Inspiration
The Watercolor Thing
Why are we all of a sudden offering watercolor kits?
Friends, it’s so good. Working with watercolors is something that is available to us all—it’s meditative, unpredictable, and it allows us to explore color in a way that is totally different from knitting.
For me, the watercolor thing started the minute Dee Hardwicke held up one of her notebooks during a meeting when we were planning our Field Guide with her.
It was exquisite: a chunky book with deckle edges, thick paper, a stitched binding. Filled with Dee’s watercolor sketches of flowers, patterns, color ideas. An object loaded with a painter’s imagination. It looked like the most fun. I wanted to do that.
I have no ambition other than to play. And that’s what we encourage you to do.
So that’s why we have not one but two sets of watercolors available to you in our MDK Shop: a very simple set and a very fine set. (All thanks to DG Strong, our resident serious watercolorist, for pointing us toward fine materials.)
We’ve put these kits in simple muslin bags for ease in toting.
A Very Simple Set
The Watercolor Kit. We’d never heard of watercolors in a booklet, so these Viviva Colorsheets really caught our imagination.
Sixteen surprisingly bright colors—a little goes a long way with these rich pigments. Divider pages keep the colors from touching each other.
The Khadi Papers sketchbook is the same one that Dee Hardwicke uses.
The paintbrush has a reservoir for water that means you can set up anywhere.
And a Modern Daily Knitting pencil from Tennessee’s Musgrave Pencil Co. lets you sketch an idea before you paint.
This is such an easy way to begin your experiments.
If you leave this set out on a kitchen counter when staying at a fiber festival with friends, it is delightful to see what happens.
A Very Fine Set
Botanica Watercolor Set. Same as above, except the watercolor set is extraordinary.
Case for Making is the source of these handmade, highly pigmented watercolors. The metal box is beautiful, small, with a dozen colors that Case for Making pulled together just for MDK.
The color is superb, rich, and lasts a long time.
Once you finish your Viviva Colorsheets, you will likely start thinking about this Case for Making set.
We are big believers in loving our gear, and these two kits are as loveable as can be.
A Gentle How-to Guide
Inga Buividavice sees watercolor as a means of calming ourselves, of slowing down. Painting Calm: Connect to Nature through the Art of Watercolour sets a tone that we all really connected with as we looked for the book to carry along with these watercolor kits.
Full of help, tips, techniques, and most of all: inspiration.
Inga writes: “I want you to enjoy all the amazing benefits painting can bring to your wellbeing, particularly when focusing on the natural world around you.”
Exactly.
I want to see what happened with this at the fiber festival. Pretty please? It sounds like a great activity for thanksgiving football for those of us who don’t watch football.
If you follow me on. Instagram (@kaygardiner), I put a little video in my stories that flips through our kitchen counter experiments in watercolor. Such a nice holder of memories of togetherness while Sarah presided over meal preparation for us all.
Ditto!
This is such a beautiful brilliant idea. Great way to teach non artsy folk (who might not have had a chance to be exposed to art in their background) about natural earth pigments and help us to develop an intuitive sense of colours.
All these colours are found in the fiber world.
Gentle washes or strong saturated tones.
They all sing out to us.
I’ve been exploring the joys of watercolor and Case for Making paints are the best.
I think I need that how-to guidebook
I adore watercolors! About ten years ago I took some art classes, despite being someone who was “not artsy”, and now I am addicted. I love my sketchbooks and my watercolors! Can’t wait to try out the fine set and the book.
I’m going to check it out. After commenting on a social media how to for a watercolor flower, my daughter got me some basics for my birthday. Winters quiet days will be perfect to play.
I took a watercolor class 20+ years ago through a museum and it was too intimidating. But I’ve wanted to try again to play with watercolor in a kinder, gentler way, and Painting Calm is a very good book for this! I bought it over the summer and love the approach – the information is good and presented in a way that helps you relax and just have fun with what you’re doing.
I did a double take at khadi paper. Having spent many years in Gujarat, the land of Gandhi, I am quite familiar with khadi cloth. It was the ultimate symbol of non-violent resistance. I had quite a lot of khadi kurtas back in the day. So delighted to see that the paper is 100% cotton. It’s a bit like our money in that sense, but devoted to art as opposed to commerce.
I’m still a bit leery of watercolors. I’ve tried, and the impossibility of undoing mistakes… it’s hard (probably why I don’t sew, LOL). But for those without my baggage, you should give it a go! I will be checking out the khadi paper.
MDK is always a source of fresh delights. Thanks to Kay, Ann, DG, and everyone else on the team.
Fantastic that you’ve offered good watercolors to knitters! I adore how beautifully watercolor and knitting work together. Offering a means of easy access to merging these two arts is wonderful.
I returned to watercolor 3 years ago and continue to embrace the joy it’s brought back into my life.
After my Aunt’s passing this year, I returned to knitting as a way to honor her and my late grandmothers’ (both) mastery of fiber work. The combination of these two arts/crafts is stunning. The simple, honest, pure pigments of watercolor invigorate as much as the gorgeous colors of yarn we work with.
I adore watercolour s & have been painting for as long as I can remember. My two stress relievers… knitting & painting. These look like very cool sets that will bring so much enjoyment.