Sunday, November 26, 2006

Living Dangerously - Time Magazine


I have just found an article on "Time" magazine, http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1562914,00.html which I found both amusing and thought provoking.
While the article suggests a governments duty I wonder if he has underplayed (ignored) the media's responsibilty in over-hyping "scares". I feel it certainly is the case in the UK when the tv evening news will be full of "special reports" and the tabloids will banner headline it and drag up every tenous link they can find.

Thursday, November 23, 2006

Beading and me....




In the last lesson Sharon asks us to examine what we feel we have learned. I now know that I am rubbish at working with beads. All the blocks would be finished if I didn't have to keep crawling round the floor picking up microscopic pieces of glass!!!! It doesn't help that as soon as I am settled my ancient old gentleman cat wants to sit on my knee. I have done all the things one is supposed to like a tin lined with felt but I ALWAYS manage to drop it. Ah well...back to the floor. The picture is a page from my skinny fat book.

Monday, November 20, 2006

Block one finished.....I think


I thinkthis is finished, I have said this about ten times over this weekend and each time I have gone back to a dd a little more. I have added a little suprise to it under the bead that is supposed to represent the crystal ball.

I still am amazed how the piece took on its own identity and suddenly found myself thinking of a poem from childhood, I could only remember the line "Old Meg she was a gipsy..." I had to look it up and found it was a poem by John Keats called Meg Merrilees. Just incase you can't remeber it all this is it.
Old Meg she was a Gipsy,
And liv'd upon the Moors:
Her bed it was the brown heath turf,
And her house was out of doors.
Her apples were swart blackberries,
Her currants pods o' broom;
Her wine was dew of the wild white rose,
Her book a churchyard tomb.
Her Brothers were the craggy hills,
Her Sisters larchen trees--
Alone with her great family
She liv'd as she did please.
No breakfast had she many a morn,
No dinner many a noon,
And 'stead of supper she would stare
Full hard against the Moon.
But every morn of woodbine fresh
She made her garlanding,
And every night the dark glen Yew
She wove, and she would sing.
And with her fingers old and brown
She plaited Mats o' Rushes,
And gave them to the Cottagers
She met among the Bushes.
Old Meg was brave as Margaret Queen
And tall as Amazon:
An old red blanket cloak she wore;
A chip hat had she on.
God rest her aged bones somewhere--
She died full long agone!

I wish I had remebered it earlier because it would have helped with the motifs. Perhaps another day......

Saturday, November 18, 2006

This is the er....news




This is ...........er.......Fred....er.......Bloggs.....insome...er....town.....somewhere.....er.....in...the UK. I am supposed to ...er...bring you......er....some sort of....er...news report......but I haven't bothered to.......er.....prepare what I was going to ....er.....say ......as it was warmer in the..... er...pub this afternoon.

I would have thought that one of the main qualifications for a television news reported was the ability to string together a sentence!!!!! It ranks along with sportsmen(paticularly footballers) who say "you know".....don't get me .....er...started!!!!.

Thursday, November 16, 2006

Nearly there





Week five of the encrusted CQ course. These are my four blocks before the last stages of beading.

Sunday, November 12, 2006

We will remember them.......


Today is Remembrance Sunday in the UK, when we remember those whose lives were cut short by war. Four more British soldiers were killed today in Iraq. Yesterday many young men of Iraq were killed as they applied for work. Where is the reason? In over two thousand years mankind has learned nothing! At my age one knows only to well the shortness of life.

Saturday, November 11, 2006

Block progress



These are the additions to block#s two and three?

Hussif

I have given my daughter the hussif which I made for her so I can now share it with everyone. A hussif is a corruption of the word housewife and is simply somewhere to keep all your sewing requirements. (Well not quite ALL as most of us have whole cupboards full of the stuff)
I would like to thank the contributors to CQ Magazine http://www.cqmagonline.com/index.html where I first heard of a hussif. If you link to them and search for hussif you will see the beautiful things that inspired me.



