“Achilles’ Point” fiction book released on Amazon

My book “Achilles’ Point” is now available on Amazon, HERE, both as a paperback and as an ebook.

The front is embroidery of 2 trees, one black, one white, growing together in Meherabad, India:

The back is a knitted picture of the same trees:

Here is a little info about it:

A story of grief, faith and unusual friendship, given through the diaries of 5 very different women:
Ruth, 22 years old, a young Mom with a strong devotion to God.
Miri, almost 30, works at an Insurance company and not much happens in her life, until…
Terez, 44 years old, scientist, works in a hospital’s research lab, lost her son.
Shelly, 50, married with one son, loves nature and contemplation.
Noel, 60ish, an artist, sick with cancer.

A note from one of my readers, that I feel gives the feeling of what the book is about:
“It was a compelling read that I went through twice. Each of the women (and the other characters too) resonated with different parts of my being. Each is an individual, but you’ve imitated life by weaving their stories together.
I believe God sends us Angels when we need them. And here you’ve demonstrated how God touches ones life even if the person doesn’t believe in him, or has doubts.
Additionally the embroidery, knitting, and photography you’ve included plus the quilt in the story, all add to the imagery of their lives and the universe being woven together.
I read a lot, but don’t often feel the depth of emotion I did with the piece.
Thank you so much for sharing it with me.”

The book has a knit pattern for the hearts friendship blanket.

Hope you’ll enjoy it,

🙂

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Free E-Books, till tomorrow night

For Crazy Corona, we managed to put 5 of our books up for free as ebooks,

LINK here.

2 of them are illustrated with knitted picture:

‘The First Time I Saw The Ocean‘ has so many knit pictures, it can almost be a catalog of my knits,

‘Mixed Tapestry’ has 7 pictures in a technique developed specially for this book, where the same 7 yarns are used for background and image. It’s basically 3 yarns technique twice, with a yarn in between (the 7th yarn).

We also made a recording of our novella ‘The Vulturet, Season 14’ as a silly youtube. It’s a PG romantic comedy. Link.

Stay sane & healthy

🙂

5 free ebooks, for 5 days

In honor of Miss Corona, some of our e-books will be free on Amazon, from April 13 – April 17. Sorry we can’t make it longer.

 

 

 

A little girl’s visit to Meher Center,

illustrated fully with knitted pictures.

Link

 

 

 

 

 

 

How to make your own personal set of cards

and how to use them to get guidance from God.

Link

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A collections of Baba talks within my heart.

Link

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

3 little stories

one about death and reincarnation,

one about fear,

and a short poem about God.

Illustrated with knit pictures with a technique made specially for this book,

and with photos.

Link

 

Our latest book, a fiction about a Vulturet looking for love in a dating game TV show.

Will she find Love?

Will anybody else find love?

Oh, the drama of it all!

Link

 

 

Have fun, and stay healthy 🙂

Our book, “Vulturet Season 14”

So, this isn’t a knit entry.

Husband & I wrote another book, a light romantic fiction. It’s a novella, in the style of The Bachelorette TV shows. We enjoyed writing it and still work on editing, but because of the Corona situation we decided to upload it on youtube, so everybody can listen to it for free. Our quality is not great, but we do our best. We record one chapter a day, and the reading will be done just before the new show will start.

If you are interested in watching it:

The channel name is Tootsy

The first chapter is here

We hope you will enjoy it, and please pass it forward

🙂

‘Meher Baba Comforts’ book

My new book ‘Meher Baba Comforts’ is out, and available here (on Amazon).

The book is a collection of Baba’s talks within my heart, 1998 – 2016.

Here is a youtube of the talk and workshop about it.

The workshop went very well, and I highly recommend it.

You will need paper (to write on) and 2 color pens, one for your voice and one for Baba’s.

Good Luck!

Multi Magic

Multi magic is a big st made of many yarns held together. I use it as a yarn ‘Bank’ and pull this or that yarn out of it, while continuing to carry the rest right there in my ‘bank’. I also use it to avoid CO, BO and weaving-in tails and other knit clean up (it works well in crochet too).

The multi magic shawl, was fun and easy knit. It also makes it easy to use more of the yarn I have a lot of, and less of other yarns.

