A chapter of accidents.

1. The bin liners I painted yesterday to see if they would take acrylic paint. They looked fine to begin with but when I tried to cut them up to weave with them, the strips gave way under any tension at all. Into the bin.
2. Then I discovered the paint had come off on my cutting mat…
3. The black bin bag which I tried free machining on. Not a good idea without some sort of supportive backing. Into the bin.
4. Waking at 2 am and not getting back to sleep till 8, when I would have been better getting up.
5. The layered [shrinkwrap, black bin liner, iridescent film, black felt], then free machined, then shrunk piece I had hoped would reveal interesting layers when zapped – didn't. The layers seemed to meld together. Not into the bin, but definitely more boring than I’d hoped, though the burnt felt wasn’t bad..
6. The plastic patchwork – which worked fine till the very end. [It was a bit slippery, so my piecing was not very accurate, but I could live with that.] Then I broke a needle. In trying to find the tip of the broken needle I broke my stitch ripper [don’t ask], and when I started again, the machine decided to rip the plastic not once but twice. Which meant replacing most of one block and a complete section of border.
7. Quilting the result – despite heavy pinning, the plastic shifted all over the place, which means I have to unpick it. Tomorrow – I’ve had enough. Fortunately I have another stitch ripper.

Rather better news – our anniversary present to ourselves arrived, just in time for Babybel’s daddy’s birthday – not to mention that of Babyboy,  who is due around the same time.

I’ve had fun playing with it.

It’s a Panasonic, as recommended by A., and is going to take a bit of getting used too.

Quality Control made a good model for a slightly more elegant image than

 

 

 

 

this one – not taken with the new toy, but when she dozed off on the scanner. Cat scan.

 

 

 

 

This is even less elegant – but interesting – a rotting apple in the garden. 

W. will get a look in, I promise – if only because he knows more about photography than me.

 

And the other good news is that Mark is finished – maybe. I’ve run out of green wool, but I fancy making him into a little cushion, so may add something else round the sides. Macro close up on the left so you can see the shards of coke can hidden in the ‘grass’. Not sure why the other one has ended up with an orange cast, but it is brilliant example of the way shadows are the complementary colour to the object <g>.

Three for the price of one.

A combination of college, Babybel and a stomach bug you don’t want to read about has made me get a bit behind with the photo challenge.

College was busy, but more productive for me personally than it has been for a while. I got my draft essay back [no problems, go away and write it], had my photos taken and, in a very positive peer review session, got some good suggestions about my 3D piece and about how I should present it in the exhibition. I don’t know whether I’ll have time/motivation to make changes to the piece itself, but the suggestion about display was easy to follow up, involving only a trip to Staples, which is conveniently close to Babybel’s nursery. All I need to do now is remember to take some scissors and our long arm stapler next week for construction purposes. The great advantage of making something deliberately grungy is that you can make the presentation grungy too…

The down side was that we were unexpectedly given more homework – the  obscurely phrased ‘Mark as stitch x 50’ – which I take to mean 50 examples of stitch used to make marks. This is on top of the [non-draft] version of the essay, and the open-ended Personally Managed Sketchbook and Personal Cloths. The up side of that is that I feel quite enthused about stitch as mark [SAM?] – perhaps because it will be nice to get back to doing some proper stitch.

I did think of stitching on used colour catchers, assuming I’ve got 50, but in the middle of an insomniac morning, decided a better idea would be to find one of my large pieces of too-multicoloured-to-use-in-a-proper-piece hand dye, and work into that, rather as I might doodle on a randomly painted piece of paper. Of course finding a suitable piece was more difficult than I anticipated – too small, too big, too dominating a pattern, too good to use for that – but I did find this, and a selection of threads which may or may not match, because I picked them out in artificial light.

So have I got started on all this homework? Of course not. After mucking around with PSE, I spent the afternoon sitting in the conservatory [pleasantly warm if not sunlit] and working on the beaded bag, which I feel I ought to finish before starting anything else. And drinking tea and listening to Radio 3’s ‘Light Music Weekend’, which is a delight for anyone brought up with the Light Programme in the 50s.

But I digress – back to the photo challenge.

Wednesday's was ‘Hands’. This started off with the Surreal photomontage effect from PFAEC, but got simplified and filtered.

 

 

 

Thursday was ‘Sunflare’, but not much sun, so I used a holiday photo which needed a bit of sun added to it.

