no socks for Bertie Wooster

I was going to do a sock-a-long on ravelry, wherein you follow a set of clues as they are revealed over a couple of weeks and knit up a mystery sock along with a group of other trusting sock enthusiasts.

Not this guy

But my yarn managed to be both too dark and too busy, so you couldn't even see all the little cables and zig-zags going down the leg of the sock. I ripped it out and cast on plain socks without a pattern. 3x1 ribbing, gusset heel, basic toe, DONE.

Portrait shot

Arty shot

Action shot

Glamour shot

I decreased across the top for visual interest, but it's still just a sock. However, it is still cold in the mornings, so just a sock is what I need.

But I'm sad about missing out on the mystery knit-a-long, because the Bertie Wooster socks turned out to be pretty damn deco-tastic.

This industry of knitting and produce portraiture brought to you by my post-illustration-completion existential panic. Happens every time. I finish a book and then look up to discover that the sun is shining and plants are blooming and holy shit what am I doing with my life why have I not drawn portraits or painted a still life or developed a successful web comic or built a studio I am a failure and my life is slipping by with nothing to show for it and then I remember that I didn't do those things because I was busy illustrating a children's book. And that now I can start the next one, because I'm not good at comics or oil painting or quitting my job to lurk in the basement - I draw goblins eating oranges, and I'm happy while I'm doing it. And then I feel stupid and finish the socks I was knitting and think about the next book.

Coming next: the assembly of a pdf dummy book; the agony of waiting for feedback/rejection from prospective agents.

Mini mint

The long slow death of the cilantro made me feel a bit more compassionate about the mint, and I let it survive the painting process. I should probably practice not murdering and eating my models if I want to get into portraiture.

Masking fluid! Mint has an alarming translucency. They light up like bioluminescent things.

There we go.

With model. I draw the foods to scale; I had a frame that needed something small, and the only other option in the fridge was a bag of shredded cabbage.

Probably the right choice.

Cilantroooo

Took a break from book illustrations to knock out another produce portrait for my kitchen wall. Our local market sells cilantro in giant two-hand bunches with the roots still attached, and I peeled one of the murdered little plants off of the bunch and asked it to pose. It went limp. I stuck it in dirt afterwards, where it died. It is not happy cilantro. But artists don't ask that their models stay alive, just that they stay still.

I painted masking fluid onto the roots. This is basically just thin rubber cement, and it's hard to paint with because it's invisible, but it is the greatest thing ever. It is a skill worth cultivating. I'm going to make whole paintings out of masking fluid and earn more points for Slytherin, because that is some dark magic.

Not sure I like seeing the pen work, but it doesn't bother me enough to ruin it with darker paint.

Framed! With bonus reflection of my neck.

Next: mint.

Probably. While I was driving home yesterday, I had an epiphany about tying illustration reference with home decorating and gardening, and walked in yelling, "I NEED A BONSAI." Or eight. A big shelf of bonsai. I need so many bonsai.

Off to google bonsai pruning.

work in progress

character sketches from this book I'm working on 

Am going blind from hunching over this thing until midnight every night. It is almost finished, which should make me excited but instead is making me panic, like a large creature is sneaking up on me in the minutes I am doing other things, and I need to run and grab the project up and get it done before it kills me. That is productivity. Or sleep deprivation. Also I gave up chocolate for Lent. There is nothing between me and the dementors. A facebook quiz told me that my patronus is James Franco, so I'm pretty much done for.

(art via alicia-mb)

Tapping on my collarbone like a woodpecker.

Typical

Snuck out of bed at 5:30 am. Ran a bath. Put coffee on. Washed my hair and laid in the steaming water. Thought soothing thoughts at myself about the upcoming toddler story time, which was a brawl of flying shaker eggs last week. Had just wrapped in a towel and stepped out of the tub when the door burst open. Little girl came running in, fighting with her footie pajamas to get on the toilet. I sat on the floor and helped her out of them, and the teenager ran in with a kitten dribbling runny poop. Tossed kitten into litter box next to me. Husband ran into bathroom, flapping about the trail of kitty diarrhea leading from the boy's bed and down the hall runner. Little girl declared that she needed an english muffin and ran naked out of the bathroom, through the cat poop.

Toddler Storytime Mosh Pit Hour is looking pretty good right now.

What we didn't need

OH YAY.

I said dogs, right? Everyone heard me say dogs?

We found another kitten.

Fine. Cats it is. Cats on every surface. Cats in the drawers. Cats in the storage compartments.

The kids are fine with this development. They named it Pantalaimon. I dubbed it Panty Liner. They are compromising with Pan. Or Pants. So we can go outside and yell PANTS. WHERE ARE YOU PANTS.