Below left: right side, on the right – the wrong side. The pattern is available here.

 

It was so much fun, I had to knit a hat to go with it:

 

Then I thought the hat is an Elfy hat (Elfy comes from a children book husband & I wrote, called ‘The mushroom under the Elf‘. The book has knitting patterns right in the middle of the story).

 

And then I saw a 3 needle BO that I just had to try and thought the easiest would be to do it in a slipper, and out came these Elfy moccasins! So my patterns for the next Elfy book are almost ready.

‘Color & Picture Knitting” book, the charts

Here are some of the charts in the book:

These are the first ones, being easy knits:

 

More landscapes and how to knit the border as you knit along:

 

These are pictures that were done with the same chart (the chart is for the blue one):

 

Portraits, show knitting in ‘invisible’ technique using 1 yarn and reverse st.st to create the image, and the advantage of knitting sideways:

Invisible Meher Baba,

Mischievous one

Charts about working from drawing:

O.K.

Karma

 

And adding your own writing:

Nothing/Everything

WAKE UP!

 

Special techniques (knitting in quilting & weaving styles):

Blue Cross

Ancient One in blue

How to knit a group project (no charts here):

 

And some heart charts we used in these projects:

I enjoyed knitting them all!

‘Color & Picture Knitting’ book

 

Dear Tracy,

I can not find your comment, so will answer you here, as other people asked about the book too.

The book is a work book. It explains how to knit pictures, from easy ones to more involved. The patterns in it are like exercises. They are meant for you to knit them and hopefully hang them on your wall or give as gifts.

You may not sell my patterns, but you may do many pictures using the charts in the book, and even sell the pictures you knitted yourself.

I am saying that the charts are exercises because my purpose was to give you enough information so that you can continue to make your own charts and do your own pictures.

So, to sum it up, the patterns in the book are for you to knit in order to learn the techniques used.

After the picture is knitted and BO, you can block it. For this you will need to stretch it upside down on foam board or anything else handy, spray lightly with water and let dry for 24 hours. Because of spraying it with water, you need to use stainless steel pins. You can buy them in a sewing store.

Some people prefer ironing their knits, I do not.

After the picture is well dry, you can attach it to foam board that is cut to fit the size of the picture. For this you can use straight pins (they do not have to be stainless steel).

Some people glue the picture instead of using pins, I do not.

See next blog post for detailed account of the charts in the book.

The book is available on Amazon.com

Good Luck, hope you’ll enjoy it, and feel free to ask questions.

 

Knit -> Write, and Write -> Knit

I LOVE encouraging people to use their art as a base for a book.

Imagine giving your friends and family a booklet of your art work for Christmas.

These days, when ‘publish on demand’ is so easy (and gets easier by the minute), there is no excuse Not to.

And that, ends ‘the lecture,’ and begins my sharing:

“The First Time I Saw the Ocean/Mayan & Richard Ward” was my first fiction book (available on Amazon). It started with my husband, exercising and looking at my knitted pictures on the walls. He said it felt like a story of a little girl visiting Meher Spiritual Center for the first time. Once I started writing, it went very fast. All I had to do was follow the knitted pictures I had, and let them tell the story. The only thing missing was a knitted picture of an alligator (which I then made just for the book). T=So the process was that the knitting led me into writing.

If you have enough images in your knitting/embroidery/needlepoint/painting, you can do the same: assemble what you have, organize it in order that tells a story, and start writing. Insert the images here and there in your writing, and your book is done!

‘Mixed Tapestries‘, our new book, follows the opposite process. First I wrote a short story in the middle of the night (well, 5 am), then I started knitting the illustrations for it. Where and how the idea started, I do not know, but it evolved to a new knit technique for me. I wrote more about it in my previous post. This is the finished series (sorry it’s from right to left) :

The technique, ‘7 yarns’ or ‘3+1+3’ uses the same 7 yarns through the whole piece, but always using one of them, as a separator, in the middle to create the image. It’s not that complicated. Once you knit 2-3 rows of the image, all yarns should be in place and from there on it’s straight forward (click on the fish to see the pattern).

And back to the lecture: do something, don’t wait, your art is unique and has your special flavor. God made you precisely as you are, give back by showing your work (and not putting it into a drawer).

Good Luck.