What was it that spurred me to want to learn how to crochet? It was the book "Beetles, Bugs and Butterflies" by Lydia Tresselet , aka Lalylala!
This book is just adorable. It begins with a short story, illustrated with the completed projects from the book. This is followed by the section of Techniques, with very clear information accompanied with lots of great photographs. The next section is full of lots of patterns for making all kinds of things from eggs, to larva, to caterpillars to pupae and full grown beetles, butterflies and other fun bugs. There’s even leaves to wrap around your creations to keep them safe or hidden!
This week I wanted to talk about something a little different, something only peripherally related to art: Behavioral Animation. Behavioral Animation is a kind of computer animation in which an autonomous object determines its own actions by interacting with its environment according to certain rules. Behavioral Animation is a fairly vague term, which covers quite a bit of ground.
The Game of Life A simple example is The Game of Life, developed by John Conway , a British mathematician, in the early 1970s. The game starts with an infinite grid (well, potentially infinite – please don’t try to draw an infinite grid…) with some of the squares filled in. It’s important to notice that each square is surrounded by eight additional squares. Nothing surprising there, it’s just how grids work! Then the squares are modified according to two simple rules: 1) if square that is filled in has either two or three of its eight neighboring squares filled in, then it remains filled in, otherwise it is emptied. 2) if an unoccupied square has exactly three filled in neighbors, then it is filled in. This continues through successive generations. The interesting thing about this is that is mimics population growth. Consider each square to be a living cell if it is filled in. If the cell doesn’t have enough neighbors, it dies (perhaps of loneliness.) If it has too many neighbors, it dies (perhaps for lack of resources.) If conditions are just right, they can reproduce, and new cells appear (we’ll just gloss over the fact that that takes three neighbors, not two!) It turns out this models things like bacterial growth fairly well.
I can sew. I can knit. I’ve done macrame. And I can do lots of other things.
I suck at crochet. I’ve never had anyone around who could teach me.
So I have decided, since I’ve seen some cute things, (not grandma doilies,) that I would like to be able to make, to try to actually learn how to do this.
I have a few books with cute patterns, and of course, there is YouTube, which can be a good teacher. I hope I can find someone I can ask about confusing things over the internet.
Recently, there was a little discussion among myself and some artistic friends about which way animals face when you draw them. Apparently, different people draw them predominantly one direction or another.
Perhaps, handedness plays a part in which way we draw them? It was also mentioned that, psychologically, animals facing left appear as more threatening than those facing right.
In this little page from my sketch book, I have animals of several kinds. Some face right, some forward, some up and one left. I don’t think I generally have a preference.
You saw the new Swing Dress that I made for Tuna last week.
It still needed a pair of shoes and possibly some leggings or tights to go with it.
I wanted to make a pair of t-strap style shoes, a bit on the dressy side, since her dress is a bit fancy.
These are what I ended up with. I’m not sure I’m too thrilled with them. It turns out that having black shoes on a leg that is grey doesn’t really provide enough contrast.
Huggins and W-2 have appeared in the Entanglement library! Huggins and W-2 both look like they have been woven but are really just shapes on a grid connected by lines according to a few simple rules. The difference between them is that Huggins connects circles with curved lines, while W-2 connects squares with straight lines.
In this post, I’ll talk about how I built Huggins (once you build Huggins, W-2 is pretty easy to add) and show some examples of how both are used.
Today’s post isn’t about Zentangle.
It’s not about art.
It’s not about sewing.
It’s about REAL LIFE.
On Wednesday night, our water heater, which is in the garage, had a blowout. Water came spewing out of a small hole.
The tank is very close to the surrounding wall. The water was under a high amount of pressure. That pressure created a hole in the wall right next to it. The beginning of a disaster.
Since it’s the start of the school year, I thought I would make Tuna a new dress to celebrate! It’s not that she’s going anywhere, but any excuse is good for a new dress, right?
This is the “Swing Dress” from this set of patterns. In keeping with Tuna’s color theme of pink and green, I decided to use this very special fabric for the skirt.
The fabric features little figures of Red Riding Hood and the Wolf in black, green, pink, and purple. It is at least 65 years old, and possibly even older. It came from my mother’s stash and I remember it from when I was very, very young. I was fascinated with it because I recognized the storybook figures, yet they were the “wrong color” in my mind.
I want to make a pair of shoes to go with the dress I showed you last week.
I would like them to be “dressy” and give the illusion of fancy heels.
As a quick trial, I used a scrap of fabric and folded it in half. Then I marked where I thought I should sew to make it fit. After tackling the stitching, I trimmed away the excess and tried it on her foot.
The Entanglement library has a very few (so far) tangle patterns built in which can be used to create Zentangles. New ones get added to the library as I get to them, but you (yes, YOU) as a user can create them too. Warning! This post is mostly Javascript code! If that’s not your thing, avert your eyes now! You need version 0.0.5 of Entanglement to follow along:
<script src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/gh/tektsu/entanglement@0.0.5/dist/entanglement.js"></script> In this post, we’ll create a simple grid-based tangle pattern, then use it in a Zentangle. The tangle we’ll create is not particularly interesting, and is not a “real” Zentangle (as far as I know.) It’s just an example to show the process. The Entanglement library only supports two general kinds of tangles so far: a pattern of tangle elements placed randomly on the canvas, such as Aah or BoxSpirals, or a grid with some kind of pattern, such as Ambler or Emingle. We’ll create a grid tangle in this case. We want it to look something like this:
I made this doll quite a while ago. The pattern is from the MadeByMiculinko Shop on Etsy. She’s a 27-inch, Tilda-style doll.
I wasn’t completely happy with her, but I did start a dress from the Little Black Dress pattern from the same store.
It ended up taking much longer to complete than I had initially planned because I ended up doing quite a bit of handwork on it. The dress is completely lined.
These are little finger puppets that I made many years ago.
Still cute!
I’d like you to meet the newest addition to my collection of Tilda Friends. Her name is Bessie. As you can see, she is a cow.
I was a bit worried about sewing on the horns by hand, but they turned out to be much easier than I thought they were going to be! I think she needs a nose, but I’m still playing with the idea and haven’t come up with something I’m happy with yet.
On two occasions I have been asked, ‘Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?’ […] I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question.
— Charles Babbage, Passages from the Life of a Philosopher (1864)
In my first post about generative art, I dumped a lot of Javascript on you with only a basic explanation of how it works, and more recently I have given up trying to explain it at all under the theory that most of the people reading these posts are more interested in the art rather than the programming behind it. Also, including a Javascript course here would make for some very, very long articles!
Progress is being made! This all-American friend is coming together!
Stay tuned!
I’ve been working on a new friend while watching TV.
I’ve had this fabric for quite a while. And I actually have quite a bit of it. I like using it for this one, because this animal will be a midwestern, all American type girl. The red, white and blue spots will be perfect.
I think I’ll name her Bessie.
