Going round in circles...........

One of the things I like about our EG meetings is that you never know what is going to happen, or what you are going to learn.  If we brush aside how to restore the fuses, which I didn't really want to know about, there were two other delights yesterday.  One was Susanne's demonstration of how to cast on a Moebius Scarf, this a You Tube demo link and this is a picture of mine at the moment.

I have no idea if it is correct and won't know until I cast off.  I had a terrible time fighting against "casting on " with the wool in the wrong hand.  Great fun, thanks Susanne.

The other was Fay's heads up on a new book by Jan Messent, Celtic, Viking and Anglo-Saxon Embroidery.. Gorgeous. I have ordered a copy. Thanks Fay.

I have been very remiss with my postings on Ideas of Inspiration, the first part of may was glittering gold, hope this will do.

The second part of May was the letter E, I think these will fit, I found them on my last visit to London

Just realised this one qualifies on both counts. Hurrah!

Being nosy...

I think I have a lot of stuff but Ruth Rae has just  re-organised her studio  and has posted a host of little videos giving glimpses into her collection.  Wow, how many drawers of buttons?  I have a copy of Ruth's book  "Layered, tattered & stitched"

This is a card I made

Must do more.

Lazy bones.....

lying in the sun.....yes we have sunshine, proper warm, clear blue sky sunshine. At the weekend too. What a treat.

I haven't really been lazy, spending most of my time defending my lettuce from the invasion of slimy creatures. Ugh.  I was going to cut one pot and thought "No, I'll leave that another day"  Next day...gone! Ah, the joys of vegetable gadening. 
My other achievment is that I completed my vessel from my day with  Lynda  I loved the whole process of turning a cardboard tube and a piece of felt, through this (please notice the tasteful artistic background)

to this

I have also turned the piece which started out like this.

into this book cover.

I wanted to go to Lynda's two day workshop at Art Van Go in June but unfortunately it clashes with something I haven't mentioned yet.. 

"The Matchgirls".  I have been helping out with the Youth Theatre of the society I have been associated with for 30 odd years.  I retired from "performing" some years ago,or so I thought,  but when I was asked to play a gin soaked old biddy, how could I resist?  "The Matchgirls" is a musical  based on the strike by the workers at the Bryant and May factory in 1888. One of the first time women bnded together to stand up for themselves against their working condition, which for them included the risk of  the horrors of "phossy jaw".     I am putting the costumes together which is going very slowly at the moment and gives me a huge guilt complex if I pick up any other kind of sewing. 

But for now the sun is shining and the garden beckons.  Have a good weekend.

Go look see......

The best of International Garden Photographer 2010 in The Guardian. I just love this  photograph of a pear by Magdalena Wasiczek (if the link doesn't work just Google her name for some stunning photographs.)

There are 18 other photographs on the Guardian site

  No intended breach of copyright, please contact if you have a problem and the post will be removed.

What a day this has been............................

a day with Purple Missus.  Early this morning I had a look at Lynda's blog and voted on the quilts she had there, a few hours later I was touching the real things. Magic.
If you follow Lynda's blog you can imagine what a wonderful day we have had.  We have played with scrim, Lutradur, pelmet vilene, Xpandaprint, gesso, paint, heat guns, soldering irons, machine stitching and good old fashioned hand stitiching. There was not one piece of work which was like another, each piece was an example of its makers creativity.
 This is a piece I did with Lutradur, Xpandaprint, ink and salt and a little touch of paint

and this was the piece of kitchen roll I had underneath it.

Same paint, same salt, different fabric.

I meant to re-do this but became so busy I forgot.  Lynda in full flow.

and these were some of the beautiful example she brought with her.

Can't wait for tomorrow when I can continue the story when I do the next stages on my own "vessel". If you ever have the chance to do a workshop with her, grab it she will get your creative juices. 

 Wait for a twenty minutes for a bus and then two come along at once!

I have been stagnating for ages.  Two days ago I was  lucky enough to secure a place on the  course with Jude of Spirit Cloth, I am so excited and, now today,  something at the other end of the textile spectrum a workshop which has awakened all my love of texture and rust and mixed media. 

What a great couple of  days these  have been..............

Waitrose 1, Sainsbury's 0 ........

When I spend money, I like good, pleasant service.  I know, I know but I am just an old fashioned girl.  Last week Waitrose and Sainsbury's were out of items I buy regularly.  I made enquiries as to what had happened, both stores promised to investigate and call me.  Waitrose rang later the same day, ten days later I am still waiting to hear from Sainsbury's. Marks and Spencer are minus 59 at the moment. I won't bore you with the details, it would take too long.

Here is a combination of my favourite store, John Lewis  and one of my favourite singers, Billy Joel.


I am not really wanting to advertise,  I just think this is clever and charming.

Top marks to the lady in the Post Office this morning when I had to organise a complicated,  special, registered package. She dealt with it all with such patience.

