"A simple combination of sheer luck and more talented friends"

I am busy working on a really exciting but still top secret project....so, because I can't talk about what I'm doing, I figured that now is a perfect time to talk about what all my talented friends are doing! I often marvel at how talented my friends are and rather than keeping them all to myself, I thought I should share so here goes... 

Benjamin Cooney: Comic dude, Illustrator, Southpaw, Superstitious

Ben writes and draws comics and is an awesome illustrator.His designs have featured on skateboards and t-shirts that have been sold around the world. He is one talented dude!

This is one of my favourite pieces by Ben, see lots more on his website.

This is another fave and his most recent piece, printed in blue risograph, the detail in this is amazing. This along with other paper based treats can be found in his shop.


Seleena Laverne Daye : Artist, Craftster, Zinester & Dancer Extraordinaire!!!

Seleena is a super-stitcher, her weapons of choice are needle, thread and felt, she creates a whole world of wonders from felt, check out her website for more info and lots more pictures!  

Alison Erika Forde: painter extraordinare, lover of bears, curios and all things wooden.

Alison's world is full of paintings, illustrations and collages of all sorts of anxiety stricken characters often awaiting impending peril in their playful scenarios.  

This is one of my favourite paintings by her, see lots more on her website.

Also, Alison has recently opened a little online shop where you can buy all sorts of treats, like these postacrds...

  

Nickie: Photographer, BLACK AND WHITE TV WITH THE SOUND TURNED LOW.

Nickie is a super talented photographer, working solely in black and white Nickie's photography has a classic feel to it, she has a natural skill of capturing people's personalities in her photographs. She has snapped many a famous face...here's a couple 

Amanda Palmer

Diego Luna

To see more of Nickie's photography and to contact her, go here, there are loads more amazing photos!

I hope you have enjoyed the creativity of my friends as much as I do.

Kandy x

MANIC Monday....

For a whole year, I worked full time! I know this is totally normal for a lot of people, but it meant a completely different routine and a big step back from Knit and Destroy for the whole year, which was hard.

Living in chesterfield and travelling to Manchester for work (plus roller derby 1-2 evenings a week) meant very little time at home. I'm not the tidiest person at the best of times, but when I'm only swinging by home in the week, eating, sleeping and having a bit of sofa time was SO much more important than tidying! The feeling of leaving the house on a Monday morning with barely more organisation than there was at the end of the previous week wasn't good.

The year went quickly and I got to do things at work that I wouldn't have being part time, and now, finally, I have my Mondays back! My studio is almost back to an acceptable workspace, and I have been spending my time at home working on my still secret (sorry) Knit and Destroy project. I feel extremely lucky to have my Mondays and Tuesdays back, and have lots of making that I can't wait to get my teeth into! Also, I now have time to do such things as organise my coloured knitting needles... 

...and putting my 2 roller derby triumphs on the wall. 

It might seem a bit showy or like 'something parents might do for their kids', but pre-roller derby I was NEVER the person who got the award for anything so I'm super-proud of them!

I think what I am saying is....I'm happy that my Mondays are no longer Manic.

Wanda-land

In my office, the wall behind me is decorated with postcards, I was just adding to it with a postcard from my recent holiday, when the cat-lady postcard caught my attention. I realised that I had bought the postcard (can't remember when/where) stuck it up and not looked up the artist, so, because it's lunchtime o'clock, I thought I would use the powers of Google to find out more...

The artist in question is a Photographer, her name is Wanda Wulz, this is the postcard I have which seems to be one of her best known pieces.

There isn't much information about Wanda out there, apart from that she had a sister called Marion and was part of the Futurist movement in the 1930s. That'll do for me though, i'm not really into finding out loads of information because I won't remember it anyway, it's the pictures I'm interested in...and I particulary like these two.

I thought I should share this one too, although it isn't one of Wanda's photos, it was taken by her father Carlo. I love the outfit here and the photograph has a playful feel that exists in Wanda's photographs. 

Hope you have enjoyed loking at the photos, and maybe even got a little inspired from them?! I know I have.

Kandy

Joan - and the story of the red knitted dress

This morning on the train I was knitting, as usual, and sat in the seats near the luggage rack, these ones are good cos they're generally never reserved. At Sheffield an elderly lady sat down next to me, and as she sat gave me a kind smile. I took out my left headphone in case she wanted to chat to me, I do love to chat, especially with old ladies! I could feel her eyes on my knitting as I sat purling in my wierd awkward hand knitting style. I gave her a smile and she said "it's good to see someone knitting, you don't see anyone knitting these days"...and that was it, we chatted non stop for the next hour and Joan had a story about a red dress that I just had to share.


