When I got up this morning …

I knew that there were four things I had to do, in addition to al the usual chores:

1. Make some soup
2. Empty the waste paper bins
3. Get my hair cut.
4. Go to Holland and Barratt for some stuff.

So after the usual chores I emptied my workroom bin – and then got distracted into tidying the room a bit more. In the process I came across the materials I’d gathered to try something from Lois Walpole’s book – and got distracted into making a useful pot to put things in.

If you think it looks as if it’s made from a plastic bottle and a plastic bag – you’d be right.

Walpole uses coloured plastic bags, but we don’t have many of those, so I used a transparent one – and I like the result. However, I think she also uses bigger bottles, and this one [1 litre] was really too small to work properly. You bend the uprights back down under the weaving, and they needed to be longer to stay in place.

Then it was lunchtime – and I remembered about the soup. Reach for the can opener…

After lunch I went upstairs to get ready to go to the hairdressers – and fell over the bins I’d put on the landing for emptying and forgotten about.

And on the way down town I realised that I’d forgotten the shopping list.

I did remember to get my hair cut – and I went into H&B and got what I thought I needed – luckily I was right – and I did the bins when I got home. Still cross about the soup, though – canned is not the same as home made.

Of course, I haven’t forgotten to play with Sumopaint in the evenings.

This is the usual blurred and smudged gradient – very moody

 

 

 

 

 

- with two more layers stamped with brushes -

 

 

 

 

 

- and different filters added – like Sphere Designer here, on the second layer. I love this one, it is very – er - spacy.

 

 

 

Just for fun, I tried applying the same filter – Kaleidoscope – to each layer in turn – this is the last layer I added -

 

 

 

 

the middle layer – [‘doyleys in space’?]

 

 

 

 

the background -

 

 

 

 

 

 

and all three merged together – definitely the least interesting.

 

 

 

 

 

But this one is my favourite - Wave Lab applied to the background to make wonderful flowers.

I think it would make a great starting point for a [restrained] touch of embroidery.

You may have wondered…

what I was going to do with the hank of sari silk [although some of it feels like sari polyester] I bought earlier in the week.

You and me both.

However, today it told me it wanted to be a Lois Walpole bowl,  in these muted colours, so I had to go through the hank removing the brighter ones.

I have another piece of this corrugated card, so I hope there will be enough of the other colours to make a second bowl.

I also did a proper landscape drawing [sort of], on some paper which had been washed with inks. I picked out some of the foliagey shapes with Inktenses, and deepened some of the colours in the ‘water’ and ‘grass’. I’m quite pleased with it, and may have another go.

This was all this afternoon – in the morning we went to a small exhibition by students from Winchester School of Art, in the Theatre Royal. I was particularly impressed by Amy Madron’s projected images and Melanie Evans’ layered sheers with screen printing [?] and a tiny amount of stitch. Worth visiting if you are passing, although it finishes on Monday so you’ll have to hurry.

You will probably have guessed that I’m avoiding talking about the landscape I started on Wednesday. I spent an hour or so last night, while listening to a rerun Rebus [don’t get me started on what a waste of Ken Stott/Ian Rankin that series is] putting running stitches in the hills, and half an hour this afternoon taking them out again. Too heavy [I’ll have to go down to a single thread of floss or hand stitch with machine embroidery thread] and I need to think very carefully about stitch direction.

While I was unpicking I pondered on why I don’t want to machine embroider it, although everyone who's commented on it obviously thinks I’m mad not to. Partly it’s because I’m not a very competent or confident machine embroiderer – and yes, I know I'd get better if I practiced, but I don’t particularly want to. Embroidery for me is a slow, contemplative process - and machining isn’t. I also find machine stitch quite restrictive – basically all you can produce is a line. It may wiggle, it may have blobs, it may have loops of the bobbin thread showing – but it is still a line. And usually an unbroken line is not what I want – although in this case it might be...

I did take a good look at the piece and to try to decide how I might machine embroider it – and it didn’t actually solve the problem of the orientation of the stitching. It would just be quicker to sew and  slower to unpick.

So sorry machine embroiderers –  I admire what you do, but I don’t want to do it myself.

Just like half-marathon running – ‘Go Mrs Cheese Minor’ who will be hitting the streets of Gosport/Lee on the Solent tomorrow while the rest of the family cheer her on.