Let's all complain when we have bad service and find someone to pass on a commendation for good service. Perhaps that way shopping may become more of a pleasure. I feel better now,  it's a long time since I had a rant.

Now would anyone like to hear my views on Self Service Tills??????????????

A real gentleman......

We were looking forward to having Lorna Bateman talk to us at EG this weekend, her talk was to be called "An Africa Experience". Unfortunately due to the volcanic cloud disruption Lorna was actually marooned in Africa. We hope she can come to us another time.  To cut a long story short we were more than fortunate to have Richard Box take her place. Generous, informative and very funny, what more could you ask in a speaker. My piece of paper was covered in notes which I hope I can decipher. I bought his book "Drawing Techniques" and I am kicking my self for not buying his DVD "Drawing for the Terrified". Richard  confessed to not being very computer oriented and  mystified us when he talked about "up-building" photographs to a computer . I have "up-built"  Richard on You Tube.



 .

Teesha Moore has posted 4 video tutorials on making fabric journal covers.  Looks like a fun way to reduce stash.

No flights......

I'm doing my own thing!

My sympathies to all those affected by lack of flights.  I think, by now, everyone in the UK must know someone who has had their holiday cancelled or who has had a struggle to get home.

I think I have said before, I don't know why we ever need to fight amongst ouselves, Mother Nature will win out every time.

A Novel idea.....

in a report from The Guardian of a  Sewing Cafe in Paris where you can hire a sewing machine or just stop in for a coffee and a chat. Could it catch on here in the UK?

Last Wednesday, as I think I mentioned, I went to the Van Gogh Exhibition at the Royal Academy of Art. Having left it too late to pre book a ticket I joined the queue, two and a half hours someone said, "no", I thought, " can't possibly be that long"...............................two and a half hours later I climbed the steps to the exhibition rooms!  Fortunately my time had been passed in conversation with two charming and very different gentleman.  I thank you gentlemen for your company and your fascinating conversation.

I loved the exhibition based on Vincent's letters to his brother Theo.  More than once I overheard the comment, that,  without Theo there would have been no Van Gogh!  The letter had wonderful little drawings where Vincent explained to Theo  the paintings he had just created.  In some cases, for me,  more touching than the paintings themselves.

Here is my contribution to this months Ideas of Inspiration, the theme is Yellow.  Who was, for me the master of yellow?  Van Gogh.  Here, with apologies to Vincent,  is my "Sun"

and from a Calendar Girls swap,  a couple of years back, some "Sunflowers".

From the sublime(Vincent's.... not mine) back to reality I am off to watch the first "debate" of the Party Leaders.!!!

A couple of years back I discovered Scribbler and played with it lots and then I forgot about it while I played with  newer toys.....today Deb had a link to, not only Scribbler but, heaven help us, Version 2.

and how about a rose!

I'm supposed to be doing the washing!

Give a girl an idea......

My last post was about making fabric roses, this is my latest.. made from another of John Lewis' faux batik cottons and bits.

Lynda picked up on this, from myself and Doreen, being Lynda she took it to a whole different dimension.  Talk about outside the box.  Go look here.  Gorgeous.

On my "to do" list is a visit to the V&A to see the quilts exhibition which is on until July, having nearly missed the Van Gogh exhibition at the Royal Academy(more of this later)  I found this fascinating video while checking the dates and then wandering around the excellent V& A site. If you like quilts take a moment to look.  Tracy Chevalier wrote "Girl with a Pearl Earing" so I look forward to the book she was researching.

There is also,( heaven help us, I'll never get anything done),  a wall of quilts where you can add your own quilt. Here is one I recognised from the blogs I follow. Deb of More Whiffs, Glimmers and Leftovers

Quilt of Quilts

Stars Out of Place

View this quilt on the V&A website

http://www.vam.ac.uk/microsites/quilts/quilt/detail/id/597

No wonder I'm always running out of time!!!!

Last week Ati's Little World  had pictures of shabby chic roses ,she gave a link to Anni's blog and Anni she gave a link to the tutorial by Roben-Marie. So here are the roses I've made.

Fun and quick to make, and really give a lift to an old cardigan. I love this sharing community.

I made a necklace as well

 The black links are fishing swivels,

 a tip given to me a by a lady whose necklace I admired.  I believe you can buy them in other finishes but my local  fishing tackle shop only had black,  The advantage is because they swivel the necklace hangs well.

No fooling..........

..............just Happy Easter.

Fame at last.....

I just want to thank  Maggie Grey for mentioning my blog as part of her article on Textile blogs in the Workbox Magazine. I was so thrilled. 

Another lovely surprise in the latest issue of Stitch was to find an article, again by Maggie, on Lynda Monk and Carol McFee.  As you know, I'm a fan.

Day out continued....

