art family

What to Do with Leftover Yarn

It started with an afghan. A zig-zag afghan in four colors of Bernat yarn. Of course, there was yarn left over. I could not let it go unused. It’s very soft yarn. In fun colors, especially that vibrant green. So, here’s what I did with the leftover vibrant green: But I still had yarn left in blue, gray, and light green. So, here’s how I used that: I knitted a birthday scarf for my son…

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art reading

YOCR #3 – The Artist’s Guide

In continuing my year of creative reading (note the abbreviation in the title), I dipped into Jackie Battenfield’s “The Artist’s Guide.” While I did not read it cover-to-cover, I read several big chunks of it. This is a fabulous reference book for anyone serious about creating their own arts career. It’s the book I wish I’d had in college in the 1980s. Art majors concentrated on their art during my college days; they did not…

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art thought fodder writing

Je Suis Charlie

The slaying of twelve people, many of them journalists, at the offices of Charlie Hebdo, a satirical French newspaper in Paris, has come as a psychic sucker punch to me this week. It is hard enough for writers and artists to fight the general negativity of society and their own self doubts in order to find their voices and speak their truths within their work. The threat of violence, let alone actual violence, can be…

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