Stepping Stone Plans for 2013

It's long been a plan for me to write and publish the knitting patterns for the little creatures I invent, so as a stepping stone goal towards this I am going to be posting the pattern to make these tiny owlets on my blog. I've almost finished the writing up, then I will ask someone to test knit it because I want to be sure that the pattern works, and that I have not missed out a key piece of instructions!

One of my illustration plans is to re-tell the story of The Sleeping Beauty: this is one of the pages I made to test out my idea:

I've been so encouraged by the enthusiasm from people to whom I have shown the painting, so that I am going to follow through and complete the dummy book over the next couple of months.

Achievements to mark

Another huge gap between posts! I've not been idle, just working very hard on improving my hand, with a lot of success: thankfully, I can now draw, paint and knit again without being unduly concerned about my hand's ability to deal with prolonged work - a great start to 2013.

Here are a couple of favourite achievements from the last few months of 2012.

First, an illustration for Little Red Riding Hood, or little Red Riding Hoodie, as I prefer to see her:

A challenge here was to incorporate the wolf, making him look scarey, but not too scarey for a young child aged 3 to 6 years, that I was imaging as reading or looking at the picture book.

Then these fabulous "Fighting words" mitts knitted from Annie Watts pattern  :

These were among the twelve presents I knitted for friends and family for Christmas during November and December 2012. (Such a good strength-building work out for my hand!) The lucky recipient is delighted with his Spiderman-themed mitts!

So, now I am excited to be making progress with my plans for 2013!

Learning How To Make Books

My next goal for enhancing my real life portfolio is to add some dummy books: last year several children's publishers admired the contents of my portfolio, and said that they would like to see demonstrated how my illustrations could work in a book!   I also want to follow Viviane Schwarz's example, and make my own sketchbooks specifically for some characters I am in the process of dreaming up.

 In fact, I began experimenting with making books early in 2011, then put the construction phase on hold because of breaking my finger and damaging the tendons.  Every week I notice new improvements to my hand, and am delighted this week to be able to do the necessary cutting, marking and stitching to complete the making of this pink sketchbook:

I've also finally sewn together these:

which were being held together with loops of ribbon. It makes such a difference to be able to turn the pages like a real book!

When funds and time permit, I'd like to treat myself to a course in bookbinding at the fabulous Shepherds Falkiners -  my rudimentary skills, mostly gleaned from watching videos and experimenting, could be vastly improved with some practical guidance!