Monster Al

 

 

This is Monster Al and his friend Little Blue Bear.

 

What seems like a long time ago, I had class named Children Literature. Our main project for the class was to create original children's book. My child draw a picture of a monster, and that drawing was the beginning of Monster Al. I wanted to use drawings, based on the original picture, for the picture book, but I am not as good with paint brushes as I am with knitting needles, therefore I picked yarn and knitting needles and created knitted version of Monster Al. Monster Al needed a friend, and we picked this little blue bear and named him Little Blue Bear. The next step was to create a story. It was the best part. I received A+ for my book and the teacher suggested that I should try to  find a publisher. That part was not fun at all. I have spent months doing that, and in the end nothing came out of it. I do not think it's the story itself, but rather many factors combined together. After taking this semester class The Book I revisited the story of Monster Al, and I decided that I would like to see the story alive, and available for children to read. This blog attracts many people, and some of them have children or grandchildren of their own, or they might know some children. Perhaps they will find the story about Monster Al interesting enough to read and share. 

 

The story about  Monster Al can be found here:

Monster Al story book

 

 

The knitting pattern for Monster Al and his friends will be available.

 

Thank you for visiting.

Unraveling.....

  Once in a while it happens to every knitter.
You work on something and it does not work.
Each and everyone deals with the situation differently.
Not too long ago, actually this past Sunday, I was facing the moment of unraveling. After working on a project for almost three weeks I have realized that the number of stitches and rows don't work together and the project doesn't look the way I have imagined it should look like. This is the downside of designing patterns, instead of following someone else's patterns.
In a way it felt horrible to unravel three weeks of work, yet it also felt liberating.
My child had a great time pulling the stitches and rows apart, while I was winding up the yarn. It took about twenty minutes to turn almost finished project into these two balls of yarn. I looked at them and felt for a moment sad for all the work gone awry, yet relieved and free. Free to start over and hopefully this time the numbers will add up to perfectly match my vision of what the project should look like.

Each ball of yarn weight 12oz/340g and contains approximately 556m/608yards of yarn. It was a a lot of stitches and  rows..........


Thank you for visiting.

Harvey, from the closet

Harvey

Harvey on a trip

In the past few months I have been busy with The Book Project. However, I also managed to create Harvey, from the closet. He has nice and friendly personality. Harvey likes to explore his surroundings. Sometimes he gets in trouble by eating pencils or crayons. He also has great hugging capabilities and offers a lot of empathy if needed. That is why he left on a great adventure and flew across the ocean to visit someone who needed his company. 
Harvey is first of the monsters who are hiding in the closet.

The knitting pattern for Harvey will be available.

Thank you for visiting.

The Book Project - The Beginning

Foreword:

Dear Reader,

 

The idea for this book was born at the beginning of a creative writing class named “The Book”. We received the syllabus and learned that we would attempt to write four chapters of an actual book we might want to publish. I was frantically searching for ideas to write an entire book. I knew that my favorite subject, children’s books would not be long enough to fulfill the required pages for this class. Furthermore, I did not want to write something that would end up on my piles of home work assignments and other useless creative endeavourers that have accumulated in the past years. In a moment of clarity I remembered my husband’s words, “You should write a book about your knitting patterns.” In my research on the subject I came across publishing houses that are actively seeking authors to submit ideas for knitting books and other craft books and I approached my professor with the idea. He was not thrilled at first, citing that I had to write a certain number of pages to fulfill the requirements for the class, but he changed his mind and let me be creative.

 

Creativity is something I really enjoy. It goes back to my childhood when I started to write books, as soon as I learned how to write. I also liked to watch my grandmother when she was knitting, crocheting, and embroidering whenever we would visit. It was about the same time that she began to teach me how to knit, crochet and embroider, and thankfully she was patient enough to continue with the slow and long process of teaching me how to wrap yarn around my fingers and hold the needles at the same time without loosing the stitches, or the yarn, or the needles. I am very grateful to my grandmother and her patience, because she gave me a gift that lasts even after she was gone, and every time I pick up the needles I think of her and the time we had together.

