It's happening this week!!  I will begin my open studios residency at MAD Museum.  That is the Museum of Art & Design here in New York City.  If you're in town come up and visit me on the sixth floor.  I will be there every Friday from 10:30am - 1:30pm & 2:30pm - 5pm.  Visitor services at admissions deliberately direct people to begin their visit to the museum on the 6th floor, so it is definitely part of the museum experience where you can meet and get to know artists and their practices, very cool!

More importantly for me I will be launching my Tiger Pelt Project from here.  My big beautiful cats will be in process at the studio and I look forward to sharing them with visitors.  "Renee", is my first big tiger and her lifesize chart and the initial stages of knitting will be on view this week for the first time.  The little tiger cub I created will be there too for you to touch and get to know.  A few of my ocelots and coral snakes will be displayed in glass cases as well.

I spent a whole week getting to know "Renee"  personally at a week long stint at  AMNH the other week.  Boy getting these tiger stripes down on paper is a tricky, hard working experience.  I chose this tiger because she had a name on her tag, which is unusual, she was 18 years old when she was 'destroyed' a year before I was born - 'destroyed' also being an unusual tag description.  And she was was given to the museum by the the New York Zoological Society, an organisation close to my heart, (now the Wildlife Conservation Society.

I also have postcards to give away and promotional material from Lion Brand Yarns, my sponsor for the Tiger Pelt Project, see you there!

I've finished the tiger cub.  Sorry I didn't blog about it, but while I was knitting it - I didn't like it!!

Not one bit!

I've been knitting with sock yarn from Knit Picks for a whole year and was perfectly happy with the small stitches, the fine details.  Then just like that I am knitting in this chunky worsted yarn that seemed so enormously thick, with big fat stitches.  I swear it wasn't until I had cast off the final stitch and hurriedly flattened it out under my iron and gave it a good press that I finally started to like it.

It was also strange looking at lines of color or stripes instead of round little rosettes that I had grown to love so much.  I liked how the chart turned out, but knitting stripes in ugly big stitches was a bit of a shock. 

Anyway, I like it much more now.  Tomorrow I am going ot have an early morning photo shoot out in the backyard before the t-storms hit.  I have some nice ideas for images to turn into postcards for handing out at MAD Museum.

Stay tuned!!!

Yesterday was my birthday,

Today I will start knitting my first tiger.

Where will these tigers take me?

The journey begins with a three month old cub - who nose to tail is already 54" long.

One day a week, this coming September to November in New York City I will be participating in the Open Studio Program at the Museum of Art & Design - MAD.

VERY EXCITING.

More posts to come about this development.........................

So I'm actually blogging today to announce the exciting news that I went to the American Museum of Natural History today and opened up the tiger skin cabinet to begin work on these MONSTER CATS.

Boy was that overwhelming.  I'm really challenged by the size and scope of these amazingly beautiful creatures but I can't wait to bring them out to the world in a different form to share with you all. 

(I can hardly lift them off the ground high enough to see how tall they are.)

I think I'm up to the challenge......

I'm starting with a little 3 month old cub that is even at this age kind of the size of a large ocelot.  Had a lot of looking and thinking and photographing to do, as well as finishing gluing the chart together so didn't get too much drawing done.  Will go back another day this week.

I'm very curious to see how the stripes will be to execute as compared with all the spots I've knitted.  This little guy, (whose sex is not determined on the tag), has a crowded cluster of stripes on it's haunches, I hope I can space them well enough with the worsted yarn, boy will it be nice to work with a thicker yarn again.

What is with the backside difficulties of these cats?!!  Everything gets complicated around the haunches for some reason.

XX

HI I'm back!!

Just spent 2 weeks in Australia with my family and it was good, a little stressful at times but still worth it and very happy to be with my mother for her birthday once again!  Which means it took me over a week to kind of emotionally detox and recover, physically from the journey and the emotion of leaving and then readjusting when I come back, the ol', "what am I doing?", "why am I here". kind of thing......

So want to share with you a picture of my mum, she got to see my knitted pelts for the first time!  Boy, she is going to kill me for posting this, but I have to give her applause for her support and she really seemed to love my work, so that was very satisfying for me.

Also if you remember I took to OZ with me the last 2 ocelots to finish, including the 6th one which I hadn't finished knitting.  And believe it or not I got them done!!!  Yippee.  All in the first week too, as I had a meeting lined up at the Australian Wool Museum in Geelong where I got to meet the charming Felicity Ellis.  Here a pic of the last 2 ocelots together on the carpet of my parents loungeroom.

SO THE OCELOT SERIES IS NOW OFFICIALLY COMPLETED, I AM SO HAPPY  :)

Sat = 5 inches

Sun = 5 inches

Mon = 5 inches

15 inches of knitting in 3 days, closing in on the forelegs and long rows for the next four inches.  Probably won't get this baby done by Thursday, but I'm very happy with the progress.

