Snow dyeing, embroidery and a walk in the sunshine.

Not tutti-frutti sorbet, but some rather mucky snow –which melted pretty quickly despite sub-zero temperatures outside.

This is even more experimental than usual as I used some elderly Dylon cold dyes – heaven only knows why I had ‘Sunshine Yellow’, ‘Mandarin’, and ‘French Blue’ but that’s what they were and I decided it was time to use them up. Fingers crossed that they are not too old. They are batching by the boiler now and will be rinsed and washed tomorrow.

I worked on this last night – blah interim version on the left, ‘finished’ version on the right. I decided to use some in-your-face, why-did-I-ever-buy that? holographic gold thread and work FME squiggles in the jar-opener shape. And then I added some zigzag stars, with purl tails. Not sure it works but it’s ‘only a sample’ and it is no longer blah.

And today I did this with  the transfer dyed sheer and felt.  You can’t really see the felt under the sheer but I think it helps to intensify the colours. The stitch is a narrow satin stitch – it is a bit irregular, due partly to having a very loose top tension and partly to a dirty machine – things got better after I cleaned it. However I quite like the blips.

It is now in the washing machine shrinking – I hope. *

I only started working with these colours because they were, more or less, the colours of the original collage – but I have come to like them. I suppose they are a sort of split complementary, although I’m open to correction on colour theory!

In between all this textile activity we had a short but pleasant walk down the road to the golf course – although it was more of a tobogganing and snowball fighting course this morning. 

 

This is the last of my daily picture posts – and the last trees in the book. Cut up magazine photos, inspired by Mondrian's trees. 

* The purple piece hasn’t shrunk – which proves fairly conclusively that the felt that wouldn’t dye wouldn’t, because it is not viscose-wool felt. Mmm – I do have rather a lot of it.

It will transfer dye though – and I suppose I could always use it for padding a print table, which is what I bought it for originally …

 

Looks like three inches to me …

which is less than most people have had, but is quite enough, thank you.

[I would like to point out that I thought of this measuring technique quite independently of Mr Cheddar, who has posted a similar image on Facebook. Although a snazzy red ruler -  and more snow.]

As I haven’t posted a picture of the cherry tree for a while – here it is this morning. That is a colour photo, believe it or not.

 

 

 

 

 

As is this – our little lane.

 

 

 

 

 

Despite the quantities of snow available, I didn’t get round to snow dyeing - but I think there will still be some tomorrow. I have put the fabric into a soda soak, and this time I remembered the threads. I had assistance in winding the threads into hanks – Quality Control has only been going out when she absolutely has to, and so has some surplus energy, best used up by assisting with thread and yarn related activities.

I’m not sure why I didn’t get round to the dyeing, as I don’t seem to have achieved much in my day off-  apart from taking a few photos. O.K., 80+ photos.

I did draw this, described in the British Museum pamphlet as a ‘plate’. Those are, apparently, one-legged beasts biting each other’s necks.

 

And I pondered on this, which is the printed silk inspired by the fractured goldfish.  As you can see I added some couching. What you may not be able to see is that I then added some seeding, running stitch and free cross stitch in a failed attempt to make the jar opener shape stand out. And it’s all a bit blah.

I think I may have found a solution – we will see.

 

While I was out with the camera I took some photos of my favourite apple tree. The one that appeared in my C&G sketchbook.

 

 

 

Like this –  a credit card print, layered on a weaving and then tinted – several times …

Am I the only person in the UK …

who is sorry to get an extra day’s holiday tomorrow? I was quite disappointed when someone phoned from College to say it would be closed tomorrow because of the snow.

I am also quite relieved, because it means I don’t have to decide in the morning whether to try to get there and then spend the day either:

1. regretting not going in and wondering what I’m missing – or
2. looking out at the sky every five minutes and worrying about getting home.

And if the snow holds I can do some more snow dyeing.

Just to prove how sad I am – I got very excited when I spotted this in Wensleydale’s tool box. Not the blue and green insulation tape – although that’s quite interesting too – but the green and yellow stripy stuff, which is sleeving for wire.  I’m thinking couching or wrapping  – or beads, as it’s hollow.

Unfortunately he’s only got the one colour – but there is quite a lot of it, which he has nobly agreed to share.

As it was another morning on which we got up early, I got quite a lot done. [Really early, as I had a dental appointment at 9. Network Rail has, in its wisdom, decided to close one of the only two routes into Winchester from the south, so all that traffic is now driving past our front door. Very very slowly. Which meant allowing even longer to drive the few miles to the city centre than we normally do. ]

So after I got back from a cleaning and a telling off, I did  some experimentation with transfer dyes. I made a rubbing of the string stamp with transfer crayons and then covered the whole thing with transfer paint. Purple transfer paint, as you can see. Top right is the paper after I’d got all these prints from it. Anticlockwise from there the fabrics are a poly sheer, some poly cotton, a long thin piece of tapestry canvas, the felt that wouldn’t die –er – dye, and some more canvas.

The patterning is quite faint on some pieces, but they will make good backgrounds - for something yet to be decided. 

I also managed to finish this – which looked better before I coloured it. Turns out I misspoke in saying it came from a shield, the British Museum think it came from a sword – as I’m sure you all knew.

 

 

And I continued my exploration of Saxon relics with this. No idea what it is, the booklet didn’t say. It looks like gold inlaid into something, possibly leather or another metal. But that little blackwork-like decoration is beautifully done – much more precisely than in my drawing … It looks like the corner of a waistcoat, although I’m sure that it isn’t.

