I’ve kept quite busy with a lot of odd projects this summer–gardening, web design, reorganizing my kitchen, to name a few–but that doesn’t stop me from knitting on an almost daily basis.  My local gym (an Anytime Fitness branch) passed out canvases to some of us artistic types with the logo traced on.  We were told we could do anything we like with the canvas.  I haven’t painted in years with actual paint, but I have discovered I can paint with yarn!

It took me a bit of pondering to come up with the concept, but I knew that whatever I decided upon, it would be knitted with yarn.  As any knitter, I’ve accumulated a wide variety of scraps, which provided the perfect “paint” for my project.  They were scraps from making socks, hats, and a sweater.  As I thought about this, it occurred to me–why not knit for this “person” in the logo the same things I normally make from yarn?  And of course, the bulk of my knitted items keep me warm during the cool months.  It’s hard not to wish for winter to come when the weather has been so hot and humid recently.  Thus my yarn painting concept turned into…

…a skier dressed in an absurdly colorful wardrobe!  His sweater is the same color as my sweater.  His hat was made from leftover yarn I used to make a hat for my dad’s girlfriend.  The fiery scarf came from scraps after making myself a pair of fiery socks.  I have no idea where the yarn for the mittens came from, but it sure is a gorgeous color and looks like something I’d buy!  I did have to buy flesh-colored yarn for the head–that’s not a usual working color for me.  I made sure to use different stitches and techniques for each piece.  The boots and scarf are in garter stitch.  The legs and head are in stockinette.  There’s a fun cable on the sweater and I used the same concept of “turning the heel” on socks to “turn the elbow” on the arms.  After all of this came together, it was only natural to use knitting needles as ski poles.  Thank you Tuesday Morning–$5 for a very sizable and quality pair of wooden straight knitting needles.  The tricky part was attaching it all to the canvas, but a glue gun and steady hands did the trick.

I have to say this is one of the rare times (I’ll touch on another time in a future post) that I’ve come up with an original concept and was able to make the finished product match up with the vision in my brain.  I am so proud of how this turned out and very excited my work of art will be on display for others to enjoy.  I hope they hang it near the treadmill so I can dream of other knitting projects while I am exercising.  And to anyone reading this–dare to dream with your yarn and knitting.  You just might surprise yourself!