2012 Art Journal Project

Here are the two page spreads I have done for the month of January from my personal year long art journal project. I also have done some single pages for the month, but thought I would just share two of my favourites thus far.

To those that know me, YES, I am using all those bits and bobs that have been gathering dust all the while. Except for certain print outs, I am using the enormous collection of found objects, ephemera and such to create the pages for this project.

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.

Dragonfly in Amber Sporran Swap

Over to Ravelry, there is a group or two or three for just about every interest one might possibly have. There are groups for journals round robins, fans of Moleskines, TV shows, quilting, movies, books, authors, designers, steampunk, geeks, knitting needle brands and all matter of other things, even for being cack - handed (a lefty).

One of the many groups I belong to is for the fans of Diana Gabaldon's Outlander series. Here's the link to Diana's Site: http://www.dianagabaldon.com/. Within the group, we are doing read-a-longs and Knit-A-Longs. The book we currently are reading is Dragonfly in Amber, which is the second book in the series. We have been doing the Dragonfly socks as the KAL, please see earlier posts for pictures of the socks (I've made two pair, as I really like them).

It's coals to Newcastle for me to read this book yet again, as I have read the series every year since 1996 when the first one was published. I know that sounds crazy, but I am not alone in doing this. The Ladies of Lallybroch are legion. (The Ladies of Lallybroch is an on-line fan group of Diana Gabaldon. Here's the link to the site: http://www.lallybroch.com). I have 3 sets of the books, a set of autographed hardbacks and 2 sets of PBs. The PBs, I will lend to anyone I can con, I mean, er, introduce to them. Between Katte Beth and I, we finally got to our friend, Darla. She is going to start reading them as well. Woot! Another person to sit and spin and talk about Outlander with.

Well, anyway, to the point of this blog. We do a swap in the group by signing up and getting randomly selected to be spoilt and to spoil. I was given Tiffany to spoil and her sporran is on the way to her. K was chosen to spoil me. The Sporran Swap is a package of themed goodies tailored to the spoilee. In this, I was spoilt to a great extent by Lachlan, aka KRobin... She really outdid herself. She must have poked around on Ravelry and other places to see what I liked and what things are favorites of mine. She did a great job of sleuthing, IMO. Thank you, thank you, thank you, (100 million).

In the great box, I got a Moleskine-like journal with a picture of the Eiffel Tower on the front. There is a package of sliced candied ginger and a recipe to make Ginger Roos (if you have read earlier posts, this will make sense). There was also roving for needle felting including some smooshy Corriedale in a shade of blue that I didn't have. Two beautiful skeins of handspun yarn (they are whispering about a pair of wristlets to me), in some of my fave colours of cream, green and brown. A package of shortbread, cuz we're Scottish after all. Wonderful stitch markers of dragonflies to add to my growing collection of REALLY KEWL JEWELS for knitting. Possibly my most favorite item of all, an amber bead and wood bead with silver charms bookmark (I love, love, love bookmarks!). There is so much more, including dark chocolate, a skein of sock yarn in a colourway very similar to one I was contemplating just this morning. There was also a roll of ribbon, a postcard, a photo of Edinburgh Castle. Jealous (1), as she's been there, also some fun buttons and findings for a bracelet.


Again, a thousand thanks and I have enjoyed this experience to no end and would do it again in a heartbeat. Next up, Voyager and I got the sock pattern picked out already, the yarn to do it in now, as well. Thanks again, K!

One on One Journal Exchange

The package from my journal exchangee arrive yesterday afternoon. It was a tough choice whether to wait to open it 'til this morning or tear into yesterday. Well, I tore into it yesterday as I am not that grown up yet, LOL. Here's a fuzzy picture of the box's contents. CHOCOLATE, YARN, travel related bookmark and an Irish themed journal with Celtic Knot endpapers. Thank You! Susan in Ohio.
I am a huge fan of Celtic knot work. I have done knotwork appliqued quilts, loomed beads, needlepointed them, cross stitched them, appliqued an I-Cord knot on a felted bag, put designs on wearables, stamped them on papers and painted them on boxes and signs, and stitched them onto banners for Scottish and other Celtic related events.

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.