The Daily ATC Challenge: Day 13

Today’s theme for the Daily ATC Challenge is: SNOWFLAKES

They’re beautiful and it’s January, so why not? Both of mine are watercolor on 140lb paper, however the second, darker one also has a bit of faint 6H pencil. Basically, I decided I didn’t like the first one and did the second one late last night so I’d have something better to share this morning!

The faint one was made by doing a blue wash, letting that dry mostly, and then scrubbing out the snowflakes with a damp brush. Additionally, before it was dry, I dripped on some clean water for additional effect.

The darker snowflake was first drawn on sketch paper using circle stencils, a protractor to get my wheels into sixths, and then just a good deal of pencil sketching. When the sketch was complete, I traced the lines I wanted with a very soft pencil, I think an 8B. Then I flipped my sketchpad ATC over onto the watercolor paper blank ATC and went at the back of the sketchpad ATC as though it were a scratch ticket. The design transferred beautifully, though reversed of course which doesn’t matter for a snowflake. Since the paper had slid a bit with my scratching vigor, I traced the bold, dark lines with a 6H pencil to get very faint, but slightly depressed into the paper lines for my outline. Then I went over the entire sheet of watercolor paper gently with a polymer eraser. The eraser took off all the bold, dark pencil from the transfer process but left the pale hard pencil lines intact. At that point I was able to start outlining my snowflake in watercolor with a very fine nail art brush and use a larger brush with clean water to spread the outline away from the snowflake in a wash. I worked my way around the snowflake four times, each time outlining a little less and spreading the outline a bit less. Ultimately, that left me with my white snowflake which has more blue around the center background than the other parts. This would have been a million times more easily completed with Frisket, but since I’m allergic to latex, I try to stay far, far away from that stuff!

The Daily ATC Challenge: Day 12

Day 12 of the daily ATC challenge will be:  SNOWMEN

Here’s what I came up with:

PRANG watercolor on 140lb Artist’s Loft watercolor paper

Knitting in an Igloo

I’ve always wanted to build an igloo. This is particularly funny because I do not like the cold, can’t lift much, and do not like getting wet out in the snow. I’ve also never had enough snow, but I got lucky this past Thursday!

I went to a knit group that meets in Black Forest, about 40 minutes from where I live now and only about 5 minutes from where I’ll be living eventually. I had a fine time with the ladies at knit group but just wasn’t done when group was over. I decided to drive by my property to just give it a hug since I was in such a good mood. Plus, I wanted to see how much snow there was. My friend in Black Forest said they’d had 20 inches earlier in the week when we’d only gotten a light dusting in the Springs.

When I got to my property, this is what I saw:

I figured I’d shovel the driveway since I needed experience shoveling a gravel driveway. I got about two feet of the driveway shoveled before I decided to play in the snow instead because shoveling gravel is hard to do and not as fun as shoveling normally is. I walked over toward my little tree in the front yard and fell past my knees into a ditch that I forgot was there. I was in awe of how much snow I had to play with…and a little frustrated that I was wearing thin sneakers instead of snow boots!

The snow was pretty powdery, but with my mini snow shovel, emergency trunk gloves, and a little bit of melting the snow with my breath and patting it down as it iced back up, I made this:

It was pretty small because I only have so much energy and strength per day. It’s still bigger and better than the last igloo I made  back in March 2010. I couldn’t fit in the old igloo which was sad, but I just didn’t have enough snow to make it bigger. It was much better construction snow though, partially iced up from the wind blowing over it and days in the sun. I’d actually cut it into blocks with the sides of my hands. Scribbles, my Miniature Schnauzer/Pyrenean Shepherd mix, fit inside though. This is one of my favorite photos of her as she actually looks more like a wild dog than a timid toy size dog.

Anyhow, I really wanted to get inside this newer igloo. I went back to the car to get a woven blanket to keep my bum dry and my knitting because really, how many people can say they’ve knit inside an igloo?

Somehow in my head, I’d envisioned crawling inside the igloo, turning around, and sitting down with my feet sticking out the door. When I actually bent down to do this, there was just no way. I couldn’t even kneel down and twist into it. I’d made the door too small on my little pod of an igloo. Ultimately, I snugged up the hood on my hoodie (I didn’t even have a jacket with me that day), squatted down in front of the igloo, and fell backward into it landing on my butt. Of course the force of coming down and back like that kept me rocking backward. My head and shoulders hit the back of the igloo with a thunk. I closed my eyes and mouth expecting to be flat on my back buried in the snow of a failed igloo. Amazingly enough, the igloo held! When I opened my eyes, I was leaning against the back wall of the igloo with my feet sticking out the door and a slight wet spot on the side of my leg where my hips were too wide to fit through the narrow doorway of the igloo without rubbing. I was thrilled. Bucket list kinds of thrilled.

The last time I felt the bucket list kind of thrilled was when guy pal took my brother and I to the Arizona Science Center and we all took turns on the bed of nails. There is nothing better for an itchy back than wiggling on a bed of nails.

With a little wiggling in the igloo, I ended up feeling quite comfortable there too. It was so much warmer than I’d expected it to be! Even though my feet stuck out, I’d constructed the igloo against the wind, so my feet, even with wet socks stayed warm enough for me to be comfortable. Originally, I’d planned to only knit one round, 81 stitches, on my Mini Mochi socks before heading back to the car and getting on with my errands. It was so comfy and quiet inside my well insulated and sound proofed igloo that I knit in there for about an hour. It was so warm inside that my bare hands didn’t even get cold!

Eventually, I had to pack up and get on with my errands, but I kept smiling like that for the rest of the day. Igloos are cool. Spending a couple hours outside building an igloo and knitting on a warm pair of wool socks makes me feel quite sure of my survival skills for when I’m in the frozen north hiding from zombies. I should probably put my igloo and wool sock making skills on my dating site profile. Surely men want a woman who can hold her own in the zombie apocalypse.