Week 6.

First, apologies if you tried to read the blog last week, and got spam - and thanks to Sandy for alerting me. I had to delete most of my widgets to get rid of it - hopefully it hasn't come back.

I am still plodding on with the seminar/essay preparation. The goalposts were moved on Wednesday - we now only have to provide a 300 word sample, and as I have already written more than that, that is the easy bit. What I am really stressing about is the PowerPoint. When I try to run the slide show on Big Mac, the program crashes. Every time. So I have no idea how it looks. And suddenly the contents of half the slides disappeared, for no apparent reason. I had already e-mailed a copy to myself and that seems to be OK, but I won't know until I get into Uni on Tuesday whether it will work or whether I will have to start all over again.

Add to that, since I downloaded Yosemite, Word for Mac makes spelling corrections in French. And I can't log on to the Uni website from Big Mac ( though I can from the hi-pad, go figure). You may guess that it hasn't been a very good week, technologically speaking.

The rest of the week has been knitting, stressing about the seminar, working on stuff for our Manor Farm exhibition,  stressing about the seminar, going to a rather good exhibition at Southampton Art Gallery,  stressing about the seminar, grandparenting, and a bit  of stressing  about the seminar. You get the picture.

However, knititng is very therapeutic, and I have completed a demi-tree. Demi, because it is only about 5 feet long. I thought the yarn was wool, but when I washed it, it didn't shrink. However in its unshrunken state, it fitted over an old carpet tube we happened to have lying around, and it looks OK. Maybe this idea is going to work out after all! 

Just think, by the time I write the next post, it will all be over.

How to set priorities and manage your time. By an expert.

I knew this was going to be a busy week, including as it did a birthday do, two childminding days and a meeting of Visual Marks. 

The birthday do (mine) was at Winchester Science Centre (followed by cake at home) and I think that a good time was had by all.

I can't comment on the quality of the Visual Marks session because I led it this month, talking about using mind maps, word association etc. in designing. We played an adaptation of 'embroidery consequences', which I found here. As a result I have to make a 16", oval collage, which includes lace and felt, which is inspired by the sea, and, which, fortuitously, is sea green in colour. And as it was my idea I feel obliged to have a go. Add all that to the book of the week, the work for Contemporary Textiles and the ongoing knitting, and I had plenty to do.

Unfortunately I had forgotten that an on-line course I had signed up for started this week.

The course is Dionne Swift's 'Drawing for Textiles' and having previously taken her 'Developing Sketchbooks' course, (it was good, that's why I signed up for another one) I knew that she would be giving us plenty to do - and I couldn't start till Wednesday.

So in the best principles of time management I made a prioritised list.

1. Dionne's course - daily exercises of up to an hour, to be done this week.

2. The book of the week - for this weekend.

3. My piece for Visual Marks, plus making some stamps, both for next month.

4. The self-imposed nine part series for Contemporary Textiles Workshop, which is so far away I'm not   

    even sure when it is - certainly after Easter...

5. Knitting - no time pressure. (Whew!) 

Knitting is an evening, slumped in front of the telly recovering from the day activity, so it gets done no matter what, and I managed to finish the mittens which started off as socks, and start another pair of socks. (The mittens, and the cowl I made earlier, will, of course, ensure there is no repeat of last year's end of March snow.)

So what did I spend Wednesday and Friday doing? 

These, for CTW.

Plus I've got the makings of two more, and then there's this, using a twisted cord I made earlier. It seemed like a good idea at the time. 

I know what it makes me think of, but if W thinks I'm making another and wearing them, he's being uncharacteristically optimistic.

To be fair to myself, I have spent today having fun layering blind contour drawings, tracing shadows (when there were any shadows to trace), and drawing curved objects using 30cm or 10cm straight lines. Next up is drawing with different media on a long stick, and pattern making with extracts from the drawings - but I've got an app for that... Next week we move on to textiles.

After that I was knackered - so I thought I'd make the book. Earlier in the week, in a fit of optimism, I had pulled out my Tarot Artists' Book Ideation Cards, which suggested I make a manifesto based (!?!), whimsical book, with an asymmetrical, innovative structure, in neutral, muted or pastel colours, including transparency and pockets or windows, using high tech techniques and abstract, non-verbal or garbled text, and collaborating with another artist for the images. So no pressure there. 

Needless to say, I decided to ignore all that and make something really simple and quick. I pulled out Esther K. Smith's 'How to Make Books' which has some interesting versions of simple forms, and spotted an 'instant book' made from an envelope. Good, I have envelopes. 

I happened to choose one with a window in it.  

You may be able to see where this is leading...

