Big Twist® 100% Super Bright Acrylic Yarn in Denim (color)
G/6 Crochet Hook from Boye™
Crochet Finishing Needle from Susan Bates®
Project Inspo
There is a fellow creator on WordPress called Elena who has been an inspiration for a long time. She posts the most relevant and significant quotations. Made by influential thinkers, scholars and leaders, these quotes always got me thinking or made me feel better when things were going rough. Anyway, her profile picture shows her in a wondrous crocheted beret.
I learned how to crochet at a young age. My mother taught me as did the nuns. I have made scarves for years. When I found this yarn on Joann’s site, I had to work with it. It proved to be great.
Gallery
These pictures show the finished project. It took about eight hours of total working time. I didn’t have a lot of time to work on it continuously, but I would work with it on Sunday afternoons. The best part about it was that it was an easy and relaxing project.
Narrative
I made the scarf first using a half double crochet, counting to 27 until the scarf fit me. The yarn was a joy. It was smooth and did not snag or tangle in the skein.
After the scarf, I made the beret, increasing in the round until I had ten rounds, then decreasing every other stitch until the beret fit me. It was four rows for me.
Next Steps
Now I’m working on a beret for Gary, and I’m hoping to find more yarn at Joann’s before they close down completely, if they do. I am praying that they come back like Big Lots. So many people love Joann’s! Joann’s is a great store and a wonderful source.
The hook was also purchased at Joann’s. It came in a set. These are all inexpensive materials for the hobbyist. Enjoy.
It was a mild, sunny Miami afternoon, and the breezes came from secret places to whisper words of relaxation and enjoyment. We rode into the parking lot of Pinecrest Gardens.
Exterior of Pinecrest Gardens, from Web.
Gary was in business attire and had his camera fully charged and ready to work. I enjoyed being his companion at the event. It was to be a reception for some of our favorite local artists at the beautiful Pinecrest Gardens. I heard the calming sounds of people talking, glasses tinkling and music playing in the background as we entered. After checking in with reception and getting our badges, we went inside. It was there that I would learn a truth about myself and another wider truth that would help me get some sorely needed hope.
Meeting the Artists
After meeting briefly with his contact at the garden, Gary and I left the natural wonders of the garden to meet with the artists. It was at the pavilion across the lake that we would meet our first artist. Her name is Bonnier, a photographer. Her photography featured there was imaginative and surprising. There were many pictures, and all featured an illusion.
She explained how she created layers within her photos. She was so open and friendly that I felt comfortable asking her about her photos. She liked using pictures of different views of the same location and putting them together in one photo to create another new photo with a different meaning. Ghostly images lingered in corners of the pictures, adding a surreal quality to them.
Bonnier Photography from web
Next, we moved back to the main hall where Ferrer and Mendoza were showing their works. While Gary interviewed the artist whom he came to see, I went to talk to Mendoza. He greeted me with a smile, laughing when I talked to him about Little Havana. I asked him about his painting with the palm trees, eager to know all about it. The painting features colorful palm trees, slightly bulging at the trunk with fun and waving fronds reaching upwards into a bright blue sky. The palm images call to mind curvaceous women wearing large hats, allowing their hair to flow in the breeze. It is as happy as the artist always seems to be himself.
Mendoza LamIn Mendoza’s painting, the chaos seems suppressed and contained. Although the palm trees are all colorful and each unique, their equal spacing makes me think of imprisonment or having to conform. It reminds me of the line from Martí, “Las palmas son novias que esperan.”
He said that it was based on another work of Wilfredo Lam called “La Jungla” that is housed in New York’s MOMA. I looked up that other painting and did not like it as much as I liked Mendoza’s. Lam’s painting had a sinister abandon to it, a hedonism, while Mendoza’s suggested the smile on a mourner’s face to pacify the children in the room.
Finally, I met Ferrer and saw her textiles. I was so swept up by them because it made me remember my mother and how she spent hours with her crochet hook and piles of yarn that she would turn into lovely creations. Ferrer explained that her piece was about a painful sacrifice. I examined the yarn work. It was complex and featured many stitches, seemingly uncountable, that looked bloody. She said that was exactly what she had intended. I was awestruck at her ability to create such an intricate piece. All the artists were open and friendly, but I felt out of sorts.
Exploring the Natural Beauty of Pinecrest Gardens
However, the surroundings made me think that everyone there should be at ease. We wandered about looking at the natural beauty of the gardens. There were honking swans that peacefully floated on the still man-made lake.
Swans Calling
Its waters were a dark blue which made the white plumage of the swans stand out more. As we watched, stately peacocks danced by, flaunting their beautiful tailfeathers. The males spread their tails wide showing off iridescent green and purple feathers. Alongside the pink coral hued walk, there were all kinds of trees and shrubs that let out a fragrance reminiscent of wild nights in the country in the Caribbean. The sound of small frogs and birds filled the air, and it was easy to relax. As the night’s sounds caressed us with their small chirps, croaks and whistles, we had fun in the garden and enjoyed ourselves.
