Almost There

This was supposed to be shading. But it's not the picture I was planning to take. I was having a bad day and I had a migraine. So it's really more "Current Mood: Existential Crisis Edition"

A pair. Also not the picture I meant to take. Also check out how perfect that first rainbow was and then in true Cheri fashion, the second one is the sloppiest thing that looks like an experiement. Oh well. 

One more to go!

Weird.

The weird thing is that I've been getting more sleep this week and feeling a little more productive...while simultaneously losing track of all kinds of other things.

Change 

Animal

Technology

Outside

Motion

Sloth

I knew I was going to use The Twisted Crocheter's Baby Finger Sloth pattern from the moment I saw "sloth" as one of the prompts for this art challenge. But when it came down to time to crochet it, I was paralyzed with weighty decisions such as "what color should I make it?" And then I got caught up on wanting to get the facial features just right. I had to pose it where you can't see the face because it's kind of a mess.

This project should not have taken more than 2-3 hours to be honest. Maybe less. Instead it took all day and I barely got the picture taken before I was completely out of light. It's the kind of light I wanted for the Night Owl picture. Oh well. It's done now. I win.

Flowers

Dance and Bonus: On This Day

I had this idea that I would find a way to make these fairies fly. Because if fairies don't dance in the air, are they even fairies? But my ambition is undermined by my lack of actual skill. Then Taryn suggested a tutu. I found some tulle but by then I didn't have time to make two, so Lark got to attempt to fly on her own. It was way too windy for this nonsense though.

2010

On This Day, 2010. We had traveled back to Maryland from our Easter visit in Kansas. And the following delightful exchange took place.

sound bite from the return journey.
Tim ~ WHAT THE HECK TRUCK!?!?!?!
Taryn ~ What the heck?
Caelie (in her super cheerful voice) ~ Heck! Heck! Heck! Heck! Heck!

Sparkle and Multiple

Sparkle. It's sooooooo sparkly in real life, and possibly more sparkly in black and white than it is in color. But I once again reference my lack of photography skills. My drying creek boots make a cameo in the background.

Multiple. I had already created multiple fairies and have no safety eyes for making more. So then I made multiple hangers out of paper clips to display their multiple options for outfits for the day. I even got my  (holy moly) almost 14 year old to play fairies with me, so you could say there were multiple artists at work....

Water

Where else would I go for the prompt "water"? I realized in retrospect that I could have crocheted mermaid tails. So that's a bit of a missed opportunity. Fairies dressed as mermaids. On the other hand, this month isn't over yet....

Sweet

Psalm 119:103 "How sweet Your words taste to me; they are sweeter than honey."

Livin On a Prayer

This isn't the picture I thought I was going to take to represent "Glow" but I really want to know what that toad is thinking because he looks like he's got not one, but two really bright ideas....

Two More Art Challenge Photos

Music

Remember that movie Big? I wish I could find a copy of it somewhere. I like it when the wind blows enough to move their hair but not enough to knock them over.

Cheers

There is a lot wrong with this "cheers" photo. Here's my big photography technique. Take lots of pictures from various angles then go inside and look at them on a computer screen and see if any of them aren't blurry. Sometimes one will just jump out at me and I know it's the right one. There's so much I don't like about this one, but it's the one. I can't help it. The thing that bothers me is not knowing why it's the right one. I have this idea that if I could figure out why I could take better pictures on purpose. And I've had several people try to explain things to me, it just doesn't stick. Oh well. Maybe that's just my perfectionism talking...

Happy Easter?

April 11: Entertainment

Tic Tac Toe had to be abandoned after April couldn't win a single match, but sadly she didn't fare much better at connect 4.

April 12: Pattern

The pattern is a little more obvious when Lark and April are together, but at some point I let go of the literal pattern and got more obsessed with the more abstract patterns. My own patterns of longing for things I don't have and my own patterns of difficulty in processing holidays. I wish I could have gotten Lark's reflection in the window for added drama, but as it stands I think her loneliness is palpable.

Night Owl

Happy National Unicorn Day!

Last year I had been toying around with some funny ideas and trying to figure out how to articulate them which resulted in writing this silly thing. I do manage to keep myself entertained. But I didn't know that there was such a thing as "National Unicorn Day" until I had already written it and went to share it on Facebook a day late:

April 10, 2019

Apparently yesterday was National Unicorn Day, so Happy Belated National Unicorn Day!

Did you know that unicorns are in the Bible? For real, check it out. Psalm 22:21 "Save me from the lion's mouth; for Thou has heard me from the horns of the unicorns." KJV

King James Version.

KJV uses the word "unicorn" 9 times, but I'm going to stick to this one instance for now.

A couple of things stand out to me about this verse. 1) It's totally hilarious to think about unicorns in the Bible. 2) We can literally make the Bible say ANY thing we want it to say if we aren't careful. 3) It's mega important to consider the viewpoints of others.

Let's consider what the word "unicorn" means to King James' translators. According to my extensive research (aka 5 minutes on Google), they probably meant a type of rhinoceros that only has one horn.

How about David (we assume) when he wrote this verse down? Some people think he was talking about an oryx. At first glance, the oryx seems like a gentle herd animal but apparently they're known to stab lions to death. I don't know about you, but I certainly want to believe in a God that not only saves me from lions but also from the things that can kill lions.

