I Felt That

Social Media page of Catrina Solei Fiber Art. You can buy prints of my art at https://fineartamerica.com/profiles/catrina-solei You can tip me at https://ko-fi.com/catrinasoleifiberarts

[catrinasoleifiberart]

Sheep

I've been working on a commission this month.

[catrinasoleifiberart]

Distraction 3: Friends and Family

About a year ago, I took a trip to visit my old group of friends, the choir I had recently moved away from. I made some crochet items as gifts to the people generously letting me stay with them at varying steps - three sets of coasters and three scarves all told. I didn't take pictures of them, but I did take pictures of the next set of projects. The gifts for my family.

There's a garden bag for my mom made out of estate yarn. The pattern is free from Lily's Sugar and Cream. There's the succulent that turns into a set of coasters for my brother's house-warming gift. The succulent is from Brunatically, but I used a different pot base. The blue runner was supposed to be a rug for the library in my house, but I spent so long on it that there's a rug in that room now, and I'm just using this piece as decoration instead. The pattern is by Jessie Zhao, who almost exclusively posts rug tutorials, but I'll be damned if they aren't the most beautiful rugs you've ever seen.

And lastly, having pride of place, is the Coca-Cola wheelchair pillow for my dad. No pattern - it's intarsia crochet and I made the blocking myself. However, I included more than that in the picture so I could brag about what an excellent quilter my mother is. That's right - she made that.

[catrinasoleifiberart]

Distraction 2.D: The Final Product

After six months, I finished it just in time for last year's pride. Here I am showing it off with a Maya Kern skirt.

[catrinasoleifiberart]

Distraction 2.C: The First Draft

I had to check myself repeatedly to see how this was coming along. I had done math, but math doesn't always hold up to the mystic power of fiber arts.

In this specific case, I realized only after crocheting an entire half that because I designed the neck to be fairly wide, I made the sleeves way, way too long.

I had to unpick most of it, which resulted in a horribly tangled mess since that's several hundred yards of fine 8-ply cotton in there.

[catrinasoleifiberart]

Distraction 2.b: The Prototype

I'll be honest, the reason I split my sweater post into a series is because I designed the prototype to fit on my cat.

The biggest worry for me was going to be if the neck line actually worked the way I wanted it to. But that meant having someone model it for me - looking at it flat was just not going to give me an accurate picture of how it would lay. Sooooo.....

That's right, there's my handsome prince. He doesn't look like he minds being stuffed into this sweater, and in fact he mostly doesn't. My cat is 13 years old and lets me treat him like a rag doll.

[catrinasoleifiberart]

Distraction Two: The Sweater Design

Do you all remember that fun blue shawl I was making? Of course not, that was a million years ago.

That one. I did eventually finish it by the way.

Yes, I'm going to be weird about posting my face to the internet. Anyway, this post isn't about the shawl. It's about the fucking sweater.

I loved that yarn so much I bought some in a rainbow gradient. And then I couldn't for the life of me find a gradient pattern I liked where it worked from one side to the other vertically (eventually, I would talk to another fiber artist and realize I'm stupid, but in fairness, the solution of splitting your yarn and working the second half backwards *does* run the risk of not meeting perfectly in the middle).

Anyway, long story short, I spent the next six months spending every waking moment on this horrid thing (affectionate). I've got a lot of in progress pictures, so I'll be splitting these up into the design, the prototype, the first draft, and the final project.

Anyway, these are my initial sketches. I have a draft of the design written up at this point, but I haven't typed it up yet. I'm planning on making two more in different sizes before I release this onto the unsuspecting world.

[catrinasoleifiberart]

A story in three parts

[catrinasoleifiberart]

Distraction One: The Holidays

Like most fiber artists, I get a little too excited to gift people my creations for the holidays. Especially now that I know what I'm doing. And, because this was my first proper holiday in a new house, I decided to go big. Very little of it was actually created projects, but of the created projects I made, they were all crochet. The matching hat and scarf is from my favorite pattern maker Crystal, and the red and brown scarf is a familiar standby of mine that I learned from Brittany at B.Hooked crochet.

[catrinasoleifiberart]

Day One... Again

We're back, baby. It's spring, I'm on anti-depressants, and we're gonna finish this monster. We've got one more suit of numbered cards, and then it's time to actually put shapes onto these things. Last up is the suit of swords.

This took like... an hour. This triptych came together super fast. It's exactly the kind of sketchy, out of focus background I was going for, it evokes the appropriate element, while still being recognizably a mountain with a field underneath.

