Tuesday, July 25, 2006

Olly the Octopus

Here is the infamous octopus I've been telling everyone about. I found a free pattern on roxycraft.com. The pattern was for MoMo the octopus but I named mine Olly. I was following the pattern for the head but somehow Olly's head is a little bigger than the pattern suggested it would be. When I began to make the eight legs they ended up a little smaller than the body so I modified the pattern and made more rows with increases and decreases. The legs are not all exactly the same size because I forgot to write down the changes that I made on the pattern. Oh well, it is the first three dimensional crochet sculpture that I have ever made. The head took about 12 hours straight to finish. As Joseph's grandmother would say I was hell bent on getting it finished. The legs I made whenever I had some time during that same week. I used Red Heart worsted weight yarn in Skipper Blue instead of the Jiffy yarn the pattern said to use.

Olly likes sitting in his little underwater cave watching the colorful fish swim by and the seaweed swaying in the water. He is all blue but not because he is sad, he can't help that, he was born that way. Sometimes he stays in his little cave because he feels he is not perfect. You see his tentacles are not all the same size and he fears he will not measure up to all the other octopuses that live in the sea. Little does he know that he is capable of so much more and the love he feels for others is so deep and strong inside of him. He is waiting patiently for Christmas time when he will find his new and rightful home in the arms of a particular child.

Succulent 1 Pastel Painting


I have decided to create this blog to reflect me, my thoughts, creations and whatever I might be doing in my life. This is a place where I can post creations, ideas, practice projects, and you name it. These projects may be paintings, drawings, crochet, sewing projects, photographs, plants, poetry, pottery and the list goes on.

The painting above was painted using soft and hard pastels. The photo is not a good one but it's the only one I had at the time. It's actually a little darker than it appears in the photo. I can't seem to stop working on it. Every time I look at it I want to fix something. I desire for it to look more realistic and I think that is why I keep working on it. I have placed several layers of pastel pigment and fixative and I don't want to over do it.
When Joseph (my husband) and I were living downtown there was this lonely little succulent growing at the edge of the wooden fence in the back yard. I took a photo of it and decided to paint it. We live in an apartment now and I have a small patio filled with plants. I have spent many hours on that patio painting this picture. While the world around me is buzzing around like a frenzied bee I enjoy my quiet hours out on my patio with my plants and pastels. Somehow I find God there sitting and talking to me like an old friend. There is a peace that comes over me and I feel tremendous joy. I named this painting Succulent 1 because I plan to paint more succulents in the future. Perhaps I will get better the more I paint.