bits of surrealism

a sketch : Turkey Mama and her Chicks

I couldn't convince myself to get into paints or pencils last night, even though I've been sort of 'itching' to - I can't get over the hump of spreading out even more things, among the things I've put away and those I haven't yet ... and doing messy work that takes physical time, and then putting it away or leaving it out - having yet another physical thing that no one else will ever see except maybe here etc etc... even though the urge to create is really really strong -- I understand most of our society's response to such a creative SPLAT as I used to make daily was : 'Do you ever sleep?  What do you do with all of that?' and those are both valid and further confusing questions

it's an ongoing existential crisis thing and I feel like I deal with it pretty well considering the absolute event-horizon space-warp thing that goes on in my head all the time.  I've worked hard to 'slow my clockrate' as Mark calls it - we're both 'high clockrate' people in his terms, but it's all mental work and sometimes especially after waking up from dreaming, it feels a bit futile and like I really SHOULD race around doing eighteen things, and then I remind myself that I'm only human and it's impossible to do everything at once, no matter how much coffee you drink.  It all feels so surreal, finite vs. infinite, NOW time vs. all other time.

 

So part of my coping with the exact difficulty of 'create--don't create' at the moment is reminding myself I can open my graphic processor, which is not very technically advanced, use it to choose colors and put some things down like a digital etch-a-sketch and just because I don't want to go to my studio table or art easel, it doesn't mean I have to choke that urge down to put an image 'out' of my brain, or play with the process, like the turkey mama and her chicks above.

 

 

and I can try to urge myself to finish other things I've started

pulled this off the little loom and finished it up  

It has a button closure underneath there and is big enough for a pair of glasses, a checkbook or several pens

It's 8 am.  I stayed up until 10 last night (didn't even make nine the night before) and was up only once with a dog, and then slept until 6:30 am.  

Finished the A1 Russian course.  I'll keep going on Duolingo now as I had sort of held off of it and done the other languages because I was guaranteed to get some practice every day doing that.  I feel I can read Cyrillic a lot better than when I started that - which was a goal for Bulgarian learning.  The Bulgarian site sends me a word of the day every day, written in Cyrillic, and I've been able to pronounce it from the word quite a bit better before clicking it to go to the page with the translation, trans-literation and pronunciation audio clip.

did a smattering of Greek, Danish, Spanish and French, will do something on my phone later

started another crochet tote bag to make during television time, it's smurf blue

have to call the mechanic later today (he didn't respond yesterday but I only called him once) and see if he has ordered the parts for the truck.  Work Saturday - of course that is still a worry about getting home, but what can I do about it other than call the mechanic today, which has to happen a little later.  I'm feeling lately like Samuel Beckett just before the Quantum Leap... like I have way too much energy but if I begin to expend it instead of save it for the things I need to do, I will fall to exhaustion instead.  So it's a bit like having your physical body on a leash while the brain is a bouncing puppy.  And yet - I don't want to get into other huge things either, because I can't sustain them.

Baking might help.

Watching a bee gathering nectar in the clover, while watering the garden and filling the chicken dishes, helped a little, too.

Made breakfast, egg and cheese on toast.  Set out a stick of butter from the freezer to thaw to make something with later.

Made cinnamon rolls, with just a glance at a recipe and hardly any measuring (the butter was pre-measured, because it comes in a stick) - they turned out pretty good, at least, while hot and with coffee.  Sometimes these things get hard as a rock when they cool down - will look at that.  I can see why some people use cream cheese in this type of recipe, and perhaps with more flour and something like that I could roll the dough even thinner on the parchment paper and still get it back up without it becoming lace.  It's been years since I even tried to make them from scratch, coffee cake used to be my goto because it didn't require the rolling.

Village around Castle Clifton - stage one

Merry Christmas Eve!  Been working on the village around the Clifton castle build today in the Bright Mountains creative world.

 

 

did these rowhouses yesterday and then a base pad for the Lighthouse 

rowhouses based on a famous building at the docks in Galway, Ireland

 

the Lighthouse finished

Mark thought it was a defensive tower at first, he mentioned 'Eye of Sauron'.. haha.. well.. see my comments about scale down below here

Lighthouse at night

Inside the Lighthouse

it got a ladder and floors after this. but it was a neat view

 

Now I know that this could be a lot better and smoother at a larger size.. and I do admire a lot of works that are done on 'much larger than Steve scale'... but I am trying to keep this world sized so that a Steve or an Alex could walk through at normal size and relate with doors and furniture etc... and everything is also in Vanilla, although this world 'Bright Mountains' is in creative (the McElvaney world was survival with only a few creative lapses for storyline work) 

After the Lighthouse (which was loosely based on another Irish landmark, the lighthouse at Inisheer Islands - also in Galway (do you see a theme here?) and I decided to use the pattern of the houses near that lighthouse to loosely base my shepherd's house off of.  

