Ruth did a post a few days ago about a landscape tutorial on the Start2 website. I hadn’t come across that tutorial before and thought Ruth’s paintings were brilliant, so having been stuck in a recliner for a week and half with flu, I was itching to do something creative so gave it a go. I had some thick but cheap sketchbook paper and also a variety of printer paper samples to try it on. This first one is the sketchbook paper:

And this is the textured printer paper sample:

They need flattening and cropping. I was disappointed they weren’t as nice as Ruth’s, but if I’d seen them before Ruth’s I’m sure I’d have been more impressed 🙂 I wish I had the artistic skills to add to them to improve them. I’m at least going to look for a white gel pen.

Start2 is the online resource for Start, an arts for good health centre. I did a couple of courses there in the last few months, and just a few weeks ago started going to a knitting group there too. I’d only really done knit stitch until I started going, apart from one row of purl I’d tried and wasn’t sure I’d done right. We had a pattern for making a small camera or phone pouch, but of course I had the wrong sized needles and yarn, so I’m making mine a bit bigger. I started with knit stitch then tried alternating knit and purl rows. I’d only done a few when I got confused doing purl and was wrapping the yarn around the wrong way so went back to knit then tried again. Once I got more confident on week 2, I added in another colour, well 2 really because I had blue aran yarn and had to double up some 4 ply.

There’s a speckled beige colour which reminds me of Hob-Nob biscuits and a bluey grey, I think they work well together:

Being ill was a good time to practise my knitting. I thought I’d make a knitting needle holder. I used white aran and doubled up some blue 4 ply:

It wants to curl up so I pinned it down. I like this angle:

I even made holes for a drawstring:

I’m not sure what I’ll do for the bottom, I did try to make a square, but it didn’t seem right so I’ll wait till the next knitting group to decide. And I still haven’t learned to sew seams, so that’s next on the list 🙂