Growth in the Gardens, Growth in the Spirit
There were other people enjoying themselves too. Everyone was milling about the area where the peacocks walked. As I walked, I thought about how much time it took for those things to grow. The trees grew and seemed to be developing just as I walked. The peacocks had once been tiny chicks newly hatched and helpless. The paintings that we saw, and the yarn work had taken time to develop. Even the master artists we had met needed time to grow and mature in their art. They learned what worked and what did not work in painting, photography and weaving. I reasoned that all had progressed while on this earth.
Garden Peace
After a few days had passed, I had started to feel like a fool for creating a blog about art when I knew so little about it. But then, after some reflection, I learned about how the experience was an important lesson in resilience. I had missed the point. In the garden, I saw how everything needed time to grow. The trees and animals, art and artists needed nurturing and sustenance to develop. I admitted that I needed to learn about art because I liked it, but that I was only a failure when I ceased to try.
“An expert is just a novice who never stopped trying.”
My truth at the time was that I knew little about art history, but the wider truth gave me hope. It was by reflecting on the works of the artists as well as the natural beauty of the garden as it all developed that I learned how important having a “growth mindset” is for staying positive and participating in the realization of personal dreams. After being introduced to this mindset by the company Tutor.com, it makes me hopeful to be participating in a process. Carol Dweck at Stanford originated this theory that a person can develop talents with perseverance and devotion. My dream is to see the beauty around me with my friends and family, enjoying each day as if it were my last.
I have only seen a minuscule portion of the world and am continually surprised by its beauty. It was because of the experience at Pinecrest Gardens that I have become reenergized about writing about art and our wonderful Miami artists.
An expert at creating likable characters and placing them in dangerous situations while keeping things wholesome for a reader who may not like gore, violence or misogyny, Gary Alan Ruse has a number of novels in his list of creations.
I picked three of Gary’s novels to introduce to you today. These three books show a consistent close attention to detail, clever use of characterization and fabulous sense of dramatic tension.
These three titles are my favorites. Treasure Seekers is an adventure tale, Morlac is fantasy and Aggie and Agent X is a “blend of science fiction and mystery.”
Once I began reading the book, I couldn’t stop. I just needed to know what happened to Mark and the group and could not put the book down.
A mysterious creature, “a demon,” brings down the plane transporting Mark’s friend as he scouts a remote location in Africa for treasure. When Mark finds out, he is driven to find out what happened to his friend and recover a treasure.
I love quests, so this book really satisfied my desires. The best thing about this book is its fairness. There is a tendency out there to create a book that ends in a cliffhanger just so the reader has to wait for the next part. This book was really like a trilogy. It had it all.
Morlac is raised from a sea creature for mysterious purposes and has to travel through magical lands to vanquish evil. Along the way, he meets fantastic beings and gains friends. There are evil mages who would like to end his quest. In the final part of the book, the magician who leads the undead against Morlac was scary.
This is a book that I have a special fondness for because I dressed up like Aggie for a talent show. It was so much fun. The book is a science fiction mystery genre bender.
Aggie is a CIA agent who is beginning her spy journey when she is teamed up with Agent X. It is surprising for her to learn of his many secret powers and his Top Secret origins.
According to Gary Alan Ruse, the painter, he created this painting from memory after seeing a photograph. While cleaning, I found the painting and liked it immediately. After some dusting, I found it intact, even though there was some damage to its frame. Hirsh at Rosemont gives a lecture on understanding art that inspired me to look at Zebras Grazing Before Mount Kilimanjaro in a new way. Her lecture on color guided me on generating a deeper response to the painting because, although I understood intuitively that the painting was calming, her discussion of how artists manipulate color showed me why.
Ruse uses color expertly to create a feeling of calm in the scene. The painting is of a family of zebras. There are three adult zebras and one smaller zebra peacefully grazing near a watering hole. Behind them rises the rounded peak of Mount Kilimanjaro. The mountain seems to protect them like an older family member. Most of the colors are cool colors like blue, teal and shades of green. Even the warm tan of the grasses is interspersed with tufts of green. The white and black of the zebras are surrounded by a rounded frame of forest green in the trees. Because of the Hirsh lecture, I see now that this use of cool colors has the effect of calming the viewer. It seems completely intuitive. This was the reason why when looking at the painting, I felt calm.
Ruse varies the intensity of the color in another way with the shades of blue. The blue of the water is mixed with white and other colors to create the representation of sunlight on the water as well as the reflection of the zebra’s face. Similarly, dark colors are used as shadow to indicate the position of the sun as well as to add dimension and fullness to their bodies. The clouds have an added pink color to suggest a refraction of sunshine also. But the best use of color is the way that the dark green contrasts the blue of the mountain. It almost enshrines the zebra family like a cameo from the vastness of the uninterrupted sky.
So, it’s no wonder that my response would be positive. I felt pleasure while admiring this painting because the cool colors were soothing. The use of color did not jar me with any unwelcome surprising clashes. The varying intensity of the blue created a meditative feeling. Finally, the saturation of the blue made the mountain friendly. It was not really intense blue, but it was like a soft light color, almost like powder blue. I have seen mountains that were sharp, jagged and icy. They communicated danger, but in this painting the mount’s color suggested that it protected the zebra family. Color was used with heart to make this painting soothe an aching heart, and I thank the artist.
Rule Creations 