I am still managing on my laptop, my hard drive had been corrupted and I am waiting to get it back and, more importantly to see what has been saved.  Fortunately I have a fairly recent backup so hopefully it won't be too bad.

I promised the other part of my lovely day out.

After leaving Margaret I went to the British Museum to re-visit the Dark Ages galleries and also to see a part of the Stafforshire hoard which was on show.  It was great to see these objects just as they had been found, encrusted in mud, with the gold gleaming through.   Sandy has some great pictures on her blog, my camera wasn't up to the task.

From there, a quick visit to the Cloth House for a browse, an eaves drop on a guy who was buying yards of fabric to make a sort of seaside tent  and a very small purchase, just half a metre of this

Don't ask, I haven't a clue what I'm going to do with it.

Next port of call was the stangely named Haunch of Venison which I didn't know existed until Margaret  told me.  So pleased she did as I was able to catch the final days of an exhibition by Chiharu Shiota. 

This wonderful structure was made of window frames, it made you just want to wander round and gaze up and through, and I so wanted to sit on one of the chairs. 

In the next room was something completely different! Click on the photographs for a closer view.

Like something out of Sleeping Beauty, this webbing was all made out of thread, apparently it took two weeks to install, but how one would know where to start I can't imagine.  I took this from inside a web tunnel, it was an amazing feeling.

In the next room were some smaller pieces  

No less amazing in how they had been constructed.

This wasn't all but will have to do for now. 

Hurrah.....

today it was  warm enough to brave the draughty station platforms so I took myself to London.  I had a special reason for wanting to go up, for some time I have been following Margaret Cooter as she took a foundation course in Art and Design at the City Lit college in London.  Today was the first day of their graduate showcase. I enjoyed the exhibition as a whole but I thought Margaret's little corner was very special. Named "Journey" and made of paper clay tablets on long fragile legs it is a piece which changes from every angle.

This is the base of the "staircase"

which Margaret describes as being like those "we find ourselves climbing constantly in nightmares"

On the wall was part of her "travel writing"the aim of which is to "draw a straight line ata constant speed, perhaps pausing at station stops - making real-time records of invisible spaces.

Here Margaret is showing her current piece of "travel writing"

also in the photo is Sandy Snowden who I was pleased to meet along with Carol Wilkes, and we had a lovely discussion about rust dying.  How civilised is that?  ( I'm sorry I didn't get the gentleman's name)

On they way out there was more of Margaret's work. 

I loved these. 

Apologies for the standard of the photographs, my proper PC is in dock so I haven't been able to tweak. It is always good to meet fellow bloggers and this was no exception. More if my super day out later in the week when, hopefully, I will have my machine back.

The sun is shining......

the birds are doing their thing.  Yeah.

This morning, inspired in part by Lynda's blog and part by a Mother's Dat gift from my son of some holographic embossing powder (along with some interesting papers) and probably by the sunshine, I had a little play.  Ages since I've done anything like this.

I unearthed a piece which I had made when taking the workshops on Fibre in-Form, Scrunched up torn fabric, stitched onto pelmet vilene I had painted it with blue and bronze acrylics from Atlantis Art Materials and then I started in with the holographic powder.  I was still lacking something so I dug out my gold flakes and added them till I was happy.

I then mounted it behind a samll gold frame, it is only just over 5"x5"

The may be a week to go but as far as I am concerned today is the first day of Spring.

Snow cloth finished.

When I was wondering how to proceed,  Jude gave me the advice to "let it do", such advice is precious and I tried to follow it.  I outlined the the main areas of colour and then I started to fill them in just as I would when doodling.  As I worked I realised that there were even more subtle changes of colour so then became a little area too.  I  tried to use a different stitch for each area just as I would make different marks.

The colours are still not quite right, I've tried indoors and out.  There is much more contrast between the purples and green. For the moment I have turned it into a bag which I will use for the EG South East Area Day Tote challenge, I have made it so that it can be converted into a cushion later on.  It has taken me two months and I have to say I enjoyed every minute.  I would like to try it again sometime, either with stronger colours or  maybe in monochrome.

When I was chosing the material for the backing the salesgirl in John Lewis said "Well, the embroidery's quite RAW!".  I smiled sweetly and said "I think you mean FREE!". Everyone's a critic!!!

I don't want to gossip.....

but did you know that a certain lady of uncertain years is spending a lot of time with this young man.

OK I'll confess.  I was given a Wii Fit Plus for Christmas and over the last few weeks I have slipped into the habit  of spending 20 minutes each morning with "my trainer".  I strive for perfection in the hope that he will say "You're postures fantastic.".(He is not giving me a gold star here, it is just the flash on the TV screen) Seriously I am really enjoying using the system and I am beginning to see the benefits apart from having a good giggle. You should see me trying to fly in my chicken suit! I leave you with that thought, I hasten to add I have absolutely no affliation .