 

And today’s is ‘Animal’, for which there was really only one choice.

Quality Control meets the Cubists – or rather the Cubism effect from PFAEC, with afterthought sepia/glow in Picasa. She really needed more cubes and more distortion, but I think I was up to 25ish layers before I got bored and gave up.

 

 

 

 

These will probably be the last photos for which I use PSE, as my student’s version of CS5 arrived today [very prompt service from Adobe, Germany to Hampshire in 2 days!] so I’m looking forward to playing with that while continuing to enjoy a nostalgic weekend on Radio 3.

The eyes have it.

Ouch.

As you may have guessed from that dreadful pun, today's challenge is ‘eyes’.

After struggling for a time with the question of how you photograph your own eyes, I realised it didn’t actually specify my eyes.

So I found an unwilling and somewhat wriggly model, and after taking lots of photos of fur and ears and other bits we won’t mention, managed this.

Just be glad you’re not a mouse.

Another attempt at the ‘Fauve’ effect from PFAEC – seemed appropriate, somehow.

Slow progress this weekend …

caused by a combination of the after-effects of insomnia – and Wensleydale re-arranging my room so that he could get to the window, to replace the old curtains with a much more practical roller blind. My room being in the state it is, this involved quite a lot of rearranging – but as a result I no longer have window coverings which dangle in the paint.

This meant that yesterday I couldn’t get at my machine to finish off the last drawer lining – and as the blind-erecting turned into an overnight job [as in, ‘Oh, b****r, I've put it up back to front, let’s have a drink and I’ll start again tomorrow’] – I made a sketch book.

I had already made some layered backgrounds, as suggested in Gwen Hedley’s new book, so I used those for some of the pages. My covers seem to get more vestigial as I go on – in this case I just took off the address label, removed half of the internal flap and stapled the other half to make a pocket, ‘ strengthened’  [maybe] the spine and added the pages. As I’ve got a bit bored with using elastic to try to hold my sketchbooks shut – this one has a rather glitzy red ribbon.

The rather odd internal stitch patterns are one of Keith smith’s 3 section sewings, which he calls Beethoven’s Fifth – I think because it makes zigzags on the spine, which I forgot to photograph.

I had to cut down the paper to make the pages fit the mailer – which meant I had some left-overs. So what can you do with left-over paper?

Make a book of course. This is a rather more elaborate cover, made from a scrap of the drawer linings – but a much less elaborate binding.

 

 

Today, when I could access the sewing machine again, I finished the last drawer – the rubber band drawer.I hope you can see the specially made dust bunnies.

The whole piece isn’t quite finished. I am still pottering around with the contents of the string drawer – I know it needs something more but I can’t work out what.

Then I decided I’d better tackle the paperwork – or ‘gathering together all the widely distributed stitch samples and putting them in the workbook’ work.

The problem with putting 3D samples in a work book is that they are 3D. I can make a workbook lumpy with 2D samples, so you can imagine what this one looks like.

But just in case you can’t, here are pictures.

That’s a rejected string sample trying, but failing, to keep it all under control. Now I need to add some words of explanation [‘I’m nuts’?] and the all-important evaluation, decide on what I’m going to do with the string drawer, do it - and it’s all finished. [I am feeling a bit pressurised because I can’t make the hand–in session and I have promised to get the 3D piece and my essay in early. Fool.]

Then I used the last of the left-over paper to make another book. Really vestigial, this one, as I experimented with staples to hold the pages in.

Unfortunately they have failed, so I will have to stitch it after all…

No wonder I feel knackered.

 

As does someone else, after a hard day – er - sleeping.

‘Cats sleep anywhere’.

I must apologise …

to everyone in the UK whose weather has deteriorated today.

It is entirely my fault.

I bought a sun hat yesterday. 

We went with Babybel, her mum, dad, and dog, to the wood festival at Queen Elizabeth Country Park, where a good time was had by all. Babybel was equally fascinated by a heavy horse pulling logs, a man carving with a chain saw, and drawing in the children’s activities tent.

But it was very hot, so on the way out I bought a hat.

And today it has been cloudy and cool.

It did mean I had no more excuses, and had to face up to going out in the garden and screen printing.

I made some freezer paper stencils, which is my preferred method – not that I know a wide range of methods…

This was the first, and the least successful. Note to self – metallic fabric paint does not work well for screen printing.

