Author: Rita de Heer

Writing is what I do. What I think about. What I meditate on. What I dream up. Listen to. Imagine. Sometimes I sleep. Sometimes I eat. And I walk. Pull out environmental weeds. There are a thousand more things I do, though writing comes into a fair few of those things too.

Cat Diary 34

See this?

That’s the chair I like to scrapple. My efforts obviously not appreciated. The old woman saw this supposed cure in a few video clips, I understand.

She laughed herself silly at my poor brothers and sisters negotiating kitchen benches and other furniture draped with this stuff. Next time she went shopping she came back with a roll of it.

I’m not happy. It’s another foreign element to negotiate. If she thinks it’ll stop me scrappling the other chair she has got another think coming.

I’m sitting under the table, in the centre. Like I can lash out in three hundred and sixty three directions at least ninety of them covered in that disgusting shiny stuff.

It’s a stand off.

Watercolor Painting

For the last week or so I’ve been busy intermittently with my latest painting. A3 size, part of an ongoing learning curve. Can count the number of successful A3s I’ve done on one hand.

I wanted to use a collaged element, some textured paper that I’ve had for about 25 years.

A mix of French Ultramarine and Phthalo blue for the sky, clouded with gouache white going into grey. The headland unadorned in situ weirdly looks inset, rather than glued on top.

Headland and sand flats painted with Quinaquidrone Gold, headland in addition with Phthalo blue (green shade). Beautiful rich colors, but the sandflats too bright, too gold.

Left it a couple of days. Toyed with collaging an old building in the lower left. Read John Lovett’s website about ‘distressing’. Found a bristle brush. What he recommends for distressing.

Scary stuff to actually do it.

The big middle area painting every which way with grey made of the previous colours and a smidgen of Alazirin Red.

The dark diagonal area running down from the middle was the only problem. After trying to stare it gone for a couple of days, I wet it and mopped up excess paint. Repeated as required. At the same time disappeared the slumped bit of the horizon.

Then the gate. Something in the foreground is a way of getting depth. And that worked. it’s hard to get a good photo. For instance there’s no hill in the left of the picture. That line is much less obvious.

But, OK, I’m happy with if.

Knitting, Mark One

A while ago I started an experimental knit that I intended to serve as a base for a crochet design of leaves and vines.

What happened to that?

This. The rolling up just never resolved itself. The more I knitted the tighter and higher it rolled.

OK, so experienced knitters will be saying I’ve done something wrong and I accept that.

Too tight? Nope, as loose as possible with yarn no thicker than a regular two ply, knitted on 4mm knitting pins.

Weird yarn? Maybe. 60% cotton, 40% viscose. No spring in it. At all.

Wrong stitches? Very possible. Stitches in the body of the work are fine. Loose and drapy as desired.

Increasing at the beginning of each row? The problem has to be there! Ffor the purl, rear of the work, row I increased by sticking pin into back of first loop, knitting that plain, then bringing knitting needle forward to knit a purl and continuing with a purl line.

Did the opposite at the front of the work, making a stitch at the beginning of the row by knitting a purl, yarn to the back then knitting a plain and coninuing in plain.

These made nice edges, one that I’d never seen before on the purl side of a work …

And yet, by the time I’d knitted twenty rows the first five had rolled up. After I unpicked those first five—with difficulty—the next five rolled up as I was doing it.

By sixty rows, the first fifteen had rolled up. No matter how I draped and folded the resulting cloth the bottom rolled up. By the time I’d knitted eighty rows I knew I had a twisted disaster and finished it off.

I may deconstruct it and use the yarn for another project, but this was already the second knit that that yarn featured in. Not sure how well it’ll stand up to the strain of pulling apart again.

Note that I said ‘twisted disaster’ …