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.

Moleskine Happiness

Today after a eight month sojourn, my 3.5 x 5.5 inch Moleskine returned. I am overjoyed and overwhelmed at the talent, humour and thought that came home with it.


Here below is my very first impression...

Oh my, everyone! My Chicklet Moley is perfectly perfect in every way. I type this with tears running down my face.

I love the funny bits, the serious bits, the open heart bits, the art bits, my turnips with tatties, Grenoiulle, the knowing more about each of you, the pirate bag made by Kimi in my favorite shade of green that my Moleys will live in, I’m thinking. The wee blue bear (who from, BTW?), the wee quilt sketch from our Gina, the Celtic stickers from Heather, the drawings, yes, even yours, Frewen and someday we’ll share a glass of yer hand crafted wine together. The bit of music from Anna, Lini was feeling Japanese, somebody actually found and use E.A. Poe stamps and passed them along to me. The menus and wee watercolours from Deborah, and no, Hope it isn’t too cute.

Ravelry Journal Swap and Moleskine Round Robin

So, I belong to Ravelry.com, which is an on-line knitting and crochet community. It's suppose to be about knitting and/or crocheting, right?


First off, Ravelry has a group or two or three for EVERYTHING. I saw that there was a one-on-one journal exchange happening. You first fill out a brief questionnaire, then you get matched up with someone else who signed up for the swap as well. Then after some exchanges to get further details about your swap partner, you then send a journal with, in this swap, a writing prompt and a wee giftie. Susan, my swappee is from the far reaches of the NorthCentral Mid-West and loves pink and blue. She is WAY younger than me, so I got her a bubblegum pink journal with book binding and lined pages, as that's her style of journals (being cack-handed, I prefer spiral bounds). Then I made a Superperson emblem with flowers and vines PINK bag with pink and black ribbon ties for it along with a matching pink project bag that I filled with two pinks and one blue ball of wool roving and the new Clover needle felting pen as her giftie. Well, apparently I chose wisely as she indeed loves pink, but she also loves Supergirl and liked the fabric I chose for her gift. She has also has never tried needle felting, but was interested in it and now she has the start of her supplies if she finds she likes it as much as I have discovered I do. As always, in haste, I left something out of Susan's package, so here is what I wrote to her about that. It might be of use to someone out there.


I wrote to Susan:
I do hope you enjoy the needle felting, I am a huge fan of it as I am sure you can tell from my blog. The only thing I didn’t send along, which I discovered too late was a large CHEAP sponge, like you get from the Dollar Store for a working surface. You can get the brush mats at JoAnn’s, Hancocks, Michael’s, etc., but if you’re not sure if you are going to like the process or only going to try it a few times, I would use a substitute and the cheapy sponge works nearly as well for a needling surface. Use a cutting mat under a sponge, tho, so you don’t mar your table and/or break your needles, ask me how I know, LOL… Above all, have fun and oh, by the way, cookie cutters make great templates for designs if you aren’t comfy with free-handing it… If you do get hooked or needled, as the case may be, many LYSs will sell dyed wool roving fiber by the oz. and some of the artier stores may have dyed silk tops and other kewl stuff that can be needle felted. The black bag with the oak leaves is needled from both wool and silk fibers. Have fun and if you do have any questions, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with me. (See post of 11/24/08 for picture.)


Then there is Group C of the International Moleskine Exchange Group aka the Fabulous Creative Collaborating Chicklets. Wherein, I have met an amazing group of women and they know who they are, who if anything, are funnier, smarter and more clever than me. There are 10 of us in the group, but 6 of us appear to either have the most time to waste or the smartest mouths so I can thank the Gods and Goddesses that most of my group share at least some of my warped sensibilities about the world and Martha Stewart and are willing to talk about free ranging chickens, vegan marshmallows, Moleskines, art and what ever else happens to strike our fancy. Oh, sometimes we even talk about fiber, Frewen is blogging about felting boots, Baby Chicklet about prezzies made of fibers and I just posted about my version of Jayne Cobb's hat from Firefly and what my daughter's getting for Christmas.

So, you might ask, what is a Moleskine? The Moleskine is a notebook that can be quadrille (graph), unlined, lined, watercolour, thick or thin paper filled generally black covered with an elastic band to hold it all together with an inside back cover pocket for stuff that was made famous by the likes of Hemingway, Picasso and various other creative people and a staple in my purse for 5 iterations or about 5 years. It comes in various sizes and now apparently in various colours. We are doing a round robin, which means that currently my Moleskine is in Essex, England UK, with Lini, the Happy Hooker. We each did intro pages wherein we let the women who were going to work on our Moleskine know if we wanted a theme, hated something, had no opinion, yadda, yadda, yadda, before sending them off and then we'll each do 2 or more pages in each of the 10 other books in the exchange before ours returns to home.