Knit Unravelling - Making Art through a Heat Wave

Hello Dear Reader,

Dawn and twilight are drawing closer together as we move through August.

It was 40 degrees Celsius last week and I ceased to be a normal human. Without air conditioning and an advisory against swimming in our local lake, there was no escape and the best we could do was endure and wait.

Thankfully, colder air rushed in after a thunderstorm this week. Even the ocean cooled down with the storm front, which admittedly felt like a shock, and now the wind that grazes my skin feels like heaven to me.

So, while enduring the elements and now enjoying a beautiful August, I want to share with you here a few little bits of my creative world.

These past two weeks, I finished a sweater, drafted card designs and sold an original painting!

Being an artist can feel both like entering a different world and operating in the dark. You’re creating and building, while simultaneously not knowing whether you’re reaching anyone.

Currently, I’m painting some small paintings of little things that make me happy like crows, plants, mushrooms and little painted red houses for greeting cards. The next will have a winter theme, and I’ll share with you when these will be available.

I’m so happy to say that one of my small Icelandic paintings sold! This design is of the famous mountain Kirkjufell in the West of Iceland.

Selling an original painting feels like a gentle nod from the universe that you’re on the right path.

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So thank you very much for spending the time to read and look at my art here. Making art and putting it out into the world can be a vulnerable and scary thing, so thank you so much - it means the world to me.

I feel for now that operating in the dark is necessary for me to figure out who I am as a creative individual. We need to go out in the wilderness of ourselves if we’re to find it, not in an echo chamber.

I have a few other paintings as well available in my shop, and will release more in the coming weeks.

A new sweater emerged!

I love this sweater! Its history and design makes me happy.

My whole intention was to create a sweater with a high neck to work in our woodland during colder months. Most of my Icelandic sweaters have boat necks, so I needed one that provided more coverage to work outdoors in the winter.

Wool is so expensive now, even the by-product yarns like Lopi, so rather than pay $200 for just the wool, I chose to unravel a sweater accumulating dust while living in the dark with the cedar balls in my closet.

This was the first time I’ve ever done this and it was very fun and liberating! Giving new life to something perfectly good but, for whatever reason, is no longer used.

I bought this Lett-Lopi in Iceland for $2.50 USD a ball in 2013. I remember a girl we spent time with in a hostel in Vík saying “wool is cheaper than candy here!” and it always stuck with me because she was so right.

This sweater served me well back in the day, but I had hardly worn it for years and the idea of transforming it was actually really exciting. How would the Icelandic wool hold up?

So, I unravelled it, eager to see how the wool would translate to an entirely new sweater. A sweater that would serve as a blueprint for a design that I’m slowly working on.

I did run out of the brown colour that I used for the body and adapted the design by using the contrasting colour for the collar. To save some of the contrasting stash colour, I used scrap wool for the interior of the hem.

These small details and its history give so much meaning to a garment that will live its life amidst the firs and mossy boulders of our forest.

And it worked great! The design needs some fixing, but I’m pretty happy with it and am so looking forward to building trails and habitat piles this winter.

The last few weeks of summer are before us now and you can feel the wistful longing of vacationers at the beach knowing it’s almost time to go back to the grind.

But not just yet - we can hold on a little bit longer.

For now, it’s Sunday and we are going to put a new bike rack on our car and venture out to a trail far from the city. Just to feel the wind and freedom of biking and perhaps find some berries along the way.

I hope you have a beautiful Sunday, a beautiful week.

☾ Thank you for being here with me.

If this piece meant something to you, please consider forwarding it to a friend who may enjoy it. You can also support my work by visiting my online shop. ☾