Fearless Knitting 101 closing down.

Over its lifetime FK101 has been quite the schizophrenic blog. It has had many personalities and purposes. Some time ago I realized that it had outlived its usefulness to me. It is time to move on. Start with a clean slate and a new vision.

I have created a new blog, Piquant, on my main website ninaclock.com. Piquant acts as an open creative journal, full of images and ideas. Stop by and take a look.

The blog archives will stay up at least for the time being and eventually my favorite posts will probably migrate over to my other site.

Thank you for visiting Fearless Knitting 101. Thank you for being interested, for commenting, for being around and sharing part of the journey. The story is not over yet, but this chapter has come to a close.

~Nina

"Cinderella Concept by Mary Blair" courtesy of Peko-Chan

Last night hubby and I had an interesting conversation about products. What our late night talk boiled down to was this: the best and most complex products must begin and end with simple and exciting ideas.

Take the photo above, for example. It is a conceptual drawing by Mary Blair of the transformation scene in Cinderella. What is fascinating about this drawing is that though it does not look like any of the final drawings used in the movie, you could never mistake it for anything but what it is. The idea is there. The idea of graceful movement and excitement and magic, the very essence of the scene are contained in this drawing. And clearly this drawing was kept in center focus while the scene was animated. But, clearly it was not copied exactly into the movie.

The same thing is true of designing knits or software or probably anything. A successful product needs a master vision that captures the vital parts of what will be created. A picture of what you want to create that gives a project focus yet allows for the inevitable modifications that must come as the idea is made concrete.

I'm sorry you guys, I have absolutely no idea why the comments never work consistently. Hubby is out of town so it will be a little bit. I'll post when they're up again.

What do you do with only one skein of a very rustic, very cheerful, very green skein of Donegal Tweed?

If you're me, you make these:

With the help of a contrasting yarn, I made sure that I used up every inch of this yarn. I love it that much. In fact, this was literally all the yarn that remained from the skein after completing these two projects.

I must have temporarily gained psychic yarn powers in order to know exactly when to switch to my contrasting color on the fingerless gloves.

The hat is roughly based on the Sugar on Snow pattern from Knitty. Such a cool idea; but I like it better in just a plain rib. And the fingerless gloves are my pattern, but it still needs a little refining before I put it up for sale.

I've got to wait till fall before I'll really get to enjoy these two items, but they were fun and fast to knit.

When you're waiting for paint to dry, you really only have short periods of time between coats. I discovered the wonder of watching every single episode of Heros on my computer. I'm all caught up now and ready, waiting, and anxious for the next episode to come out. Is Peter dead?!

I've also been working on the purple sweater design.

This sweater keeps on morphing on me. I've changed my mind about needle sizes, stitch pattern, motifs, lengths, you name it. And yet I'm enjoying very much working on this pattern. The yarn here is the real challenge. I really, really like it, but it was a gift. And like so many gift yarns, it's not something I would have picked out myself. This means that I'm out of my comfort zone, and it's showing in my process. Just about every detail has changed as I've swatched, sketched, and swatched some more. I'm pretty sure I'm finally ready to start knitting. But not today. The shelves need another coat of paint and I need some more time to make sure I've got the idea of this sweater just right.