s how I read the name of the pattern every time I had a look), has been on my needles for a long time – since last year in fact. I finished it some time ago, but was too lazy to take a photo and upload it and blog about it. Besides, I lost my camera battery charger that I hadn’t even used once and had to order a new one. Of course the cheapest option was from a web store whose owner won’t send your stuff until you start getting really mad. It took about 2 months!

Anyway. The black heelhead scarf was for myself. I liked knitting it eventually, after having had plenty of trouble with it. So I knitted another one for my mum in colourful stripes, because she’s a colour fan as myself. The difference between us is that I won’t wear just anything colorful, but she will. She has more confidence for dressing up like a clown… just kidding, I think she has a great taste and really can pull off a colourful style.

So here they are, me wearing the black scarf and Turpo sporting the fancy splash of colour:

(Turpo looks like an artist!)

(Modelling knitwear is FUN!)

(Click to enlarge)

And moving on to the helmet liner: why did I want to knit it? I can only remember wanting to knit a hat for myself (which I did), and while I was at it I noticed a pattern for a marine helmet liner (opens a pdf file). It’s a pattern perfectly suited for US marine troops, knitters can knit them and send them in for real use!

I really liked that idea, except I wasn’t going to send my own helmet liner anywhere. I was going to knit it no matter what, even if I couldn’t find anyone to give it to. But then I got blessed with my own Finnish ex-navy tough guy who could use it. Perfect!  He really seems to like it and says he’s going to use it, even though the yarn is a bit itchy. It’s not even 100% wool, which btw would be unacceptable for US troops who’d rather not have their face melt together with their helmet liner in the case of fire…

I had my troubles with the helmet liner, too. For the first time I was using two circular needles, with the other one acting as a stitch holder while knitting the cap portion; and I also learned to add stitches with the cabled cast-on method. There was some unraveling involved at some points, but I persevered and pulled through. Moreover I think my knitting is starting to get quite even and nice-looking. It’s almost as if I wasn’t a beginner knitter still.

(Beautiful eyes, huh?)

All in all, even though it took me a long time to finish these and publish them here, I’m very pleased with the results. Gods I like knitting so much. And I get huge kicks from learning new knitting tricks.

(Turpo is a HUGE fan of cuddling! See how she’s enjoying it!)

Next up is my still unfinished object, a Karius scarf, and sewing together my hobbit sweater. I can’t wait to have Turpo model it. I’m also planning to knit matching mittens for the colourful heelhead scarf for mum, since there is some yarn left still.

And now I can take another month’s break from blogging again. Or not. I have some ideas for new portraits again and will get down to it tomorrow…

I haven’t posted a painting in a long while and I feel bad about it. So I shall amend this sad state of affairs.

During the spring term on the painting course, this was the last painting I finished. I think it just might be my best so far. The teacher agreed that I’ve come a long way from the start of the autumn term.

I paid special attention to making the eyes realistic, and I’m very proud of their look. The face overall has a pretty good resemblance to the model, Cillian Murphy. He’s been one of my favorite actors ever since 28 days later, because he has such a distinctive, peculiar face. High and sharp cheek bones, gaunt cheeks, full lips and very light blue eyes. Very strange, which I like.

(I no longer know how to link the small pic to a larger one on WordPress, thanks so much update 3.01)

There are some  minor things off about the face, but I came to a point where making any changes would have probably jeopardized the painting as a whole. Usually it’s best to just leave it as it is at some point and make another version if you are desperate to get it exactly right. I think I will paint Cillian again later, but from a different picture and angle. Even though I’m not perfectly content with the actual resemblance, I like the color combo of earthy tones combined with cool blue. Besides, we had a live model once during the course, and she came by to look at it and recognized him immediately.

In other news, for a while I’ve meant to move my pictures to some other gallery than Photobucket. It’s just so sucky. But moving the pictures and updating the links won’t be a walk in the park either. As for continuing my painting, I’m thinking of joining the Saturday group in the autumn term. I can no longer attend morning classes just in case I get work, and that unfortunately means I will have a different instructor.