Sunday, November 05, 2006

Ugly Bug Ball

Another great day with Sam Beresford at the Sevenoaks Embroiders Guild. This is my bug after some skilful surgery by Sam.

I like to think that I will finish the second one.........

Sewing frenzy


My husband must think my needle is welded to my hand!!! The third of Sharon's lessons arrived and this is the result on the first block, (Gipsy gold). So now my gipsy has a basket of pegs, a caravan and a violin , the motif in my corner made me think of the signs gipsy's used to leave on gateposts to show whether a house was friendly or not. The centre and the corner are waiting for lesson four!

Wednesday, November 01, 2006

Visit from a stanger



A very colourful visitor to our bird feeders, unfortunately in my excitement didn't manage to catch his wonderful red beak.

Tuesday, October 31, 2006

Progress report

Here we are a bit more embellishing, fell I'm getting the hang of this now. For those seams which are still empty I am waiting to see where lesson three leads me.






Happiness is...


Thomas and Elcectra or, as they should be known these days, Darby and Joan sharing a sunbeam!!

Monday, October 30, 2006

Better than Google.......

I decided to search for some crochet motifs to make for the later stages of my Encrusted CQ. I paticularly wanted a fan, so into Google it went and what should come up but a reference which had the inaminuteago url. I smiled and clicked and lo and behold I found Sharon had already done all the work and there were all and more motif instructions that I could ever want.

Sunday, October 29, 2006



This is the first block with the seam stitching. It looks sort of bitty and I'm not too happy with it but I am hoping that I know where I am going with it. In my mind I have called it "gipsy gold" a bit more inspirational than 1st block!! When we get to the motifs, beads etc I hope I can spice it up a bit.

Now going to try second block which is now called "gilded cage". Hoping I can get to be more spontaneous on this one.

Friday, October 27, 2006

I'm on a roll........or not

Sharon suggested that we make a sample of stitches on a roll of material. I'm not too patient so I started but then the desire to get going on my blocks won so I turned to them instead and that is where everything ground to a halt. Talk about stage fright.... Now let me say here I do know a few stitches (not very good at them but I do know them) and being left handed I have had to teach myself how to do them. (Domestic Science teacher at school wrote me off as useless) so I thought it would be easy, but no, you see now I have all this added information about texture and paths etc. It took me ages to get going.
I think one of the main reasones is trying to visualise what it will be like when it is all encrusted and what you would like to put where. The other thing is because on three of the blocks I have used images I feel I need to tell a story with the embelishments. This probably comes from altering books which is what I have been doing for the last year.
Anyway I finally took the plunge on the basis that if I don't like it I can always pull it out. Here is roll and story so far on first block.

Thursday, October 26, 2006

The great Lace Debate

I sat for hours with my bits of lace and my blocks trying this bit here and that bit there. These layouts are the story so far. They are only layed on so things may happen when I start Stitiching.





Just printed off the second lesson, all 49 pages of it!!! Should keep me occupied.

Marks and Spencer a question.

Why have Mark & Spencer started playing muzak in the Bluewater store, I do not want someone wailing about their love life when I am buying my knickers or trying to decide what to have for dinner. It drives me nuts!! I may have stop shopping there. M&S probably won't notice but my bank manager will be happy.

Tuesday, October 24, 2006

New enchantments


Look at this gorgeousness. This is the lace I dyed, I used Marabou Silk and Dynaflow. I tried to combine the colours to tone with my blocks for Sharon's class and then just left them to do their own thing. I was thrilled with the resulting colours.
This is a bit of Dupioni I used to mop up the plastic sheet, I then screwed it up and left it to dry and look what happened, a piece which is just dreaming about embroidery.

Now to try and position the lace.

Monday, October 23, 2006

How to measure success !

"School trip a huge success - not one child asked if it was dinnertime (which they usually start doing about 10am)"

This from a friend who teaches primary school.