Doing the morning school drive there were numerous contrails across the blue sky. One contrail was casting a shadow on the wispy cirrus clouds in the distance. It made a striking effect, and I rolled down the window and took a picture while we were stopped at a light.
I went to my favorite coffee shop and picked up a latte and a couple shots of expresso to go. I drank the latte, but used the expresso to make lots of shapes on water color paper.
My goal is to digitize the coffee stains to make amalgamated coffee art. First up, a coffee tree. Although I intended to use the shapes to make the tree, I decided to also try just painting an evergreen tree with expresso. It turned out great, so that turned into my base image. I scanned everything, including a scattering of sugar sprinkles. I digitally combined the tree, sprinkles, and a precisely placed coffee ring, and am quite pleased with the result. For fun, I changed the color of the sprinkles in Photoshop so I had two options.
These cards are sold exclusively at The Full Cup in Weatherford, TX.
I made a new digital card design for our holiday cards. I started in Adobe Fresco on an iPad with an Apple Pencil, moved to the computer and used Adobe Illustrator, then to print, used Adobe inDesign to do the layout. I like black and gray word art, but to give it a little pop I printed on pearlescent paper.
My plan is to put the design in Redbubble and cross post to my CarynsCreations.com site after the design is available.
I’ve made it to the split of the arms and body on the cardigan I’m knitting! This is momentous because after I separate the stitches for the sleeves each body row will have less stitches, which will make progress seem faster. There are a couple ways to hold the stitches for the arms, waste yarn, or a stitch holder. I found some pony bead elastic in my stash, which is a thick, but hollow, rubberized cord marketed for stringing beads. The end of this cord fits over the tip of my needle, making it much less scary to slide the stitches off the needle and onto the cord.
The cord comes in long lengths, making it possible to cut it as long as I want it, which in this case is large enough so the garment can be tried on during construction. In the package there are also small connectors that slide into the ends of the cord, closing the loop.
Now onto knitting the body!
I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this, but Thor the Gray tabby is an awkward sleeper. He hasn’t quite figured out laps, and lays half on, half off. I often find him sleeping not quite within the confines of a space. The picture below is typical, draped over the arm of the couch and his leg doing weird things. The yarn snuggling is quite suspicious. How did it get there?
Critters and Craft 