The Saturday group is actually 5 hours for independent painters to come and make use of the facilities, without any guidance from an instructor. That would be fine, since painting without guidance is better than no painting at all. It’s the facilities that I most appreciated in addition to the instructions, since it is very complicated to set up my painting table at home. Plus, having a set time for painting never hurts.

I’m also considering making a website for advertising my translation and proofreading services. I have my own personal nerd to help me so basically I just need to come up with the content and design. I might not get customers anytime soon since I have so little on my CV as far as translations, but I might have a chance with low pay rates and with a convincing website.

Even small jobs would add to the groundwork for getting to my ultimate goal, i.e. some day successfully getting employed at a translation agency. It’s difficult to convince them that I could be a great translator when I have done so little of it officially, with proofs. I believe in my own abilities but I have little to show for it. But maybe one day.

Last year, I gave lol-slippers to my mum as Christmas present. I also gave Deniselle a pair of her own, a Christmas gift in name, but no sooner than earlier this month! That’s why I couldn’t show them here earlier – I didn’t want to ruin the surprise for her. As for mum’s slippers, obviously she has had them at my childhood home, and I kept forgetting to take photos whenever I visit my parents. But now I finally have photos to show both of them off!

Hmm, maybe we could make it a tradition to exchange xmas presents in March or April, since it’s such a long time until my birthday and next Christmas… Anyway, in exchange for lol-slippers, Deniselle gave me fridge magnet poetry!

It’s a collection of words and punctuation marks in the form of fridge magnets that I can use to compose sentences, poetry in particular, by arranging them around on my fridge. I tried to group them according to word class, but soon discovered that my powers of classifying Finnish are less than perfect.

But let’s move on to the slippers! The pattern is from here, the Ravelry link is here. They are called Peter Pan’s slippers, but since mine always turn out too big, I call them lol-slippers.

Here are Deniselle’s slippers:

Deniselle really, really liked them! I guessed her taste in colors quite well – I don’t like blue much myself, but I don’t have a problem making something for someone else in colors that I don’t like. She thought they look absolutely hilarious with the pointy toes, which fits her endearingly silly personality very well indeed.

And here are mum’s slippers:

Mum commented that the pointy toes seem to want her to keep turning to the left all the time. They twist like that because I wasn’t careful enough with lining up the sides properly when I sewed them together.

Just like my dad’s slippers, these are huge. The cat in the photo is about the size of a real cat! The weird thing is, they are 12 rows and too big for mum, but at the same time the 10-row slipper she crocheted herself turned out too small for a friend of hers who has big feet for a woman. And when I asked Amoena about the size, she recalled she may have made only 8 rows in slippers she gave to a male friend of hers! Strange.

In any case, mum was thrilled with the colors and she decided she wants to try to make her own to give out as presents. She used to crochet, knit and sew her own clothes when she was young, because back then she was too poor to buy her clothes ready-made. She used to have a decent skill at it at least, so no reason why she couldn’t re-learn it.

So I urged her to buy  a crochet hook (her old ones were so short that they felt difficult to use) and some yarn, so I could teach her some basics before I have a 3 week break before my next Irish dance classes. She obeyed and I translated and printed out Finnish instructions for the slippers. As soon as she made her first double crochet, she immediately exclaimed “ooohh this is fun!”. Hooked from the first stitch! I had to draw a detailed series of pictures as a reminder of how to make the first slipknot and the first stitches in a magic ring, but otherwise she got the hang of the different stitches very quickly.

So the next time I’ll show her how to make hexagons (see on the sidebar in my projects – oh dear, I’ve completely neglected to blog about my hexagon blanket that I also gave to mum?!), since the slippers are quite fast to make and can get boring really quick. I can’t wait. It’s fun to spread the joy of handicraft.