Stasia told me about the new knitalong, Knit the Classics, in the comments recently. They're currently reading Middlemarch which is my favorite book so I'm finally involved in a knitalong. I'm going to choose some lace socks to knit while re-reading it - probably the vine lace socks in Socks X3 and the Girly-Girl socks in the Spin-Off sock book.

Chris asked why no ribbing on the last pair of socks I knit. I have a perfectly good explanation - BUGS! NM is an entomologist's paradise. What does this have to do with socks you ask? Every night the house fills with insects of all shapes and sizes despite the fact that I rarely even open the windows. One strategy to deal with this is to knit in the dark while watching tv. Although I can turn heels in the dark, I can't knit ribbing for some reason.

I finished the second pair knit in the dark (see below) - the yarn is some Kroy I bought on Elann a while back. I had sworn off Kroy sock yarn previously when a meticulously knit Christmas pair of socks shrunk (it is supposedly machine washable yarn) but now that I wash all my socks by hand it isn't an issue.

Oddly enough, these socks don't really slouch despite the lack of ribbing. They do fit pretty snugly though and are knit on 60 stitches with size 2 dpns. Both DH & I have really skinny ankles and the socks stay up. (I'm almost done with a pair for him which I'll show here in a day or two.) I may never do ribbing again.

Peaches is highly offended that I was feeding strange sheep graham crackers when all she gets is an empty hand to sniff. Look at those chipmunk cheeks.

.


And here's the second pair of "socks in the dark".

The subtle dance of drawing

The Past is Behind. That is the title of this little drawing by L.A.-based artist Mel Kadel. I look at it carefuly. Something about it is quite disturbing. The past. The past is on the right side. You see, in Western culture we read time as we read text: from left to right. Our past is on the left, and our future - on the right. Well, here, the rules are different (as they should be on the real moon). Either time moves the other way, or, maybe, the girl is jumping, setting off, being blown away, and the past is whatever she dares to look at in the right-most position. But then probably this is the moon, and she is landing her jump, and when she falls she looks down, at the ground, not behind her. In any case, the past is absent. Not even a shadow to count it. This abstract landing is, of course, a dance, full of grace and asbent-minded, as only a dance can be. Did I say there was no shadow? I was wrong. There is one poignant shadow: on the face of the girl, as she is flying highest. So the sun is on the right. Behind.

There are many other drawings by Mel Kadel I really like. Here are some examples:

girl with bicycle wheel shoes #2

summersaulting

The Park

Some of her drawings remind me of Linda Zacks, others, of the great Lithuanian-Polish artist Stasys I have to write about some time. The latter might have a different technique, but there is just something about the way of seeing the world, the birds...
(Stasys)


(Mel Kadel)

...and horses...

(Stasys)
(MelKadel)

...that really makes me feel good.




Polish Easter, Mel Kadel

(via)

Technorati: painting, fine art, visual art, art, contemporary art, vvoi

Welcome new readers!

I was really happy to find out this blog was recommended by the hispanic (Colombian) magazine Semana. To those of you streaming in from there: this blog has a fairly primitive structure - it is not ordered by themes or tags. Please forgive the linearity, and try exploring the archives (see sidebar), as well as making use of the Google searchbox. Any comments, also to the older articles, are always welcome! As you can see, I post new things on average once a day.

Poster for a show

(part 1)

(part 2)
(this is the poster for the performance I'm directing. It is also the excuse for not having written as much as I would like recently.)

Louise Bourgeois about modern art

Which artists do you like?
I like Francis Bacon best, because Francis Bacon has terrific problems, and he knows that he is not going to solve them, but he knows also that he can escape from day to day and stay alive, and he does that because his work gives him a kick. And also, Bacon is not self-indulgent. Some people will say, "What do you mean by that? He always paints the same picture." That's true - he always paints the same picture, because he is driven. But he is not self-indulgent. Never.

(...)what does modern art as such mean to you?
What modern art means is that you have to keep finding new ways to express yourself, to express the problems, that there are no settled ways, no fixed approach. This is a painful situation, and modern art is about this painful situation of having no absolutely definite way of expressing yourself. This is why modern art will continue, because this condition remains; it is the modern human condition. (...) [Modern art] is about the hurt of not being able to express yourself properly, to express your intimate relations, your unconscious, to trust the world enough to express yourself directly in it. It is about trying to be sane in this situation, of being tentatively and temporarily sane by expressing yourself. (...) It is about the difficulty of being a self because one is neglected. Everywhere in the modern world there is neglect, the need to be recognized, which is not satisfied. Art is a way of recognizing oneself, which is why it will always be modern.

- Louise Bourgeois (interview with Donald Ksupit, 1988)

Technorati: art installation, installation, fine art, visual art, art, contemporary art, vvoi