Monet and Me

I like Art. Who doesn't? I love going around art galleries on holidays and viewing the famous artist of the cities we are in. Of course that means I am always skimming the surface of the art world, Malaga is Picasso, Vienna is Klimt and France is Monet. In fact everywhere is Monet. I have seen Monet exhibitions in Paris, New York and London. I was such a lightweight, I thought artists painted one painting. I knew they did lots of sketches and scribbles on the back of an envelope, but I was surprised to find they actually did lots of variations of the one painting. I mean, there are dozens of Monet's Waterlilies. Not just the really famous one, and there is a little known early version hanging in my spare bedroom. This is a little known version. At this stage in his life Monet was playing about with fabric paints and salt and machine embroidery.

Excuse the rather bad photo. The quilt holder upper has been unwell, and I didn't want to disturb him. So, I climbed on a chair, then climbed on my daughter's school desk to lift down the picture to photo. No, this did not end well. Apparently part of rest and recuperation does not include running down the hall on hearing a crash bang wallop. I survived, the chair survived, the desk mostly survived minus one shelf it didn't really need anyway.

And the reason for all this destruction? I wanted to take a photo. Well, yes. I was knitting and joining in with the Impressionist mystery knit a long shawl by Helen Stewart of Curious Handmade.

Your colour choices could be inspired by your favourite impressionist painting. These were my first colour choices.  None of these were from stash, I went to a local yarn shop to buy them.

Then I pondered this and decided the green was too similar to my #what the fade shawl.

The fleck was very similar too. There was a real purple shimmer from this fleck though, so I thought I would go with the purple  tones. I had a mid purple bought from Sylvantiger yarns as part of the flower power fund for Marie Curie. I dithered as to whether or not the purples were too close in tone but went with them. I was glad I did, but more about that later.

It is only since knitting the shawl I noticed how the purple shades are all similar in the garden and they blend together ok!

The shawl was released over 4 clues, and clue 2 was well underway by the time I joined in.

 I knitted like a knitting frenzy and actually finished all 4 clues on schedule. It ended up with a mahoosive 584 stitches so there was a lot of knitting. There was however no brioche so it went fairly quickly.

I loved knitting this. I loved the loose knit of the 4 ply yarn on a double knitting needle. I loved the texture of the garter stitch and the leaf motif counterbalanced with the more delicate lace sections. I still felt the purples were too similar as I knitted, but now it is finished I am happy. I can actually see myself knitting this again. I fancy it in blues sometime.

The ends are all sewn in but I still have to block this. I wouldn't bother, except I think the edge border tension would be improved after blocking. Aren't I the proper knitter now! When it is blocked and dried I will post another photo.

And there was one last great thing about this shawl.  I entered it into the Flower Power Fund spring knit a long, and I won! I won a skein of Norah George sock yarn and a fantastic project bag by Sussexyorkie. Didn't I say last post I needed more project bags. I will let you see these when they arrive.

And last week, I won a skein of my choice from Ellie from crafthousemagic for knitting her valentine's socks. I must say, the gingerbread and green tea was lovely,  I must buy some.

 

Helen x