And then two come along at once...........

... I decided has been far too long since I played with paint and paper. At the beginning of the year Seth Apter suggested a prject for 2017. It is called Artifacts. 
"". This would be a no rules collaboration. Just find or make some sort of artist book, planner, scrapbook, 3-ring-binder, folder, or other container to document your creative experiences, whether they be in art, craft, or anything else. Then get to documenting in any way to style that works for you.""
That sounded like something I could do.  Loose enought not to become a millstone round your
Then Seth started to preview all the new stamps, stencils etc.  he has new for this year. Finger itchingly good.  That sent me to Paperarsty as I know they stock many of Seth's products and lo and behold they had just issued a challenge for January,to create using Pink and Orange so.......
a journal spread, using distress inks, sari silk, Treasure Gold , metal findings and a homemade tassel.

  Difficult to photograph. This is a scan.

 And here is one I made earlier,  more textile orientated.

Lady in waiting........

......that's me this week.  Fingers crossed, tomorrow I will be having a long awaited gall bladder operation.   I have been trying to anticipate all the things that I won't be able to do for a couple of weeks like bend stretch and lift. Somehow I haven't managed to do quite the amount of de-cluttering  that I promised myself I would do but then embroidery, paint play and a trip out with a friend are so much more appealing don't you think?

Week four already of the 1 Year of Stitches challenge and my piece has taken an even more nostalgic trip.

Hopefully anyone who has ever visited Barrow in Furness will recognise the crane from the shipyard. On the way to Barrow the road passes the Dolly Blue Works. Forgive me if I have told you about them before. The road now by passes the factory which is has become a residential complex but one of the delights of my childhood was to  to drive past the factory with its blue walls in the hope of spotting a blue man.  The men wore blue overalls and their skin would be covered in the powder as was everthing around. Oh the excitment if we saw one.  There is an good piece about the factory here,
 The trip was to Rochester, it was freezing cold and foggy but a lovely brisk mooch round the galleries and shops.
Today it reached 9 deg c. and after last week felt like Spring so the garden had a quick tidy and the apple tree had a hair cut before I have to put my feet up.   Lovely to see the white of the snowdrops just beginning to show and the hellebores pushing through. Daylight lasting a little longer too. Hurrah.

I am going to cover the paint play in a separate post becauser I need to link it.
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Half way.....

....through January, where did that go? The good kind of winter weather though, frost and clear blue skies.  Possibly a third through my 1 Year in Stitches piece but who knows what is still to come.  Still obsessed.

Livestock and mountains have appeared. All a bit of a cheat really.  I find myself thinking of things from my childhood but they have to be altered for the sake of "art". The sheep should be Lakeland Herdwick sheep but their grey coats didn't show up well enough and the Lakeland hills are rounded by the Ice Age and not sharp like the Alps but they do get snow on them,.  The cows are what my sister would call "proper" cows i.e black and white but at the moment it looks as though one of them is a goat, slight adjustment to be made I think.

I sais last week that I was looking to see the film La La Land and comment.  We saw it.  Best I say nothing.

My Pinterest find this week was the artist Kimmy Cantrell  I love his sculpture faces.
http://www.kimart.com/index.html

No pressure then........

 ....my first offering for 1 Year of Stitches 2017   received 489 "Likes" and 60 very kind comments.  I hope I managed to respond to all of them but if I missed anyone,  thank you.  It has certainly been a fascinating week, the variety of stitches and styles is amazing. I have become slighly obsessive about my piece which now looks like this..

I am not sure about my attempt at  mendung clouds   , I find blues very difficult  to work with.   When I first started making stage costumes(amateur) the lighting designer (professional) told me that blues were the most difficult colour to light.  I think I should have stuck to my trusty indigo range but I was trying to brighten up.  We shall see if they balance out as the rest progresses otherwise they will have to come out. Not a pleasant thought as chain stitch may be one of the easiest to do but I have found it is a "b*****" to undo.

One of the unexpected benefits of 1 Year is the links to other places.  Here are two I liked. First

 A beautiful site for ribbon embroidery with very good tutorials. One of these days...
The other is Folksy a site selling modern British craft. I have ordered these buttons in anticipation of vast production this year.

We have a had a liittle snow here and worse, a biting cold wind so a bit of surfing (web) hs been the order of the day.
Please go an look at this site   Kirsty Mitchell    . I don't want to risk breaching copyright so I can't post a picture but I promise you if you like colour you won't be disappointed.
 I was hoping to be able to comment on La La Land but the weather put paid to that little trip.  Hopefully next week.                                                

First week .....

...passed in a flash.  This is what happened to the yellow line.  Not the Yellow Brick Road after all,(well it might be) but something triggered in what I laughingly call my brain and suddenly I was thinking Hundertwasser
I have long wished I could see some of his work for real, fascinated by the complexity of the shapes and love the wonderful colours.  So here is the beginning. For scale this is in a n 8inch/20cm hoop/

Remember that teaser, well it was a sort of "Wot I did on my holidays" except I was a home but I made it over the Christmas time .My inpiration was a picture I saw on Pinterest, I do wish people would make their links to the actual post not just the site. It took me 20 minutes to backtrack until I came to the orginal to that I could acknowledge it.. It came from this post
 This is what it turned into.

The background is part of an old pair of linen trousers.  Now what to do with it?
I had a huge beef this week with the Spring Knitting and Stitching Show    I received an email offiering a discount on entry tickets, after last year when we were horrified at being charged £17 "on the door" I thought I would take up the offer.  When I applied nearly six hours before the deadline it rejected the code, after several tries I gave in.  We will NOT be going to the show this year.

John Lewis had taken one more row off the haberdashery department in Bluewater and allowed Mac cosmetices to play music.  Shame on you.

I also managed these this week. 

 

It won't last......

....not just a pessimist, I know myself ...but while it lasts.  Here is the firt day of "1 Year in stitches"

I took me ages to actually start and then came "Yellow Brick Road "...so we will have to see where it leads.  It doesn't look very inspiring but it has already sparked another idea.

Last night watching Tom Brady do his stuff, I made these "journal" pages.(I have no intention of keeping a journal, like I said, I know me.  Butterfly mind and a difficulty with finishing off.)

Gosh that man is inspiring! 

 Seriously,  great fun, I haven't done anything like this for ages. A while back I found that if you use sticky tape, my preferred is Scotch Magic, you can remove imagaes from the Sunday paper magazine supplement. The little red berries in the first picture and the strip along the bottom of the second were done this way. I like the magic tape because it has a matt finish. 

To inspire you .