More Moleskine Madness from Ravelry

Now that I have had time to process my joy at the return of my Moleskine (pronounced Molskina), I will go into more detail about the Ravelry International Moleskine Exchange Round Robin and where this all started. My friend, Karen asked for more information. Moleskines have been a part of my life for over 10 years and I keep all necessary information in them along with anything else I need or might need in the way of sketches of knitwear, sizes and measurements for the Highland shirts I make, ideas for quilts, a hand-fast ceremony and so much more. Here is a picture of my current Moley, it has a knitting charm attached to the place mark ribbon.




Back in the fall, I signed up for a Journal Exchange on Ravelry. The rules for that were simple. Send in a questionnaire, get matched with a swap partner then put together a wee giftie of a Journal, writing prompt and some other goodies and send off to your swap partner. I got a lovely package back along with a Celtic journal in my exchange which I blogged about last year as well.

Whilst talking amongst ourselves in the journal exchange group, we realized that some of us would like to go further, than just sending a blank book. We also discovered that quite a few of us were fans of the Moleskine brand of notebook. Thus, the International Moleskine Exchange round robin group was born. Many of us immediately signed up to be involved in the long term art project. Some logistics needed to be ironed out, then we got our Moleys, wrote our introductions and off we were to the P.O.

I have just finished one exchange with a small book (3.5 x 5.5) that had no theme other than for each participant to tell me a little about themselves and add art in their particular media. There are 10-12 people in each group. We had some fall out due to life's circumstances and a VERY few Naughty Swappers, but for the most part this has been a very successful round robin. I have always enjoyed working with others on art, be it a quilt, a knitting project, a Headless Corpse or the books. Everyone is creative in some way. One of our members is more of a wordsmith, than an artist (so she claims, but I love her little sketch of a turnip in my book). Words done well is a talent I wish I was better at.

I also have another larger one, loose in the world right now. That one is a 5.5 x 13 inch one with quadrille (graph paper) pages. It does have a theme. It's theme is Ravens and Roses in honour of Poe's and Burns' 200th and 250th natal anniversaries. They are two of my favorite poets, so that theme seemed most appropriate for the round robin that started in 2009. I also blogged about it with pictures of the cover earlier this year.



The sketch is one of the many views of Pike's Peak that I get to enjoy except on those days when the clouds are lower than the mountain. This is the first bit of art in my Creative Collaborating Chicklets Group of IME Moley. We started out as Group C but ran away with it, thus the 3rd group became the 3Cs.





This is the last bit of art in my returned book. I had thought to send it back out in round 3, but my lovely and creative partners left only six blank pages in this wee book. So, I have an idea to finish it up with my thoughts about the IME experience and one or two more sketches and then enjoy it til the end of days.




Heartfelt thank yous again to Frewen, Baby, Loops, DMXOX, SleepyEyes, Kwesty, Grenouille, Celty and Stucky for enlivening my world and sharing part of yours. It has been a joy, privilege and incredible learning experience for me getting to know the marvelously talented, funny, irreverent, curmudgeonly, humorous, GIFTED women from Canada, the UK and the good ole US of A during this art experience. I would do it ALL OVER again in a heartbeat. In fact, I have signed on to do it again in a 3rd round starting next month, LOL.