Remorseless children. Shopping for litter boxes disguised as potted plants, for every freaking corner of the house.

VICTORY

Potty training: achieved.

Toddler levels up to little girl.

eta: that's her eating a Burger King breakfast platter with chopsticks, because we ran there from half a block away to use their toilet.

What I've been doing

I tore up a bunch of boxes and taped them together into a little model house, guided by a stack of make-your-own-dollhouse and cottages-in-California books. Then I sat and drew it, and inked it, and stuck (battery-operated) candles inside it to light it. This is the under-drawing.

I had been going loose and cartooney with the rest of the illustrations, but I liked this so well I've had to go back and add more pencil detail to them. I will re-work them until they are dead, and that will be an important lesson. Or they will be great, and that will be an important lesson.

LENT APPROACHES.  I'm giving up staff room snacks and sugars and thick fatty beers. The usual. Fine. The kids are very excited to choke on quarters in their pancakes this Tuesday, so that makes it worthwhile.

In other news, IT IS FUCKING FREEZING. Maybe if it were actually freezing, I could trot outside with a parka and make love-eyes at the snowy trees and it would be fine, but in the middle of the pacific - no. We have no warm clothes and no heating and no proper windows, and I woke up with Zenny cramming her shivering body under my armpit. All the thin blankets in the house were piled on all the beds and they were doing nothing to keep the arctic blast of 50 degree wind from cutting through our pajamas. UNACCEPTABLE. So we put on layers and went to the thrift store to load up on oh-shit-we've-moved-to-the-tropics military discards. Heavy blankets, footie pajamas, jackets with plush linings, a hoodie with panda ears and a front pocket big enough to carry a cat in. The kids are so pleased with the invention of fleece. They have everything on. With no shirts on underneath, because "it's soooo soft", but that is Hawaii for you.

the f word

The other day, the man gave me that cheerfully worried expression that said he was about to try something I wouldn't like. "Hey! How about you spend the whole day having fun with your mom while I watch the kids this Sunday?"

"Oh, ok. Why?"

"Well, I am going to have a brewing day. And invite... friends?"

Friends? What is friends? I suddenly realized that I hadn't made any new friends since leaving Maui. None at all. No friends. I am friendless. And for a moment I felt a flutter of panic, like when you realize that you forgot something important years ago (didn't I use to have sea monkeys?), and then I remembered that I am happier now than I have been since my desert hermit days. Small family, small library, small town, large open spaces, NO STRANGERS IN MY HOUSE. I have never identified with any movie hero more fiercely than I did as a child watching the stranded scientist in Never Cry Wolf as he peed around his campsite and vengefully ate the mice in his food stores.

life goals

So the man tried to get me out of the way in order to socialize with these people I don't know, which I appreciate, but his proposed brewing day fell on Super Bowl, and we don't have cable tv, so nobody wanted to come. "Friends", eh.

Maybe I need dogs. Dogs is like friends.

liiiife

There isn't much going on except for my fevered neck-crinking obsession with this book project. (13/32 pages blocked out and mostly finished.) But I said I would talk about my life and I WILL.

Went to mother's house to help her change her car battery. All the doors malfunctioned, stopped responding to key, and we accidentally locked her out of the car entirely. Locksmith arrived to bust into it; car alarm broke and goes off every time key is inserted into ignition. Car has been rendered useless. Tried to convince her that problems can't be solved until they reach their worst outcome, so we really did her a favor.

Read the Martian. Liked it, despite a "that would be gay" joke that irritated me for the next 50 pages. And despite my willful ignorance of car repair. I can understand mechanics just fine, it's just that regular vehicle maintenance is so much less interesting than shit getting blown up and taped back together in a desperate bid for survival. My emergency skill set is mostly food- and textile-related. I can make tow lines out of twine if I need to, but someone else will need to modify the CO2 regulator.

Knitted 1.5 socks before getting derailed by the book project. Someone else will have to make the tow line, too, I guess.

Went swimming with the kids. I say "swimming", but what happens is that the boys try to drown each other and the girl wants to get in and out of the water, so I spend the whole time breaking up fights and paddling around in circles trying to help the toddler up and down the metal ladder. I finally call it after 45 minutes of nervy vigilance and drag them back to the house for sandwiches.

Injured ankle, discovered bloody scrapes and bruises around shins. Couldn't remember how I did this. Thought it was cardigan-related* for most of the week, then remembered kicking over a huge wheel of butcher paper under the desk and getting leg pinned to chair. Didn't pay much attention to this because I was drawing. So the good news is that I won't even notice a tow line/regulator emergency when it happens; will just keel over and die.

And here is a picture of me, because I haven't posted one in a long time.

* I hang my cardigan on the back of my office chair, and sometimes it slithers down to wrap around my feet when I leap up to be helpful.