I was reading Mason-Dixon earlier this week. Kay has been talking about art and paintings.

But here I am. A knitter in love with paintings. I can't think of anything else to do but knit them.

You see, that's the whole point isn't it. This is knitting, you can knit anything you want to, and the reason I love the folks at Mason-Dixon is because they talk about their inspirations and there are no knitting police who tell you that you're holding your pins wrong and your stitches are wobbly (Ahem, sorry, I appear to have gone off the point).

So, to the art. I'm not really one for art galleries, but I do love a good album sleeve - I am old enough to remember vinyl records, so artwork was LARGE. This is my idea of a good album sleeve.

It's simple it's effective, it's Barney Bubbles. I love Barney Bubbles album covers.

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Having grown up buying Nick Lowe, Elvis Costello and Stiff Records amongst others, Barney Bubbles was someone who made me laugh and made me think. The world needs more people like that.

So I got to looking at some of the things Barney did, there's a great page here by John Coulthart with plenty of images. In a later post John says that there's a book coming out about Barney later this year, can't wait.

So, what to knit? Well, I don't think I'm quite up to knitting a Bubbles LP sleeve yet. Although a Blockheads logo might be possible. I do have a copy of this book though.

I don't offer much in the way of knitting advice, this is one of my exceptions to that rule. If you spot this book at full price DON'T BUY IT. If however, you spot it going for 20p in your local charity shop you have yourself a bargain. It completely ruins most of the art it attempts to portray, and the 1980's models just make you want to cringe. As a source of inspiration for how you might want to put art into a knitting pattern though, for that, it's useful.

I found this:

This is Piet Mondrian's Square Composition and the book gives a handy chart to follow. So, it's simple, easy and elegant. I have cast on.

It's not Barney Bubbles, but it is art, and that's a reason to be cheerful.