Look what DS just found – must be around 1995.
I remember the dress – Monsoon, size 14, possibly a 12.
Pure silk, wore it to a friends winter wedding with a long jacket and a 20’s style hat.
Notice the hair – long and no colouring.
Those were the days.
Yesterday I finally motivated myself to get working again. It was hard. At 1pm, I was wandering around feeling lost, at 3.15pm I was running around trying to finish and get home before the school bus. Isn’t that just typical. I sorted out a beautiful piece of hand dyed rayon cloth to hand stitch.
And did you say how tidy it was looking? Not anymore! Back to normal. I took my little netbook with me yesterday but I couldn’t receive emails – only send. Very odd.
I’ve moved the room around – the sewing machine table was under the window and it was freezing! The unit is SO cold for the first hour and then it warms up. But it is generally –3C overnight and only gradually getting to 4C during the day. We are all fed up of this cold weather. We still have loads of snow in the garden and the hills are white over.
I had long sheets of bondaweb painted with acrylics and the paint was starting to flake off everywhere so I had a bonding session with the iron. Next stage is to make some Towers, but as I want them for the Festival of Quilts I can’t really show them here first. I will have to show tantalising snippets.
OK, have a good day – I’m off to Newcastle for a haircut and colour and some retail therapy!
Clockwise from top LHS; Alkanet (didn’t work, need to extract with alcohol), Sticklac (lovely pinky purple), Safflower (disappointing), Walnut leaves (lovely green colour but needs a lot of leaves)
Excuse the plastic bags, but here are the results of a weeks worth of dyeing.
What else can you do?
The new bathroom suite money is converted to Bernina’s, horn cabinet (delivery May unfortunately) and various accessories. The Bernina’s arrived today but I can’t find the enthusiasm to unpack them.
Thursday, Friday and Saturday is my “local” needlework show in Newcastle. The Textile Forum have a stand and if you make it you’ll see some of my work (if there is space I wasn’t at set up today). There are also Artgirlz charms, Texere yarn variety packs, Angelina and lots of colours of Sari Yarn.
All space dependant of course.
Impressions 4012
Impressions 4013
Impressions 3009
And if you are waiting for an update on the studio – well lets just say this; Don’t ever trust anyone (especially not a man) to read the policy correctly. Make sure you do it yourself, insist on seeing the paperwork. I have no idea what comes next.
More snow for us, not too much this time.
I find myself fascinated with the mark making of animal tracks. I must transfer these to my art somehow.
We had a bit of an adventure today. Not a welcomed one. On a Sunday we take DS to an art class with a friend of mine – in Rothbury, which is not too far away, but up a steep road and over the moors for a short distance. We went to collect DS and the road was clear and then 10 minutes later on the way back the road was covered and slippery as hell.
We were following a 4X4 going up the hill, over the top and then down and going really slowly and lots of distance between us – then coming down the hill there was a car in the ditch and the 4X4 stopped to look!!!!! (no need there was already another car helping). We couldn’t stop.
Luckily nothing coming up the hill so Ian swerved around, missed the 4X4 by inches and managed to straighten up (I thought we were going into the ditch too). There was another car coming up and I was frantically flashing the lights to get him to slow down (he did thank goodness, but he did look a bit worried!) Then another car in a ditch on the left just before the main road junction – and then on the main road another car well and truly in the ditch at a right angle to the road. It was totally mad and utter chaos. I phoned my friend who runs the art classes and told her to get the kids out and get home asap!
I do hope the police got there quickly because there were going to be more accidents as the road was just a skating rink and with the sharp gradients it was just impossible to control the cars….. I took these a few miles down the road when it was safer.
Back here at home (about 7 miles) there was no snow on the road at all.
I’ve said it before – roll on Spring please.
How perfect is this?
Whilst burying Skittles we found a rabbit skull. Look at DS’s sad but intent face.
We’ll make a biologist of him yet.
DS decided to put the skull on top of the stones. We went to Ikea yesterday and came back with a fleece baby blanket for Star to snuggle up to in the pod. He is sitting outside just now, looking all lonely.
Sunday we went to Cragside – the Lake is still frozen. The coffee was wonderful (top marks to the National Trust for keeping soya milk). It is still freezing here – It’s school holidays this week and it’s always cold, wet and muddy. Not much fun for the kids. (Or the parents).
The unit is now ready to use. Notice boards are up with a schedule of things to do, I’ve put up paintings and hangings to make it colourful and feel like home. But it is still cramped and its hard to get going again.
I’ve been FME with the Pfaff, I do HATE having a plate over the feed dogs – you hit it with the hoop and it knocks you off course. Why on earth can’t they just add the dropping mechanism? Surely for a machine that costs ÂŁ600 they could add it in? And, my big moan – I couldn’t get it stitching with gold metallic at all.
Can I stamp my foot and scream “I want my Bernina back!”?
Actually, I think I did do this.
Are you mourning the loss of Alexander McQueen? I am. What a waste of a life and such wonderful talent.
I have three favourite designers – Alexander McQueen, Vivienne Westwood and Galliano. I remember seeing one of AMcQ’s dresses in an exhibition at Belsay Hall – it was my favourite in the show.
If you want to see some wonderful images you can see some here at Google.
And today I went to feed my rabbits and only one came running out. Skittle has died. He was 6.5yrs old.
We are all very, very sad indeed.
Here is the last photo I took on Feb 2nd, Skittles highlighted.
This was Jan 1st.
And here they are having Christmas lunch, Skittles is at the front. Aren’t they beautiful creatures?
They often sat snuggled up to each other, poor Star will be on his own now.
*snuffle*
(Alternative post title “Keeping your hands busy during the evenings so you don’t nibble”)
I’m going to create a series of works I’ve named “5 process cloth”.
1. Dye
2. Paint
3. Stitch
4. Bead
5. Piece
The process is a l-o-n-g one. I should time myself, hundred plus hours for each piece.
Maybe even hundreds of hours. Here one is in the process of being stitched.
Rayon fabric hand dyed with procion dye, markal paint over Indian printing blocks,
threads by Stef Francis and 21stC Yarns. Beads will be various as collected over the years.
Here is an example from a few years ago.
