Wednesday, October 1, 2014

US Figure Skating Championships contest

 The city of Greensboro + Greenhill Center for the Arts held a poster competition for the US Figure Skating Championships, that Greensboro will be hosting in January 2015. At first, I wasn't sure if I was interested but the cash prize was enticing enough for me to get out my sketchbook and think of some ideas. I knew I wanted to design something that was a reflection of my personal artwork, so that meant it needed to be knitted. I ended up having a lot of fun designing this piece. It proved to be my most challenging original design yet! But, with this project, I finally learned a decent way to design my knits in the computer in an efficient manner, without buying a special program. That was huge! The Intarsia knitting was not too complicated for me but the scale of the final piece (18"x 22") proved to be quite time consuming. I spent several days cramped up into positions on the couch that took its toll on my back. Oh the sacrifices I make for art!! I turned in my piece yesterday and fingers crossed I make it to the semi-finalist round.

I'm really proud of how this piece ended up and really thankful that the city and the state create these kinds of initiatives to help support NC artists. I love my home state!!

In-progress, mega-knotted knitting. The biggest problem I had working on this was a single-ply yarn that had such open fibers, it wanted to grip and tangle with anything it touched including itself. The absolute trick for doing this kind of color knitting is working with short strands of yarn that are easily pulled through any tangles you might encounter. I would ignore the tangles until I literally could not move the yarn anymore and then sit down and untangle everything. Eek!!

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