 

This one, inspired by our cupressus hedge, was more successful. Apologies to those who dislike cupressus, but it does have fascinating fronds. B****r to cut out, though.

As you may have noticed, I like positive/negative patterns.

 

 

This was the most successful – or is it just my liking for 60s patterns obscuring my judgement?

Some of the colour choices are a little odd, based on what came to light in the hand-dye stash, and setting myself to use up some fabric paints I’ve had for far too long. [Note to self – pearlised fabric paints don’t work too well for screen printing either.]

I found something else in the stash cupboard while I was in there.

 

 

 

I ended up with 20 screen printed ‘drawings’ - some on fabric and some on paper. Not all of them will go in the homework book, and those that do will probably get some stitch or more printing – I fancy a leafy linocut – except it won’t be lino…

I also think I’ll use up my transparent fabric paints with some sun prints – anyone know if sunprints work on paper? That’s assuming I haven’t driven the sun away permanently.

Of course, when the sun did come out this afternoon, I forgot to wear my sun hat.

Busy doing nothing …

I’m afraid that my enthusiasm for the 100 drawings has disappeared – I think I was probably energized by all the adrenaline associated with the end of term, but now I've wound down.

I did make some preparations. 

I’ve had the felt to make myself a printing surface for a loooong time – so long that I had used it for something else, bought some more, and used a lot of that. But I managed to stretch it out to cover a bit of plywood Wensleydale found for me. Although, as you can see, it’s not that well stretched.

I was going to use it for some screen printing – but look at the sunshine! Far too hot to screen print – the ink would have dried in seconds. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

So I sat in one of the chairs and worked on this - two pockets for a zapper holder.  But now it’s got to the stage where I need to use the machine and the weather is to nice to sit inside. So I'll have to find some more hand embroidery to do. Or some drawing …

There is a forecast of rain [possibly] – but they‘ve been forecasting rain [possibly] for weeks now and we’ve barely had a drop.

We have a feeling that Quality Control is feeling better – although, as JP guessed, we have to take her back to the vets next week for a check up. It could be because she is back to making her beautiful flying leaps [followed by clumsy landings, but they always were]. But it is more because when W. opened the bedroom door this morning he was greeted by the sight of a dismembered pigeon on the landing.

Numbers 26 - 28

 

26 & 27 are these two -  the inverse scan which I’ve shown you before, and a scan of shells, which I played with in Picasa to make it look sandy.

 

 

This rather odd effort is 28.It’s best described as reverse appliqué, embroidered from the back, using phone book pages – to which I added some gold paint because it looked a bit boring. If I try it again I will use some of the pages with more colour. I will also use some more robust paper as the base layer, as the phone book backing tor away when I didn’t want it to.

The workroom floor is now covered with bits of torn paper, though.

I’ve been a bit quiet, due to several outings, both the pleasant and less pleasant kind. The latter involved taking Quality Control to the vets, and then picking her up from the vets after a little dentistry for a loose tooth, some X-rays because she’s been limping, and a rather large bill. The limp is probably due to some ligament damage and not serious, unlike the damage to our bank account …

The pleasant outings were both arty – first to Winchester Cathedral to an exhibition by the Society of Portrait Sculptors, and then, with Mr and Mrs Cheddar, to Art in the Garden.

The former was, in my opinion, a curate’s egg. There were some excellent pieces, and some that did nothing for me at all. [Not saying which was which!] And of course they were all, in my eyes, in competition with ‘Sound II’ in the crypt, which takes a lot of beating – although with such dry weather it was not at it’s best.

[For those who don’t know the piece – the link shows water at the feet of the statue – in dry weather the water disappears and you don’t get the magical reflections.]

Art in the Garden was also variable – but there were some lovely pieces. We all liked this one by Eric Duggan – and Mrs C kindly identified the perfect spot for it in our garden. She didn’t offer to buy it for us, though…

 

 

 

 

I also like this by Carole Waller – textiles, in case you hadn't realised. We saw some of her clothing at an exhibition in Woodstock a year or so ago so it was great to see some of her sculptural pieces.

On a beautiful summer day…

like yesterday the last thing you want to do is sit in a classroom.

Fortunately it was the day for this semester’s college trip.

And even more fortunately the trip was to Roche Court. [No photos, unfortunately, as photography is not allowed.]

