Here is a very poor photo of some handbeaded stitch markers that a dear friend made. This pic really doesn’t do them justice. She arrived at our weekly knitting day (yesterday) with these little Valentine’s gifts for us!! What a lovely surprise! We watched the movie The Secret Lives of Dentists while knitting away – I got so involved with the movie that I failed to count and ended up having to rip out 15 rows of work! So I suppose that means I would recommend renting it!

I wanted to also thank you all for your kind comments regarding yesterday’s post — it was a real pick me up. :)

I have been taking a little art course over the past few months. It is given by the neighbor of a friend and is in the woman’s home. It has been a nice diversion, but during the past two classes I have not been thrilled with her approach to teaching. I have found her to be inconsistent and a bit scattered. I also don’t like the way she keeps drawing on everyone’s drawings. I have a drawing at home that I keep getting compliments on and I know that the crucial details are not my own and keep feeling like a fraud. Yesterday’s class took the cake, was the cherry on the sundae (trying to use food puns here!).

We were working on a still life consisiting of a vase and some fruit sitting on a table draped in fabric. Before we start in on the good paper, she has us start out with a smaller sketch, to get the proportions and placement the way we want it. So far so good.

So now we have moved on to the good paper stage. I am cruising along, sketching it in as I see it and as I did it on the practise paper. The teacher is standing behind me and then says, “Ann, it is surprising that for such a large person you are so un-generous on the paper. Look at Donna’s (another lady in the class) she is so skinny and she is using the whole page. You need to be a more generous person.”

This pissed me off on many levels:

1. I am a large person. I have a mirror. I don’t need you to tell me.

2. Size is not an indication of temperment, any more than skin color, eye color, height etc. Don’t make presumptions based on the size of my ass.

3. I am not un-generous.

4. This is how I did it in my sketch, I was centering the vase to leave room at the top for the draped fabric background. Why wasn’t something said at the sketch stage?

5. Why didn’t I drop this class when I thought she was just a lousy teacher?

I had a big debate with myself whether I was going to post about this. Exactly what is the function of this blog? How much to reveal, what is the purpose and who am I doing this for. I have read other’s sites where they are wondering the same thing – and honestly, the sites that do reveal the humaness of the author are the ones that touch me.

ps.I did not do the sketch that I uploaded with this post – wish I could claim it! I think she is beautiful! you can find her here

thought you would enjoy a picture of our pug Lucy watching the dog show last night. This is how she always watches television whenever there is a dog onscreen. She actually goes nuts — charging over to the TV and barking, running around etc. She follows the action on the screen – notice how she is directly under the dauchshund on screen – as that dog moved from left to right, Lucy tried to follow – all of this on those skinny little hind legs. Poetry in motion I tell ya’. This almost always gets our Shih Tzu, Mo, in a twist and he will start up too. His concern is Lucy, not the tv. He will go yipping after her, trying to get her to cut it out. He doesn’t have her stamina however. Mo gives up after a few passes, but Lucy will stay glued to the screen as long as a dog is up there. Our big dogs ignore the whole display – I wonder if they think the two little ones are morons or if they just don’t notice.

instead of taking Lucy on walks for exercise, we just turn on Animal Planet! :)

thought you would enjoy a picture of our pug Lucy watching the dog show last night. This is how she always watches television whenever there is a dog onscreen. She actually goes nuts — charging over to the TV and barking, running around etc. She follows the action on the screen – notice how she is directly under the dauchshund on screen – as that dog moved from left to right, Lucy tried to follow – all of this on those skinny little hind legs. Poetry in motion I tell ya’. This almost always gets our Shih Tzu, Mo, in a twist and he will start up too. His concern is Lucy, not the tv. He will go yipping after her, trying to get her to cut it out. He doesn’t have her stamina however. Mo gives up after a few passes, but Lucy will stay glued to the screen as long as a dog is up there. Our big dogs ignore the whole display – I wonder if they think the two little ones are morons or if they just don’t notice.

instead of taking Lucy on walks for exercise, we just turn on Animal Planet! :)