I

After finding out where the original inspiration castle was from, I  decided to look up more about what building styles were used over different time periods in this specific area because a) It's fun  and b) I'll learn something and c) There is so much out there I can use a different theme elsewhere and have fun and learn something about a different place next time.

 

 finished shepherd house off to the left there

 

 

the footprint for the shepherd's house

 in progress

the rabbit hutch, just because

 

gardens and sheep pen, caught those two sheep that had been running around town and are going to make them work for their grass *ha*

stick a chicken in the oven and sit down for a while

This is another example of scale.. this is a ship 'The Maple Leaf' that I saw something like it in a picture, and since the first castle had a ship, I gave this one too.  It would be better looking at a grander scale, but then it wouldn't fit into the landscape, either.

 

So this is what Stage One of the landscape looks like.. more to come

Bright Mountains castle loosely based on Clifden Castle in Ireland

 Welcome to Bright Mountains, Clifton castle...

Bright Mountains saga world : Clifton Castle

Finished as seen from front and above, without village or docks

well, this is very (and I mean very) loosely based on Clifden Castle in Ireland.  

 If you tilt your head from just the right angle you might see some resemblance between the Escher-like drawing I made below and the original manor house seen from behind, as seen on Pinterest when I was cruising around looking at things and well laid out in this Travel page that I did not find until later.

But it was really just inspiration, in the elements of square and round towers, and multiple connected causeways that made me want to sketch it.. then later that day, begin to build it.  My husband and daughter came up to bring me out with them to see the Grand Conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn, and my husband looked at the drawing and said 'oh, no .. she's drawing castles again'... as in I was soon to be lost to hours of building...

 

the image below is nearly the same angle as the drawing would be

 

in progress : at the beginning

in progress - a little further on

the interior seen through the back

looking down into the cistern in the enclosed courtyard

put in some chimneys over the smith and kitchens and so forth.. because well, that is something I've proliferated through my building style and even if it wasn't in the picture if I could work it in, I will.

from above at night

The original Clifden had a terrible history of loss and failure and then disagreement and division.  The Wikipedia article lays out how it was built not too long before the Irish potato famine, and then the tenants of the surround land and the family all fell to ruin.  I guess the point would be for Minecraft to plant more than potatoes in the surrounding landscape.  The modern day ruins still contain lots of sheep, which works with this Minecraft world as there are sheep wandering everywhere.  I had to pull one sheep out of the basement level before I could put in the stairs and doors!  

 

The castle still needs a village and support gardens before I can live in it in Survival Mode.  I'd also like a really nice dock with boats aimed towards trading with the original castle to the North.  I will be looking at some other images for info on what kind of docks, houses and so forth would have been in similar items and then run with whatever seems like it will fit the landscape.

Also, I see I would have had a much easier time discerning all the elements and angles if I had seen this Travel page first - lots and lots of pictures of the original ruined building from lots of angles.  Next time?   Still, I like it and it is a good addition to Bright Mountains.  This 'Clifton' castle (as it is named in the map) is located fairly south and a little east of the original Bright Mountain castle, which I had pulled entirely out of my head and don't have a name for yet.

Since I didn't really know where anything was in the original castle, and well... mine wasn't quite like it anyway, I tucked three family chambers into different places, then added some servant and guard rooms wherever they seemed they could fit.  As the first castle was a great exercise in making the 3D structure come together, this one was good in trying to fit a plan but then make the plan do something 'realistic' inside.  That was a slightly different challenge. 

  a few interior shots.. will update later with village and etc.. and link

the courtyard cistern

A lady's chambers

an eating and cooking area

a king-sized bedchamber

 

Creative mode, Bright Mountains saga world

dishcloth yarn comparison sugar and creme vs sugarwheel vs berroco linsey

A little yarn geekery.  I am comparing three different types of dishcloth yarn I used in the past few months.  I used the same basic pattern for three of the cloths, and one of them is my 'seed stitch' variant I use for oven mitts.

They were all knitted with a 5 to 7 size knitting needle.  I prefer my bamboo 5's or my metal 7's for knitting dishcloths.

