Something completely different.......

 For my 1 Year of Stitches this week I have started a picture of trees, for myself this time.  I made one each for my son and daughter for Christmas, they were pleased and I thought "I want one". I am using some wonderful material  from The Cloth House. At £38 a metre it is the most expensive material I have even bought but it is perfect for this job. It is slow progress as it will be seen from both side I need the back to look neater than I normally do,.

If you are wondering about my little world, I have decided to have if framed professionally so I need to ask there advice before putting in the final stitches.

A good week n the whole. It started with a visit to Hidden Figures . I really enjoyed this film and think it derserves far more accolades than La La Land. Learned a lot, laughed and cried, what more can you want from a film.

I finished my Cronwall book, moderately pleased with it. It was difficult to photograph because of the size and shape. It is made from the black cards which come with DH's Royal Mail stamps. they are approx 9x5inches. I covered them with old Gelli print papers and then a mixture of paints and  collaged photographs from our holiday back in 2012.

I like the way it will stand up as well though I couldn't get a good angle to photograph.

The other highlight of the week was a meeting with 'the Girls'.  Always a joy we tried our hands at needle felting.  Our animals may not win prizes but we had the best fun.
Blue bunny.

 Bad angle on this, he has a wonderful beak.

  Mine was supposed to be a sheep but ended up as a sheep dog..... possibly.

I came across this, forgot to keep link.


Crafting is a major growth activity internationally – it generates a retail economy of over £3.5bn in the UK alone. Almost 70% of British women have crafted in the last year – that’s over 18 million people. Craft Intelligence is our influential, biennial study of the crafting habits of UK females, conducted by Kantar. And the number of young crafters is growing rapidly – in the UK, crafting among 16-34 year olds is up 9% in the last year. And 23% of UK women have tried a new craft in the last year.
Bluewater   and others please take note.

Mobile again......

... thank goodness.  Coffee with a friend, cat sitting for my son and a few doc's visits for DH, a printer which died just after I had replaced the cartridges (why does that happen) and the week flew by.  I have. though brought my 1 year of stitches piece nearly to an end.    So easy to completely ruin a piece by bad framing so it is probably going to take a while. Here is the piece as is.

This week I added the sun, much needed around here.  I learned how to make suns (and moons) from Jude Hill of Spirit Cloth . I started to make a little bit of the border. I can't do much more until I have decided on the mounting and framing.  So easy to completely ruin a piece with the wrong frame. I have done a little digital auditioning, what do you think?

I have spent a lot of time this week trying to make a book.   I was going to make a scrap journal with some old gelli prints but somewhere along the line  it turned into a book on a holiday we spent in St Ives a few years back.

One of the first things I did was make a cottage.

and the this piece of paper reminded me of the harbour so I added a couple of boats.

Loving the process.
Tomorrow we are off to do the laundry, in other words we are going to the cinema. I may be repeating myself here but to clarify, when we found that OAP's can have reduced rates at our local cinema on a Monday morning  it seemed like a good idea and we agreed that we were so much more fortunate than our grandmothers who spent their Mondays standing over a copper or a dolly tub doing the washing . Tomorrow's laundry is "Hidden Figures".
I think I have mentioned this before but Seth Apter has a new feature on his blog called  The Sunday Papers
Well worth following, it has links to some very interesting sites. Last week this had me wanting one of these, even if it was just a little piece.
https://youtu.be/PeMGRMwarKI

Grey days.......

.....I have long said that February may have the least number of days but is the longest months.  This tear with enforced idleness and the heaviest grey days  you can imagine it is certainly living up to expectations.

1Year of  Stitiches continues and is keeping me sane.
Something occurred to me toda, it wasn't just that the piece had taken an autobiographical turn.  I was reading a piece on Terry Pratchett   and I realised that the mountains in the middle, which are definitely not the shape of my Lakeland hills, could very well be the Ramtops   and this little world might just resemble the Discworld.  Food for thought for the future.

 The train is now crossing Morecambe Bay on the Levens Viaduct. There is a tug in the harbour.  Memories of  the excitment of being taken to see the launch Oronsay  cruise liner by my grandfather.  Some of the tugs had come down from Glasgow and the only way you can describe them is as bustling about, full of self importance. Important is what there were because the Walney Channel is narrow and at one heart stopping moment it looked as though the ship would carry on and hit the island but the tugs held her. The cruise ship, coming into the harbour, could be the Oronsay but it could also record the wonderful holidays on the two Seabourn cruises we took
I have obscured the bottom middle because I am not quite sure about that section . I just have to fix that, put in a few doors and windows and then the prosect of the border which won't be half so exciting.
I also had time to play with paint, stamps and dies.  Result, this which is a fairly conventional "art journal" page

and then this, which was just getting a few things off my chest

I enjoyed that, never done anything like it before.

Two weeks and apart from bananas, which I came out of hospital craving and a few eggs my household stores have done us proud.  I always stock up for winter as though I still lived at  Ulpha Looking forward to getting behind the wheel this week so that life can resume a bit or normal. Also hoping for a little more warmth and light.

Bed rest..................

....well not really. Just a glorious excuse to sit with my feet up and sew. Op went  OK and I now just have to get myself in working order again.

Week 5 of 1 Year of Stitches.

My little world has aquired a few more houses,  a train, a lighthouse and I think that is meant to be Piel Castle. 

This piece is becoming even more auto-
biographical by the minute.

When I go north there is a pont where the M6 motorway crosses the Manchester Ship Canal that is when the light seems to change and I take a deep breath of contentment.  If you go to Barrow in Furness by train there is a bit where you cross the viaduct over Morecambe Bay and you can see what apprears to be a lighthouse  on the top of the hill.  This gives me the came feeling,  of "coming home" (Cross now, I had a super photo i took from the train and I can't find it.)
 Silly isn't it, I have been away from "home" for 58 years but each time I visit I have these emotions.

When I first came to London in 1960 travel by train was the only option for me.  If you were making the journey on a Sunday it could take eight hours to get to Euston.  When were married we would have like to spend our honeymoon in Cornwall but it would have taken 3 days to get there from Barrow as we only had a weeks leave it wasn't an option so we spent it in the Lakes. (Not a bad trade off.)

The "lighthouse" is  called The Hoad  locally and is a monument to Sir John Barrow who was born in Ulverston and became naval explorer. I do have a real lighhouse connection  though. One of my greatx3 grandfathers was the Lighthouse keeper on Walney island which was up for sale recently.  That would have been fun but the lighthouse tower was not included.