beck's blog

Tuesday, March 01, 2011

Thoroughly Modern Mona

This project began in January when I received a couple of free art prints in the mail, (promising me if I'd just sign up, they'd continue to deliver these lovely masterpiece art prints until I decide to cancel - at any time, of course, blah, blah, blah...)

Well, anyway, one was Claude Monet's The Water-Lily Pond and the other was Leonardo DaVinci's Mona Lisa.

Thus began a fun-filled month of playing a newly invented game with my youngest son that I like to call, "Where's Mona?"
The game merely consists of hiding the Mona print throughout the house, (although, bringing her out to my car seat would not be considered an infraction of the game either, mind you). Anyway, the object of the game is to find the Mona. That's all. Nothing to it really. Then, once you find Mona, you must hide it and wait until the other person discovers her, (usually in a most unsuspecting place).

I once had her "dressed in my son's bathrobe, seated at his computer with an arm extending to his mouse. (Not to be outdone, I did come home from shopping one day to find Mona at my computer, dressed in my new Harry Potter Snuggie "robe"!) (Who would have guessed Mona was a Gtyffindor?!) LOL!

Anyway, with so much Mona on our minds, I decided to search the web for an easily adaptable picture of her to crochet into an afghan.

Oh. My. Gosh! Have you ever googled Mona Lisa images??!!! It seems everyone has had a crack at altering her photo into some hilarious, some disturbing, and some, well, just plain weird pictures.

I finally found this image on a flicker webpage belonging to "dirtchick" (also known as Nina), which was a picture she'd taken of a billboard sign in Charles de Gaulle airport on February 3, 2006 .
On further investigation, I found that this image is also displayed in many different tourist locations throughout France, (such as airports etc.), to remind folks to go check out the Mona Lisa at the Louvre Museum whilst visiting here.

Soooo, are you still with me folks? That's how I came to the decision to use this picture of Mona for my next project. I changed the colors a little bit and graphed it at microrevolt again.

So, without further ado, here's my finished Mona... (Please click on the photos to enlarge them).

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This is the front. I used caron One Pound in Peach, I Love This Yarn from Hobby Lobby in purple, orange and true blue (at the border), and Red Heart blue also. It is tunisian crocheted using a size J cabled afghan hook.

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This is the back of the afghan. It came out very neat. I like to do afghans with big blocks of colors. (Not a million and one color changes every few stitches like some of the other harder ones).

I'm ending this with the beautiful song Mona Lisa sung by another master craftsman; the fabulous Nat King Cole.