Can you imagine a better ‘lesson’ on a warm, sunny day, than a  guided tour of sculptures by Hepworth, Caro, Gormley, Long, Moore, etc. etc. etc? All set in the beautiful Wiltshire countryside, with the roses in bloom in the walled garden. And, as a special dispensation, a picnic next to this.

Today the weather is equally beautiful, but the day has been marred by an emergency trip to the vet for Quality Control, who appears to have been in a fight [not unusual] and come off worst [most unusual]. We think she is OK but she is being kept in overnight for observation – much to her disgust.

No photographs as she is not a pretty sight!

P.S. – I should make clear that Quality Control’s enforced incarceration is at home, not at the vets – she’s not that bad!

More books

Well, booklets.

One of the drawbacks of using mailers as book backs is that you have to cut down standard sized paper – which leaves you with a problem. Do I throw the leftovers away? Do I use find a way to use them - to make more books, for example?

No question.

So when I found these instructions and the cereal box booklets here, I had to have a play.

 

These are the mini notepads – a bit plainer than the ones in the instructions, but good for sticking in a pocket.

 

 

 

And these are the cereal box books – except mine used a photo  paper packet, not a cereal packet, as we don’t eat that sort of cereal. The covering  is old calendar pages.

We won’t talk about the mistakes, which were entirely my fault – it probably wasn't a good idea to change the sizes the first time I made them – or to make so many – or to do them both at the same time. 

But I like them. [I once saw Dick Emery in a restaurant in Bournemouth and he looked exactly as you would expect him to. And so did his female companion.][Note to non-Brits or those too young to remember, Dick Emery was a comedian whose punchline was ‘But I like you’ – delivered while giving his interlocutor a playful tap that knocked him flying – and while wearing drag. Naturally. But I digress.] [If you don’t like my digressions, blame Wil for encouraging me.]

Meanwhile, Quality Control was keeping a careful eye on the decorator. [Not me, I don’t do decorating – although I have got designs on that tin of white emulsion.

That stripy thing behind her is a cupboard wearing a duvet cover. Honest. Would I lie to you?

Positively the last view …

of son of plank. I think. This is the ‘Hex Cells’ filter on Picnik.

My first ever attempt at patchwork was hexagons over papers with blue and white Laura Ashley fabrics – after which I gave up patchwork for about 10 years. The barely started piece languished for several of those years until we moved and I junked it.

Which is a long-winded way of saying that this looks like patchwork but you won’t catch me tackling hexagons again – even purple ones.

 

QC, I have to report, is not a well cat. She has harvest mites – hence lots of nasty weals. She looks scruffy but  isn’t scratching and seems OK. She is more upset because we moved the printer and she doesn’t like lying on it in its new position. 

So she has decided to sleep in my in-tray.   OK, so it is a basket – but I bet if we’d bought her a basket she would have ignored it.

 

I have managed to complete the plastic bag book – helped by waking up at 5.30. [My camera battery is flat so I have only managed a couple of not very good pictures.]

This is another design from ‘Re:bound’. The original used Victorian photos for the covers but I don’t have any suitable photos - and that look isn’t to my taste anyway.

What I do have is plastic bags.

So as I mentioned a day or two ago, I chopped up some bags with rather funky print and images and ironed them together. [The funky bags were acquired from Cheese Minor -  I haven’t started dressing as lamb.]  Then I machine embroidered all over the result and backed it with card. Much more my sort of look. I.e. messy.

This is the inside. Those are two notebooks - the instructions are to insert them in opposite directions – not sure why – so I did. These are the covers – the pages are white, so it is usable!

The original was sewn and tied with ribbon but I used  waxed linen thread, and elastic to hold it closed. And as you can see I added a few beads. Now there’s a surprise.

There is actually room for a pen in the spine so I think I may add an elastic loop or two to hold one in place.

I’m pleased with it – and may use the fused bags + card again in my continuing exploration of alternatives to Vilene.

I actually did some sewing today …

although I can’t show it to you. I did some improvisational piecing for the new Art Quilts Around the World challenge, ‘When/where sea and land meet’. So I found all my bits of sea-like fabric and sewed together some likely candidates. It all may come to nothing but at least I’ve done something.

I also got started on ‘P is for …’ which is drying as I type, but doesn’t yet have any stitch. I don’t think I’ll have time to start it tomorrow as we are planning a Wednesday wander, but hope to put needle to paper on Thursday. Yes, P is for paper – amongst other things …

I was wandering round the house taking photos of things I've done, – and surprising myself a bit about how much I have actually finished since finishing C&G, – when I spotted someone asleep on the spare room bed. So here is today's rather odd texture image. 