When she was 16, Joan got her first job, which she had to travel by train to get to. She was doing a lot of travelling and wanted something to do with this time so decided to knit herself a dress. It took a long time to finish but when she did it was lovely, her favourite thing to wear, warm, cosy and perfectly fitted. I imagine Joan and her dress looked something like this...

Joan kept the dress for years, but everytime she washed it, the dress got a bit longer, but it was ok, she just unravelled a bit from the bottom and kept on wearing it. When she was married (12 years later) after a wash, Joan hung the dress to dry by the fireside and to her dismay, the skirt of the dress got singed beyond repair. But Joan being the resourceful lady that she is, removed the scorched part, and unravelled the dress until it was the length of a jumper, giving this hand knitted item a good few more years as a jumper!


Joan had 2 children, and when they were both young, Joan wanted to make them a christmas stocking each. Not having the money to buy any new fabric or yarn, she decided to use the now rather old jumper and fashioned 2 red christmas stockings out of it that the children went on to use unitl "father christmas stopped coming". The stockings were given to charity and that was the end of the red knitted dress.


Joan also told me about how her grandmother hand knitted socks for her 10 children and when they had been darned so much they couldn't be darned any more, the feet were cut off and new feet knitted on. Her Grandmother continued to knit socks and replace the feet in them for Joan's father into his adult life. Joan's father didn't wear other socks, because they just "weren't right".


While telling these stories, Joan also showed me a new way to hold my yarn to make my knitting easier and eventually quicker. And finally, just before the journey ended at Manchester Picdilly, we were talking about musicals, I mentioned Calamity Jane, and of course Joan loves Calamity Jane, but not only does she love it, it was the film that she watched on her first ever date.

                 

If you haven't seen Calamity Jane, watch it. And if you can't knit, crochet or sew, you should seriously consider learning. In this era of fast, throwaway fashion we all need to take a leaf out of Joan's book, make things last, share skills and be awesome all the way into old age!

Pastel Passion

I love a good pastel colour palette and thanks to Barry M's amazing range of pastel shades I have been rocking pastel nails for the past few weeks,

These aren't my nails, I'm not that neat! Pastels are often reffered to as 'ice cream colours' but here it's the cones that are amazing colours rather than the ice cream itself, shame they don't sell them in my local shop...

And of course, I can't write a blog about pastels without mentioning the most visually appealing french treat, the macaron!
Last but not least in the edible pastels department,I've been eating these, with it being Easter weekend'n'all, it would be rude not to, right?!

The thing that actually sparked my writing of this blog is the below image. I discovered these beautiful pastel scenes in the clips of the 'hand coloured' film ' A trip to the Moon' (Le voyage dans la lune) in the film Hugo which I can highly reccommend!

I am completely taken by these film clips and will definitly hunting down more films by Georges Melies and hand tinted film in general. I love the imagination in the story and how everything was real sets and people in costume. If you like what you see you might also like to watch this clip....

Yayoi Kusama - getting excited

Right now I'm at home, on the verge of delving into a good few hours of work that involves reading a book with NO pictures in it....I know, perish the thought. But, this isn't about doing the boring work, this is about what I'm looking forward to and getting excited about that gets me throught the boring work!

This is about Yayoi Kusama and how I'm ridiculously excited about the possibility of seeing her work in real life at the end of this month! I don't know much about her, and I'm not going to pretend I do, what I do know is this - she's Japanese, she's been making art that very much pleases my eyes since the 60s,

She is now in her 80s and is still an active artist. I have looked at pictures of her work a lot but never thought there would be an opportinity to see it in real life!

Yayoi's work is on exhibit at the Tate until June, I am going at the end of the month and will do a proper blog about this awesome lady when I've been to the exhibition.

Getting organiz-ized...

Making the most of working from home by getting my spaces in order....

Firstly the closet, I am LUCKY to have a teeny room to call my closet, now all neat and tidy...

And in the studio, the good news is the floor is now visible and I'm feeling inspired! I gave the pin-board a spring clean unearthing some of my favourite pictures and adding some new ones.

Also, I re-homed these blue animal paintings from a local charity shop....

They have been inspiring me as has the work of Mark Ryden, these will remain as sketches/ideas in my head until I get back to creating in the Summer when I go back part-time!