The Contestants
Yarn A : Hobby Lobby Sugarwheel cotton
Yarn B : Mix of Berroco Linsey and Rowan Creative Linen
Yarn C : 'thick weight' ombre version of Sugar and Creme
Yarn D : 'thin weight' ombre version of Sugar and Creme

The Winner (to me): thin weight ombre version of Sugar and Creme

Yarn A : Hobby Lobby Sugarwheel cotton

The green yarn was the last bit I had left - there are like five other cloths from a previous post wandering around the house.  It was very fun to knit with, especially on smaller needles... and the color shifts were nice, green to purple, blue to grey etc.

HOWEVER... they don't make great washcloths (or dishcloths, whichever you call them).  They are not very scrubby.  Maybe for a baby, they would be nice, or for delicate skin.  But I like to use these washcloths because they are scrubby - and exfoliate.  When we use different ones for the sink, they scrub the dishes well.  I make larger cloths sometimes for 'mop-up' and cleaning, and it is important that they are good scrubbing cloths, too.

This yarn stretches, instead of compressing tightly, even when knitted on the same needles.  So, even though the yarn is very tempting and pretty - I don't think it is a good yarn for making washcloths.  With that stretch, it has a nice drape, and could make pretty shirts or shrugs, if knitted or crocheted to work with the bias.

Yarn B : Berroco Linsey and Rowan Creative Linen

Yarn B is something I bought on clearance, and intended to weave with.  It is Berroco 'Linsey', a cotton and linen blend yarn.  It is kind of expensive when not on clearance, and I wouldn't buy it specifically to make washcloths.  But, it is the project that called to me to test it out.  I knitted with two colors (the other was actually Rowan Creative Linen, which is very similar.. so take this with a grain of salt across both brands.  I made two washcloths, one green and yellow even and one mostly yellow with a few stripes of the green (rowan)... and like them both.  My husband says it has a hard core, with a softer outside - and it is scrubby enough, without being rough.  So, yes, I like this one.  It was a little tougher to knit on the smooth needles, but it came out nicely.  It stretches a little, doesn't compress to the tight square as much, but washes up well.

Yarn C : the cheap but heavyweight Sugar and Creme
Yarn D : the slightly more expensive thin weight Sugar and Creme

Yarn C and D are two weights of the same 'cheap' yarn available at Wal-Mart and such... sugar and creme or peaches and creme.  It is the most basic cotton available.  D is a finer grade weight that they had on offer last year, and I snagged about five balls of that ombre (it is usually the ombres that are fine weight) and knit them up into lots of cloths.  I love that yarn.  It knit beautifully (as fun as the sugarwheel) and it actually inspired me to try lighter weight yarns for this purpose.  It is scrubby, and compresses tightly to the square and holds well wash after wash.  The ends I wove in are coming out a little - but it is on several of the others, too.  I throw them in with the towels and other clothing so they are not treated with kid gloves!

The oven mitt is a thicker seed-stitch variant in a slightly thicker-weight ombre Sugar and Creme.

Cloths A, B and D are made with 'Grandmother's Favorite' simple dishcloth pattern - you can find it easily online with a search.  It is one of the very first things I learned how to knit and does a good job of teaching increase, decrease and yarn over.

Pattern for Cloth C
To knit the oven mitt / dishwashing sink variant :

Cast on 36 to 50 stitches, depending on how wide you would like it to be.  My husband likes the 36 for dishwashing, fits the hand better without being too large.  We leave one of these draped over the kitchen sink for washing utensils and other things.  The 50 stitches are better for the oven mitt / mop up type cloth because then you want it bigger than your hand.  It is also important to use a yarn with a good compression, the stitches hold tight to each other, for the oven mitt type.  A yarn like Sugarwheel would not be good at ALL for this use.

Knit three rows of garter stitch.
Switch to this pattern for the rest of the cloth:
Knit three, seed stitch nearly to end, knit three
If you would like, knit every fifth or sixth row throw in three rows of plain garter stitch.  This will give a ripply effect to the cloth and lots of grip.  You can see I have done that in the peach and brown 'C' cloth.
End with three rows of garter stitch then cast off.


The next yarn I would like to try out is Knitpicks Cotlin dishcloth yarn.  I think it would combine a lot of these qualities.  However, I am just using up what I have - because the best part about knitting dishcloths is that it can be done while you are doing anything else, watching tv, reading articles, reading a book, listening to music, sitting in the garden, talking on the phone, waiting for something to timer ding that you are cooking etc etc...