Is This Art?

Seems like I am asking that question a lot lately. Is this art? I am feeling creative and inspired and am busy, but unless I have paint on my hands or charcoal on my wrists or glue in my hair or paper scraps on the floor, or spilled beads, I feel guilty somehow. It feels like I am neglecting my art and my art blog. Actually, I guess it would be more accurate to say it feels like I am neglecting my traditional art forms--if altered art can now be called "traditional!"

But, I'm busy! Busy appreciating the mod art of vintage doll fashions from the 1960s and 1970s. And no one did it better than the exquisite mod Mattel fashions, made with dressmaker details including beautiful finishing, for the one and only Barbie and her friends.

So I've been occupied with sorting, washing (carefully!), pressing, fixing or having fixed, looking up, cataloging and just generally reliving my first childhood. "First childhood" would be an oxymoron, except that I am, most decidedly, in my second childhood.

I can paint when I'm all grown up...again.

I'm a chick with sticks now, not just a hooker

In my continued enjoyment of all things color, I pulled the two bins that make up my yarn stash down from on high to help me decide what to make now that I am learning to knit. I've just had one class so far, but I love it. Once I got past the initial awkwardness, since knitting is so different from crochet, I was able to fly along. Admittedly, I've only learned one stitch, the knit stitch, along with casting on. Too eager to wait for this weekend's class, I found the purl stitch in two different books and have tried to learn that also.

My goal with knitting is to be able to make colorful doll hats and sweaters like those I just featured on my Blythe blog. I'm afraid that will be a long time coming, because that's tiny, skilled work. The two afghans I crocheted above, Hello Kitty and sock monkeys, were not even small work, but took plenty of time not just to finish but to master the stitches and understand the patterns.

But, I love learning new stuff, and I have no predisposition for or against knitting versus crochet as some people do. They are just so totally different. And they produce such different results, some of which I hope to post here some day!