Insy winsy spider......

I do hope  I have the opportunity to see the Golden Spider Silk Cape at the V& A, there till June so I might make it but in the meanwhile you can watch here. Just amazing. Thank you to Mary Corbet for the heads up. I always hate it if I have to break a web, you know when they build one right across the path. This one was caught when the greenhouse heater backfired.

I played a bit

and then a bit more.....

Christmas.....

.....was a little late(or early) this year.  Because our daughter was working in Canada we waited until she was able to join us (our son's idea), so for us Friday 13th was Christmas Day and a jolly good day it was.  Well worth waiting for. I was too late for Fortnum and Mason's Christmas windows but at the moment they are going with a show girl theme.  I didn't have my camera with me but I took this on my i Pod and then I played.

Daughter is off on her travels again so now, unfortunately,  I have no excuse for putting off all those jobs I have been thinking about. Tidy workroom,....... turn out some cupboards, .....watch the NFL playoff games.....start new cloth......start new fabric book.....play with new toys......decisions, decisions.

Freedom...

Today was the first session of the Magic Diaries it was full of the excitement of new beginnings.  At one point Jude took a pen and drew directly onto a corner of the cloth, it made me gasp but then I realised that this is Jude's gift.  She gives freedom.  I shed many tears and not a little blood in my Domestic Science lessons at school, I never seemed to be able to do anything to the satisfaction of the teacher.  I have been patronised because I haven't done my City and Guilds Embroidery (only by one person but in such a way as to make me feel inadequate ) and then Jude takes a Sharpie(no less)  to a cloth made of interwoven pieces which I watched her make and when someone commented she replied "it's only cloth". Brilliant. Today I'm growing.

Cloth book

For ages I have admired the cloth journals  made by Ro Bruhn.  I don't aspire to even match her journals but I really had the best time making this. I am trying to justify the amount of "stuff" in my workroom. This seemed like an ideal way to use papers, UFO's and other experiments and basically anything that came to hand.

 The back, I made it with a sort of left handed fastener.  Loops from front to back.!

So happy that part 2 of Jude's Magic Diaries has begun.  It has become so much a part of my daily life.

Two posts in two days.  It must be New Year.  Have a good one.

Time.....

I had a reminder that I was contributing to Sandy's Ideas of Inspiration blog and had fallen by the wayside, as indeed I seem to have done here. So full of resolve (not resolutions) when I saw the first idea of this new year "Time".  I was immediately reminded of the clock we had seen in the Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg.  The Peacock clock.

This is a close up of the peacock,

because of the light it was difficult to photograph.  You Tube to the rescue.
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/-q0FAYE0_1Y" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen>iframe>
I apologise for the cross posting but I wanted the video here.

Space update...

This morning I spent some time clearing  my blog list of blogs which hadn't been updated in some months, then I realised that someone was probably doing the same to me.  So here is the present state of Space.

I found this commercial fabric at the Knit and Stitch show and though it ideal for my space animals.  So this is the great bear and the little bear between Jupiter and Saturn.  Astonomically incorrect I am sure but that is were they wanted to be.  I learned how to the star "maps" in the "Sun, Moon and Stars" workshop with Jude. Some of them are real constellations reversed and some are just pure invention.

More animals, the southern hemisphere seems to have a more interesting collection that we do, living on the edge of London it is very difficult to see stars at all. So here they are swirling around.  I may rest this cloth for a little while as working on the dark cloth is difficult in electric light but I know it has a long way to go.

Jude is to talk about eyes, I had already added one to the whale(apologies for fuzzy photograph) but I am sure the other animals will benefit.

A friend sent me this.

Play day.....

Yesterday was fun.  Inspired by this , Painting in the Round on Ro Bruhn's blog we decided to have a little go yesterday.  Just so we didn't get carried away we decided on a few rules, the shape would be circles and we would each only use two colours.    We painted for ten minutes and then moved round.  This is the first round.

A bite of lunch while it they dried off and then we added black for a bit of drama.