You're probably wondering "Cheri, what's the point of all this?" And here it comes. Mythical creature, large tank-like rhino, dainty little lion-stabber, "wild-oxen", bull, buffalo, or whatever other animal your translation says there, I don't think that matters.

What matters is that we have a God Who saves, rescues, delivers, snatches us away from danger. Who regards our lowliness but still hears us and answers us in our distress. Isn't that amazing?

So we need to keep talking to Him, and reading His Word, and trying to do what He tells us to do because He's way cooler than a unicorn*.

*modern definition

Art Challenge Catch-Up

I did post these on social media "on time" but in terms of blogging to myself...well...here I am.

April 6: Create

Yeah, those are toothpicks with little beads on the ends. And I knitted a tiny bit of knitting for April to appear to be knitting. So that was fun.

April 7: Pastel

When I first think of "pastel" I think of soft colors. Like sweetarts candy. These fairies were already pastel in that sense. But it turns out if you go try to buy art supplies pastels are very intense. So I thought "why not both?" And then I took this still un-named fairy to get her boots muddy in a little creek of her own.

April 8: Bloom

I really meant to get outside before it was completely dark and just get a mildly dark photo of the fairies tucked in for the night in their lily pad beds with their water lily blankets.....it was just too big of an idea for the time frame and took too long to crochet. Plus I didn't work diligently, I had other things to do.

April 9: Early Bird

I decided that the Early Bird gets the gummy worm and brings it to share with April. I considered letting April be the one that sleeps in because being yellow shouldn't automatically mean she's an early riser....but it turns out I identify more with this purple fairy (probably why I can't think of a name for her) and we're not early birds.

Distance

This one is less crochet-y in the sense that there is nothing new in it. From an outsider's perspective, you could say that I took my fairies to the creek to play with them. Because I totally did.

I thought April was better in the background and having the-still-unnamed purple fairy in the front made a sadder tone...but when I asked my two consultants which picture was best they both independently picked April. But this is my blog so I voted to share more than one picture, and I won.

Doesn't she just look so forlorn? Maybe she's sad about social distancing or maybe she's sad that she's not got a name yet.

Current Mood

Challenge Days 2 and 3

I guess I decided to keep with the Art Challenge for a couple more days at least. The second prompt was Historical Figure so I dressed up my fairy in a Bob Ross costume. I used Laura Tegg's trousers pattern but had to heavily modify the dress bodice to come up with the shirt. For the wig and beard, I read a technique from a Ragdoll Hagrid pattern...but not super closely, and then used the stitch counts from the Little Weebee wig but ultimately had to make up my own way of getting it all to work. It turns out Laura Tegg sells a curly wig pattern and I wonder if it's the same. Anyway, I watched a youtube video on making a beard that can attach to any hat but when they said "any" they really meant only human sizes so I had to make that up too.

The palette was kind of fun, I found a picture of Bob Ross' custom designed palette and traced it on paper. Then I used that to cut out the shape from an empty lunch meat container. The paintbrush is just a regular clean brush that I stabbed through the fairy's arm. Not all the pictures were from the correct angle...

Today's prompt was Spring. I had wanted to make matching dresses for both the first fairy and her new friend, but I had a hard time getting my vision to come into reality. That sounds so dramatic. Anyway. This is Laura Tegg's Spring Time Dress. 

I think this fairy's name is April. For many reasons. This is an art challenge in April. The challenge is from our parks and rec department and there's a character on the Parks and Recreation show named April. I think yellow is more April-y than purple. Still haven't named the first fairy. I had wanted her braid to be long enough to wrap around her head, but I did a bad job of measuring, so it was too short then I trimmed it even shorter. 

I was pretty excited to be able to find a little bit of ice left from last night's storm to be able to include in the photo. My big plan for tomorrow's prompt involves the creek though so hopefully it's warm enough to get my feet muddy.

No Joke

My local Parks and Recreation posted an art challenge for the month of April which is open to all art mediums. The first graphic they posted listed today's prompt as "Fairy Tail" which I first thought was a typo and then thought was an April Fool's Day joke. It didn't matter though because my brain was already at work designing a Fairy Tail for me to crochet.

I started with the Little WeeBee Doll pattern from Laura Tegg. I just realized I didn't take a picture with the hat off to show off her little hairdo. The pattern includes a wig cap and then I added braids. The dress is also one of Laura Tegg's patterns specifically for Little WeeBee. I had to modify it to fit around the wings and I think I added an extra row and skipped a step at the end. I never know at what point a pattern becomes my own. The tail is attached to the back of the dress.

I looked at a lot of patterns for wings and my favorite comes from a pattern for Swallow-Tailed Butterflies. I left off some of the features that make it more butterfly-y....like the body and the swallow tail part. The hat is really just a generic hat pattern. Several years ago the cool thing was to make hats with animal features on them, so that's something I don't really need a pattern for anymore.

This might be my favorite of the pictures I took today but my dress got in the way because it was super windy out at the creek. So here's my interpretation of a "Fairy Tail". I should give her a name, but I'm drawing a blank. I don't know if I'll try to do something for every day of this challenge. We'll see.