Guess what – another C&G tree! [Nearly at the end now]. This was ‘drawn’ with hot glue, then given a water colour wash [after it had cooled down, obviously]. I like drawing with hot glue – told you I was weird.

 

 

 

Speaking of drawing – have a look at Julia Griffiths Jones’ work. I think it is wonderful – I want to rush off to Wales to look at it. After it’s stopped snowing, obviously.

For the first time for months …

we had a Monday Meander.  Wensleydale is still finding walking quite difficult but he is fed up of being indoors, or only going where he can lean on a shopping trolley, so we took ourselves off to the Hillier Gardens.

It has been one of those lovely winter days which, as W.said, ‘we used to have’ – still, sunny, and very very cold. We had a look at the current textile exhibition, ‘Material World’, had a short walk in our favourite part of the gardens, the  winter garden, and then sought refuge in the cafe to warm up.

The exhibition seemed less interesting than it did last year – perhaps because many of the same people are exhibiting, or I’m getting pickier. Terrie the teacher has pieces in it, which are worth a look, and it is great if you want to buy interesting knitting wool – but as I am trying to reduce my wool stash, I passed by the alpaca, mohair, and locally grown and processed wool. [I coveted some bright pink mohair socks but I wasn't convinced they would survive my rather heavy handed washing.]

All this gadding about meant that I didn’t do very much else. I did finish this last night.  I realise it is a bit like a spot the difference competition – the only change from yesterday is the addition of some gold beads. The paler blurry bits in the background are not due to an inadequate scan but the colouring of the Colour Catcher.

Not sure why I’m so besotted with working with Colour Catchers – possibly because there are usually several lying around my workroom - which of course is because I don’t throw them away like a normal human being, I take them in there and iron them onto interfacing …

I did start a drawing this morning. It isn’t finished, because I want to colour the garnets red, with Inktense. The gold has been coloured with a metallic water colour pencil but you can be forgiven for not realising. It isn’t a ring, apparently, but some form of shield decoration. I love the wiggly shapes of the gold round the garnets, which were great fun to draw.

More wiggly shapes – repeating patterns made from the section of ‘tree’ on the left. The watercoloured ones fold up – and the explanatory label was added at the tutor's request. Good thing really or I wouldn’t have been able to remember what I’d done …

A more productive day …

probably because I could actually breathe. And I had a reasonable night’s sleep.

So I did some drawing.

I started with the jar opener collage, and a triptych/kimono shaped mask.

 

 

 

Then I drew it. All that shading was hard!

 

 

 

 

Then I scanned the drawing and played with it in Picasa. The only difficult bit was persuading Picasa to put the right date at the top. Not ‘April 2009’.

Can you tell I like blue?

I think these are the most interesting ideas to have come out of that collage – appliqué? Canvas work? Lots of interesting linear stitches?

I suspect Wensleydale is hoping it might turn into a real kimono. He has such faith.

That was the morning – in the afternoon I tried a machine version of this.

The machine version is also on a colour catcher - the scan doesn’t really show that I went a bit mad with automatic blobs in gold thread. It will probably get a few beads this evening.

 

 

 

 

Back to the trees.  The top one is [I kid you not]washing up liquid drizzled on wet Brusho. It works the opposite way to salt, but as you can see it spread a bit too far. It also works best with the expensive organic colourless washing up liquid – unless you want a yellow tree.

The bottom one is bleach, applied with a brush to black paper, but as it didn’t discharge much I added some silver pen lines.

Darn – missed!

Yesterday was our day to host a gathering of the clans Cheddar and Cheshire – eight adults, one little un, two dogs and a cat – although the cat effected a tactical withdrawal very soon after the arrival of the first dog.

Eating, drinking and drawing took place.

 

 

 

 

 

And by the time the last one had gone home – I had no energy left for posting.

Not much has happened today, apart from tidying up, de-Christmasing the house, and – at last – reading the course handbook for the degree.

It’s scary. And led to the gathering of some rather disorganised notes into one large ring-binder. Good job I’d already started to gather things in it, before I realised the accumulated wisdom of three years would need to be assessed  …

I also looked at all the recommended reading for the different modules. I think ABE books may be getting rather a lot of business from me in the future.

And here we have some more trees – paper cuts on the left, an ‘undrawing’ [i.e. removing details from a charcoal coat] on the right.

A Happy New Year to you all!

It doesn’t seem long since we were awaiting the beginning of 2000 – and now it’s nearly 2010. Where did those 10 years go? Of course when I think about it a lot has happened – two marriages, one granddaughter, four years of  C&G, one granddaughter, nearly 4 years of retirement, one granddaughter, a term of another degree, one granddaughter. [Got to get your priorities right.]

Unfortunately my priorities today, after going up to the shop for emergency supplies of Lemsip and Kleenex, have been drifting about the house complaining about how ill I feel. And sneezing. So not much has been achieved. Wensleydale has done some wonderful cooking for tonight [venison bourguignon] but I don’t think I will be able to do it justice.

But, let’s look on the bright side.  It isn’t raining. Yet.

After a little research [interesting to read my posts of a year ago] I know that I started posting  a daily photo on Jan 7th, 2009, so I   need a few more to complete the year – and possibly some more to compensate for the gaps. So, at the risk of boring you still further with images of trees, I will probably go on to the end of the C&G  sketchbook.

There are trees in this one – but they got a bit fragmented and interwoven.

Thanks to Carole and JP for their kind comments on yesterday’s post. Mmm – dare I tell JP that I did Creative Sketchbooks and hardly drew anything?  However a lot of the techniques I learned on it appeared in the C&G sketchbook – like cutting holes in your pages …