September....

is my birthday month so for me, it is like New Year, a new beginning. Apart from the weather Summer has not been good with some health worries in the family. So I am trying to fill my mind. 
While I am waiting for the Spirit Cloth Diaries to begin I have been looking at all my bits and pieces that I have made while following Jude on Spirit Cloth. Some I have put aside for new projects and some I am trying to put to practical use. This "long cloth" had become a table runner.

A couple more pieces I think are going to become cushion covers. I have finished my Space cloth but I have to show it to some special people before I put it on here. Time now to unearth the Earth Cloth so I can work along with the Diaries.   Also need to re-organise my workroom it has become sadly neglected over the last few months.  I am writing all this like New Year resolutions to goad myself into getting on with it. 

PS.  for information to the BBC, Autumn does not begin on the 1st September. It begins with the Autumnal Equinox which this year is the 22nd September.

Good morning....

The sun is shining and the birds are singing and I am seated in my freshly painted and carpeted living room in front of my new computer, Hurrah! And it just gets better you can see the carpet in my workroom which I have not been able to see for the last four weeks. I removed eight boxes to be re-cycled at the tip and st the charity shop so I am feeling very smug. Now all I have to do is re-cycle my stash by getting creative again.

Thank you for the messages of sympathy in my self inflicted predicament. They are still working on the files.
One of my losses, if that is what it turns out to be, are the dozens of photographs I took at the Three Emperors Exhibition at the RA. I was reminded of them when I caught the end of the programme on the Forbidden City on BBC2 last night. (Yes, I was watching the Nancy's)

This is from the RA's site, painted on silk....can you imagine?

Last year I did a workshop at the EG with Fay Maxwell based on her work in her book Crewel and Unusual, I have to confess the piece from this workshop became a UFO but I jumped at the chance to take another workshop when she visited us again. Her workshops hardwork because she keeps you at it but great fun. Half the room wanted to do the modern take on Crewel work we did last time and the other half, including me, wanted to do the much freer canvas work.

We had to paint a piece of canvas before hand, having done that Fay then said we could ignore the painting as we were going to cover the canvas to within an inch of it's life. I was just a way of getting over staring at a blank piece of white canvas. I have been fascinated by the rust pieces that Lynda of Purple Missus has been doing, so I pinched her colour scheme of Quinacridone Nickel Azo Gold and Paynes Grey and I added a little Iridescent Gold. I painted the canvas and also a piece of velvet and some threads. I was fascinating to see how the different materials took the paint in different ways. I forgot to take photographs as we went along but this is the piece to far




The lace is only being auditioned at the moment and I want it to look more distressed, loads of work to be done but this is going to be a great "pick up and do a bit piece" for the summer.

Off to enjoy the day just in case this fine weather spell turns out to be "summer".

How could I forget............Cranford......

No copyright breach intended.
What a joy, we sat there hanging on every word and drinking in the wonderful period detail. No simulated sex, no violence and no bad language just one hour of riveting acting and an already gently enthralling story and, as someone pointed out today, issues that are still relevant today. For those of you beyond these shores I hope it will come to a small screen near you soon.
As you know I frequently have my disappointments with the BBC and am not backward in coming forward but when it comes to adaptations of the classics they are unbeatable.The BBC website has some interesting background information as does this site which tells of the filming in Lacock, the village we visited in October.What joy for the next few Sunday evenings.
I add two extracts from the Englishwoman's Domestic Magazine which I was luck y enought to borrow from a friend some time ago.


(If you double clock they should come up large)
A different world indeed!!