 It was very interesting how the first marks inspired the second and how different they all were.  Sparked loads of ideas for "next time" .Thanks girls.

Ro Bruhn is proving to be a bit of an inspiration  at the moment and hopefully assiting me to reduce the ridiculous amounts of "stuff" I have aquired over the last 20 years.but more of that later.

"Space" is coming along nicely and I will post soon, delighted that Jude is going to continue the Magic Diaries next year.

I was really thown in my blogging routine by the loss of Slide.  Still searching for an alternative.

But will it stay in place,,,,

I need to wear a scarf when it turns chilly, so when I was fascinated when I saw this saw this on Michelle Ward's blog .

Now which version will stay put best?

It was great....

I loved my first live American Football game, the whole experience was such fun. This is me on Wembley Way, you can see I didn't intend to be cold but in fact it the weather was just right.

A lot of the day was about flags, giant ones were passed tround the crowd

Everyone had one to wave.

National anthems

Cheer leaders

and the game

 

Tampa Bay Buccaneers 18 - Chicago Bears 24

Goodnight Wembley, hopefully see you next year. That was some birthday treat!

NFL comes to London....

and this time I was there.  Every other year the Fan Rally in Trafalgar Square has clashed with an EG meeting and of course there has bee no contest........this year I was ecstatic when my friends pointed out that I could attend as we don't meet until next week.  So this morning found me in Trafalgar Square.    I think I have explained before the thing that hooked me onto American Football was seeing what is known as a Hail Mary pass in one of the early televised games in the 1980's.  I have been always useless at throwing and especially catching (always the middle in "pig in the middle")so this as far as I was concerned was magic.Today I threw a touchdown pass to Wes Welker.......well.....to be honest it was a picture of the delectable Wes and he didn't really catch it but I did put the ball through the hole.This has to be one of high spots of my life.  I know,.... simple soul.

It was a great day. The weather was literaly sparkling. There were all kinds of fun things going on.

and it was great to be entertained by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers cheer leaders

and the Chicago Bears  drum band

to see some of the players and coaches

and to see Cecil Martin up close.

 

It was a fun day and I am even more excited for tomorrow and the actual game.

Mars...

the red planet, the god of war and memories of  Journey into Space. Who else remembers sitting close to the radio, riveted by the adventures of Jet, Doc Mitch and Lemmy.   I have never thought about it before but that is probably where my love of science fiction started. Before that was Dick Barton, Special Agent, eat your heart out James Bond. Dark winter nights and a cup of Horlicks before bed.  But I digress, or perhaps I don't,  perhaps this is part of what belongs to slow cloth, the time to think or reminisce.  Here is the my red planet, with canals

and with explosions

Only one more sleep to the NFL game at Wembley, as neither the Bucs nor the Bears are "my " team I'm not sure who I will shout for, probably both if they make it an exciting game.Must be careful not to have son disown me.

A detour at Venus....

Over a week now since the Knit and Stitch.  I enjoyed the show this year, wasn't going to buy anything...but couldn't resist this...

from The Crochet Chain, enough to make a sweater in one huge ball,  just perfect for watching Australian Master Chef!!!!

All the planets are in place on Space but it needs a rest at the moment. This is Venus at the start, Goddess of Beauty, she is soft and a little bit sparkely.

 Goddess of Love she sends it out into the universe.

Other diversions were my most successful tarte tatin ever...

and yesterday under sky of the most amazing blue, a walk round the park and  through the woods at Knole 

 where we collected chestnuts and acorns and saw wondrous things...

and at home more wonder....a rainbow on the carpet.

 Excitment mounting because it is only one week to the NFL game at Wembley, my first live american football game,  a birthday present from my son.

Mercury.....

The planet nearest the sun and the first one to be put in place on  "Space"

Images of Mercury from theMariner 10 spacecraft show losts of craters and I was pleased how these turned out with just simple stitich. Mercury was of course the messenger of the gods so I gave it some wings.

and here it is in place.

 I have actually placed all the planets, I have missed out Earth because I have this dream in my head of making it the other side of the cloth. We shall see.