 

And this is my attempt at reproducing that texture in a Turkey work sample for C&G.

After a brief flurry of excitement

before we got up, it has been a very boring day.

The excitement occurred when QC decided to try to get into our bedroom through a small fanlight window. [Bad people had closed the big window – we ought to know she likes to come in that way, then straight out of the door and downstairs to see if breakfast has appeared. She has a cat flap, which is much closer to the feeding bowl, but that would be too easy.]

She has looked longingly at the fanlight before, stretching up and mewing piteously, but has never tried to get through it. This morning she made a leap for it and discovered:

1. that it was too small for her to get through and
2. it opens upwards so she couldn't stand on the window frame. [I have mentioned before that she isn’t very bright.]

She ended up hanging by her front paws from the frame, back paws scrabbling at the window below. Then one paw. Then no paws. It looked like she was auditioning for Tom and Jerry. Unfortunately I don’t keep my camera in the bedroom, - although I might start because she is quite stupid enough to try it again.

It was actually scary at the time. Fortunately she landed safely on the window sill, and could only have fallen as far as the conservatory roof underneath – which is how she gets to the bedroom window.

So on to letter ‘E’ – an egg in English patchwork – by which I mean that it was done over papers. Yes, even the egg – which is probably the only bit that was easier done that way than machining it. Ah, the lengths I go to to fulfil my mission.

No one who knew her …

would ever describe Quality Control as ‘intelligent’. To compare her with a short plank would be unfair to the plank. [Not original, I'm afraid, I got it from a TV programme, but I intend to make it my own.]

However, she is normally a very clean cat.

Normally.

Bear in mind when you look at this that she is a dark grey cat.

 

 

So why is she so mucky?

Barbecued cat, anyone?

 

 

 

 

To finish off the month I thought I would show you some of my counted thread embroidery samples from C&G – not that I have very many.

This is extreme Hardanger – the heart is about 14 cm square. The fabric and thread are hand-dyed – I found C&G samples an excellent way of making a small dent on the metres of fabric I have dyed over the years.

I always find Hardanger very scary – I’m sure I’m going to cut the wrong thread.

Some paper, some stitch, – and a purple picture. Oh – and a rabbit.

Despite an insomniac night I've been quite productive today. At about 2 a.m. I decided it was about time I did something with this, which has been tacked to some felt for a few weeks now.

So it has been Kantha'd extensively and is currently in the washing machine being shrunk. Heaven knows what it will look like when it emerges from the washer.

 

 

I also played around with some more tile ideas in paper. [Can’t get them out of my brain.] These are postcard size.

 

 

 

   I decided it was time to get away from the stamps – so here are some in cut paper with doodles…

 

 

 

 

 

and cut paper without doodles. I used all the cut out bits as well – love those bird shapes in the corners. These tiles are getting more and more elaborate.

 

 

 

 

This is a technique I got from a Jane Dunnewold article in QA or CPS. There are three separate images, collaged in Picasa.

 

 

The purple picture is another from Furzey Gardens – I think it’s a magnolia, but I’m sure you’ll correct me if I’m wrong. I find those strange flowers on bare stems quite weird.

 

 

 

And the rabbit? The lady on the left decided she wanted to invite her new friend in to play and was quite miffed when we wouldn’t let her.

After a while it was only half a new friend but we still wouldn't invite it in.

She decided to think about the problem. In the sunshine. With her eyes closed. And while she was sleeping it off – er - thinking about the problem – the rabbit mysteriously disappeared. Odd, that.

Just a quicky ...

as little has been happening around here apart from routine stuff you don't want to read about, as you probably do enough of it yourselves.

Despite a frost this morning we had some sunshine in the middle of the day and Quality Control has made the most of it. She hasn't featured for a while, and is muttering about too much attention being paid to dogs, so here she is doing her well known impussonation of a dead cat.




Today's green picture also features sunshine. This is a little garden hidden away behind Winchester Cathedral. There is no house attached so I don't know who it belongs to, but we always stop to admire it. There are the remains of several medieval fish ponds in the area so the pool [just visible under the waterlilies] may well be one of them, although I think the bridge [which goes nowhere] and statue are a little later.