And this little cat is good.  I wasn't sure about things as I was working on the lower back, I switched up the way I organize the colors along the spine, but now that I'm at the shoulders I can see it coming together more and I think it's fine.

Beach tomorrow!!!

But first,.......

HOW TO KNIT A DETAILED OCELOT PELT

1/  Get up at 7:30am, no sorry, I mean wake up and lie there thinking about what I was just dreaming about.  Then think a little more about the mysteries of life, and before I actually get up, infuse my thoughts with some positive thinking.

2/  Feed cat, shower, coffee, check email, facebook, twitter - (particularly Dalai Lama message for the day), breakfast and then watch Regis & Kelly while starting knitting at 9am.

3/  Over the next four hours, knit = I have eight rows to an inch, I take a break after every inch and am usually dying to go to the bathroom at the end of every row, cos I'm also drinking a lot of water.  Also the cat - AKA Pep-Pep gets a lot of attention all the time.

4/  Lunch, favoring a sandwich and a salad at the mo', maybe take a long break, run some errands.

5/  In the afternoon I am trying to get 3 inches completed, so I can break for dinner and work on another 2 inches in the evening.

6/  Stretch a lot.  Constant dillemma about what to watch on TV, or the radio, "This American Life" is a fave, or watch one of my movies for the umpteenth time.  I can't really look at anything 'cos I have to keep an eye on the needles, so sports are perfect, cos they replay anything that's exciting and they describe what is happening.  Right now, it's great cos Wimbledon is on and the World Cup soccer as well, so I set up in front of the computer and stream!!!!

Yesterday I posted a couple of pics of my cat Pepsi sitting on the ocelot chart.  Not going to post them here, oh no!  I want traffic to pick up on my other networking sites.

Its scandalous really, I know, using my adorable old lady/kitten cat to drive up the internet highway traffic, but you can also see some of the craziness going on in the chart as well.

I also forgot to put down the feline distraction she causes when I'm trying to work, so she is 10/ on the last post!

Links are on my homepage to face book and twitter.

(Note: The facebook link will not open on firefox, try safari instead!)

Just started knitting Ocelot #6 a couple of hours ago, tail is done.

Lunchbreak with my Progresso chicken chowder soup, why am I eating this when it is so hot I don't know, but the air-con is in so we are cool.

Let me digress and chat about chart madness.

HOW TO MAKE A KNITTING CHART OF A DETAILED OCELOT PELT

1/  Take plenty of naps.

2/  Run your errands.

3/  Make sure you thoroughly do as much as you can on the internet.

4/  Then keep going back to the computer to check the latest tweets, face book news, etc.

5/  Start freaking out at how late in the day it's getting.

6/  Do a couple of hours of chart work, then take a long break, or a nap, or a walk.

7/  Realise that you are nowhere near where you wanted to be on the chart that particular day.

8/  Simultaneously with no. 7/, above, understand how long it takes to do chart.

9/  Really begin work at 8 or 9 pm and work straight for four hours.

Repeat for 3 days and then you're done!!

The chart for this little animal did take three days, not bad, but I wanted it to only take two days, and I wanted to start knitting it last night.  But I swear when I sat down to knit, pulled out the yarn, needles and everything I had an intuitive attack to take another look at the color scheme.  Also I had this suddent urge to crochet.  So I ended up spending three hours crocheting the edging on Ocelot #5, which is a  really good thing, the edging is such a chore and now it's done!!!  And I did take a hard look and ruminate about color selection for Ocelot #6, tweaked a few things, made some notes on the chart and now I feel 100 % about it.

The name of this post is "Almond forever", because I love, love, love the color of the yarn for this cat.  I'm using the Knit Picks Palette Almond for the first time and it is gorgeous.  The slight pink tinge comes out alongside the Palette Bark that I am using for the black spots and lines, this will be the best ocelot yet, why is it always the last one in a series that seems like the best one?

Anyway expect a lot of happy posts about this pelt, and now there is a thunderstorm outside cooling things off and I have my soup and my knitting and my ambient music and my patient cat who is dying to sit in this chair, so life is good for the mo'.

Yay!  Ocelot #5 is done, (except for edging, ears, etc), but amazing how the last six inches  - 2 of which are only 4- 5 inches across, still takes six hours!!!!  What the heck?!  But the head is dirty, knarly, lots of loose ends, eyeholes, earholes, the colors are all over the place, so lot of patience is needed to keep everything together and still looking nice.

Now to turn 180 degrees and face the last ocelot chart.  She is small, detailed, a different shape and  has  a re-arranged color scheme, nice and complicated to end up the series.  Can't wait to tear through the work and take her home to show my mama, (she's excited.)  Was talking to my mother last night, she has never seen my  knitted pelts, whenever I go home my work is always in shows or unavailable, or too big to travel with, so I can't wait to show her and everyone else in a few weeks - maybe a few galleries/museums  as well.  It's always so different when you see it in person........ BETTER!