Swords is the element of air. It's cerebral, it's balance, it's change. So it was important for me, and for the symbolism of this deck, to represent agriculture.

Tilled land is still nature. We have a bad habit, as humans, to treat the things we do outside of nature. To treat cities as something other than a human's created natural habitat. But that's not the case. Humans are mammals, and the soil we till is still natural soil, even if we are applying a human touch to it. It is no less natural than a beehive or an anthill. So the suit of swords brings man back into the conversation, with corn and pumpkin and wheat.

[catrinasoleifiberart]

Day... anyway that's not important

Look... I knew this was going to happen. You knew this was going to happen. The whole point of giving myself a deadline was to try and stick to doing needle felting every day for as long as possible. Apparently that was 20 days. I'll queue some posts about what I've been doing in the meantime but for now the post (no one's) been waiting for... the last triptych in the suit of wands.

If I were to psychoanalyze myself, I might say something along the lines of, 'fire is my weakest trait.' I'm more cerebral than passionate, more steadfast than wild. I could say that life got in the way, because it always does. But mostly I was just depressed. Around day 20, I experienced an instance of discrimination at work. This would, a year later, culminate in my firing. I'm still unemployed, still depressed, and it's hard to reach for the radical joy I've practiced for most of my adult life.

But I'm going to finish this tarot deck, dammit. I have something to say, and if I don't take the time to say it, no one will. So we're taking one day at a time, working on what we can when we can, and if that means I spend over 500 days ignoring this project, then at least I've picked it up again.

[shegavemeroses]

i finished my “my body is home” series! all are made out of acrylic yarn and feature a different pride flag. i’m so proud of them all. find me on etsy and instagram to see more of my art!!

[catrinasoleifiberart]

Look y'all, AI art is theft but if someone designed a tool with machine learning that untangled yarn, I would consider it just compensation

[sleepycatmama]

One should always have at least 2 craft projects going. That way, when one of them is messed up and misbehaving, you can switch to another, and let the first one sit there and think about what it's done.

[capricorn-0mnikorn]

Sometimes (oftentimes), when a creative project is "misbehaving," it's because it is tired, and overstimulated, and just needs a time out to rest -- like toddlers often need.

And sometimes, you should give your creative projects time to talk to each other, as well as to you.

[nydescynt]

Instructions unclear; my 17 ongoing craft projects have unionized against me.

[catrinasoleifiberart]

I'm sure there's no context needed here...

[catrinasoleifiberart]

Day 33 - A crochet interlude

I decided against bringing my felting with me to visit my folks, which was for the best, because I absolutely would not have had the time to give it the presence it deserved. Instead, I worked on crochet.

I haven't posted a lot about the crochet I've done. I'm not at the point where I'm designing my own patterns, so it feels significantly less creative than painting. But there's a lot of technical skill I've developed over the past couple years, and it is satisfying to work on something with that level of finesse. And I like that for a pattern like this one, I can hang out and socialize and chat and be present with family while still working on art.

This is one of Crystal Doedtman's designs, with her recommended yarn over at Rena's Threads and Crafts. If you're into lacy crochet patterns like I am, both are a must-have.

[catrinasoleifiberart]

Day 20

Well I was on hiatus a lot longer than I planned...

I did art on day 13 or 14, but it was so little before life got in the way that I found myself getting frustrated and next thing I knew it was a week before I looked at it again. Some of this was artist burnout and some of this was life getting in the way.

I still don't like the finished tryptich, but I feel like I have to move on for the sake of my sanity.

I also made some adjustments to the other set I stalled out on, and it is better, but still not great. The suit of wands is not treating me well.

We've only got one more tryptich in the wands set before I can move on and this one feels a lot better so I think we're going to finish strong.

[catrinasoleifiberart]

Day Twelve

I didn't do any art yesterday. This was inevitable, and I'm expecting many days will be like this, and I'm honestly not going to post updates for all of them. But for now I thought this might be a fun opportunity to peek behind the curtain and my reference photos. All of these are photos that I took.

[catrinasoleifiberart]

Day Eleven

I've moved on to the tryptich backgrounds for the suit of wands. As the suit of fire, wands symbolizes wild creativity, ambition, and strength, which I thought would be good for wildflowers. This scene wasn't coming together quite how I wanted it to so I've set it aside and started the next set before finishing this one. Looking at it again I know exactly what I did wrong, which seems like is what always happens.