 

Another one of my creative outlets is photography. I did not learn to appreciate photography until my teenage years. I have seen my grandfather, an avid photographer, carrying cameras everywhere and taking pictures of mundane objects, people, and documenting life’s changes around him. Inspired by the men of the past who captured human’s history in their writings; he worked on several chronicles and documented the life around him through photographs. It was his devotion to capture the essence of everyday life and its effect on people that helped me discover the art of photography. Because of him, I learned to carry a camera and capture the fleeting moments in life that pass by too easily and are forgotten in the hassle of our busy lives.

  

I hope to pass the gift of observing and appreciating small things to anyone willing to open their heart and mind.

 

Thank you for visiting.

 

The Book Project

Roses

After several months of hard work the book project is near its completion.
The book class will meet two more times and then the spring  semester is over. I have turned in the fourth chapter of my knitting book and as far as the  requirements for this class are concerned I am done. I will receive my grade for the class and could stop pursuing publishing the book. However, the work on my project will continue. Even though the majority of writing is done, and most of the samples and patterns are done, the process is not over yet.

I am entering the next level. I have to find the right publisher for the book.This step seems to be more intimidating and scary in many respects. How can I convince the editors at a  publishing house that my book is worth their time and money, and should be published? Can my book proposal enchant them, or will I receive the polite, yet dreadful rejection letter? Or should I skip this part of the process and self publish my book? The self publishing route might be faster, yet the aspect of having my book published by a real publishing house seems much more desirable. It would mean so much to me, not just the fact that the book is worth other people's time and money, but more importantly fulfilling my childhood dream of being a writer, even though the subjects and stories have evolved from my first story written in second grade.
I know the market for the book exists. This blog, and my knitting patterns prove it.

Thank you for visiting.

Too many hats to wear.

The oversized eyes that this cute Miranda, the owl has remind me of my own eyes after I finished reading one of the assigned books for my class "The Book". It seems that in today's world authors have to wear too many hats. We need to be the creative force behind the ideas and write. We also need to be a wizard in technology and computers, and create author's platforms and spend hours creating social connections. And most importantly, we need to market ourselves, which to me seems like I should switch my major and get at least an MBA in order to understand all the tricks and marketing rules.

I have a busy life (family to feed, home to clean, work to do, homework for school, friends to see, and other obligations) and I can devote only a certain amount of time to pursue the art of creating something new and interesting, may it be a new knitting toy, or pattern, or new picture, or piece of writing. Yet, the amount of time that I can devote to creativity seems to be cut short, by all the other aspects that I, the author, should pursue as well. It is a hard and difficult decision for every aspiring author, should we try to concentrate on marketing  the things that we have created, or should we rather let the creativity flow free and enjoy the richness and satisfaction that art can bring.

At the moment I am sitting on the fence, I would like to see that my work is valued and appreciated, but it seems to me that the cost is too high. If I have to spend most of the time I have available on the Internet doing marketing and promotions when  will I actually create something new?

The author of the book, strongly suggested that the blogs are registered with all of the blog catalogs, that it should increase traffic and exposure. Yet when I tried to do so, I basically wasted several hours and nothing really happened. Perhaps I should have spent that time creating instead. It would definitively be more rewarding and enjoyable.

I really appreciate all of the readers and visitors of this blog who found it without the blog being registered somewhere. It shows me that I am doing something right, and that people can find it.

Thank you for visiting.

 

Spring......

.. seems to be taking its sweet time to arrive this year.

The same goes for the book I have been working on for the past few months. I did not realize how  time consuming this project will be. I have no regrets and am happy with the progress, though my patience is tested a lot.

Had I chosen a more simple project, like a work of fiction, I might have spend less time on it, but in the end the 80 pages that we have to turn in by the end of the semester would be just 80 pages of material that I would just put on a pile of old  homework assignments and that would be the end of it. This book, I hope, will be different.  When I am finish with it I will have about thirty new knitting patterns that will find an audience one way or another.

Some of the patterns are projects that I had worked on in the past, but did not finish the whole process, and some of the patterns are completely new, never seen before.Though in the knitting world it is hard to say that something has not been around before. I hope that my patterns will offer a fresh look at the world around us, and that they will make you want to pick up knitting needles and start to create your own version of one of my knitting patterns from the collection in the book project.

This particular unfinished project, the knitting pattern for tulip hat, did not make it into the book after all. Though I was thinking about including it in one of the parts of the book. Yet the tulip is in a way an important part, because it was the picture of the yellow tulip I took last spring that started it all.

Thank you for visiting.