Flower Course, first week's results

 Here's a little spinning tip I didn't have images for in the previous post about spinning. I think it's worth the price of the course.

If you slide your finished yarn through the holes of your knitting needle gauge until you get a reasonably snug fit, you can find the range of needles that will work for that project. So obvious and yet.....

I have begun the "Crazy Flowers" course with Carla Sonheim and am I ever out of my depth.

http://www.carlasonheim.com/

I can do the first lesson, sort of. I threw out the first attempt at the first lesson because it was so hopeless. Carla's lessons concentrate on layering transparent colours, adding shading and little bits of dots and stripes and floaty things and shazam, a cool looking flower. Hmph.

Here's what I've managed to do so far. I've done day two and three over a couple of times. I guess that's why it's a four week course, by the end of the fourth week, I should like something I've done.

Ten flowers with pencil crayons, markers and some water colours to infill the big flowers.

After shading, more pencil crayons and some white pencil crayon to dull out the backgrounds. Carla used white ink, but I was too scared to wreck the whole thing. The white pencil crayon seemed the cowardly thing to do.

 Pencil crayons layered over top of each other, then water colour to mess things up and desperate attempts at ornament.

I see some small moments of success here and there. Forgot to worry about page composition, but then really, too much at once is too much.

Eventually, I just tried to erase the whole things with grey watercolour. The good thing about a mistake is that there is always the other side of the paper that can be used.  When I took Karen Ruane's on line courses, I already knew how to stitch. This course is wiping the smug look off my face. That's OK, it is still winter and I'm wearing a scarf, so no one can see my look of terror. I am off to do something with a thick layer of gesso (white gunky stuff).