A transparent window! That's two of the nine Ideation Card criteria!

I went back the list. 

I thought I could describe it as whimsical, and the colour was muted, so that's another four out of nine. But it wasn't asymmetrical. Could I fold an asymmetrical one? Three books later (you can see them bottom right - the first book, one try-out which worked, one attempt at the real thing which didn't work because I didn't follow the techniques I'd tried out, and my final successful attempt) I had my book. And I decided it was innovative. So that was six! I was two thirds of the way there!

The next problem was to decide what 'manifesto-based' meant. Well, I still don't know, but I know what a manifesto is, so I wrote my own, and used Wingdings to type it out (high tech and garbled text in one go!). I was rather pleased that the Wingdings symbol for the first letter of the title is a bomb, it seemed appropriately manifesto-ish, although mine is entirely peaceful.

So there was just the collaborative image. Well, I can't claim that whoever designs clip art for Microsoft knew s/he was collaborating with me, but, with some difficulty, I found an image which suited my manifesto and added that. (Microsoft were very happy to sell me an expensive copy of Word for my Mac, but whatever I paid them clearly was not enough to persuade them to make it easy to find or download clip art from their website...)

So much for my quick, simple book!

Tomorrow will be spent drawing with things on sticks and making stamps. Or not, as the case may be.

* i assume that you, gentle reader, recognise irony when you meet it. 

Bad stuff and good stuff.

Bad stuff

I had to have a tooth out yesterday - and I don't have that many to spare. I was eating toast on Saturday morning when I heard a crack, and one of my few remaining, much patched molars became painful and wobbly. It turned out that the root had broken, so it was goodbye tooth. In the words of Pam Ayres, 'I wish I'd looked after me teeth'.

Good stuff

My lovely Welsh dentist told me to go home and put my feet up. I didn't need to be told twice - and so I have finished my first Karen Ruane block. Maybe. It may get extras when I come to join it to its brothers and sisters. (I should point out this is straight out of the embroidery hoop and it needs blocking to make it look better.)

I like some bits better than others - although  I like the look of the cutwork, I wish I'd made it smaller, but that isn't really something you can unpick.

Now on to block two. I wonder how long I can spin out this 'I've got to sit down, the dentist told me to'?

Where did that week go?

I thought I'd be spending most of it on the sofa with my feet up, but it didn't quite turn out as expected. Of course we still had small people to look after on Monday and Thursday, I have recovered more quickly than I expected, and it was pretty boring sitting on the sofa, even with embroidery to do. In any case, the NHS Direct advice was not to sit on your backside all the time, so I didn't/couldn't.

There has been some painting, which I could do sitting down.

This is Karen Ruane's emulsion and watercolour technique. Karen showed us some of her work from university, where she had painted on strongly patterned fabric, then drawn and stitched on the painted areas, which were almost completely hidden. It's an excellent technique for adding stitch to fabrics.

As I can't draw, my efforts are a little more pedestrian. I used the perspective lines from my source image to make freezer paper stencils for the emulsion paint, then added watercolour when it was dry. Now I'm pondering on whether to add some lines in pen - and then, some stitch.

Some embroidery has been done. This is an emulsion paint and ink piece from the Contemporary Textile Workshop. As soon as I'd done it, I thought 'French knots' - but now I'm not so sure, I think because the big ones are too pale. (This image is greener than it is in reality - and that orange dot is not permanent!)

I'm swithering with the idea of giving it another coat of emulsion, to reduce the contrast, and then adding a few more knots and some beads. Any comments or suggestions gratefully received!

And I've got started on a block for Karen's new class, 'Embroider, embellish, create', which is an excellent class for anyone with a stash of odd bits of fabric, lace, old hankies etc. A lot of mine came from my mother, so this is inspired by her - that's why it's purple.

So far we've covered making the block and adding seam embellishments - on Friday we move on to decorating the empty bits. Mine looks a bit boring restrained, compared with other people's, but I'm encouraging myself to get a bit more adventurous.

However, not much more work will be done before the weekend. Tomorrow is a Babybel and VHC day. The VHC now has a name for Wensleydale and I - the same name. 'Gaga'. It may or may not be appropriate, I'm not committing myself.

Then on Friday it's G Day - graduation, that is. I and my colleagues will go and collect our bits of paper from the VC (I think) of Winchester University, and then process out of the Cathedral in our finery. Then we are all heading for Brasserie Blanc, entourages in tow, for what a colleague has called a 'large, jolly party'.  And as W. and I intend to go in on the bus, we may be jollier than the rest.

You may wish to avoid the centre of Winchester tomorrow...

Another anniversary. Unfortunately.

Last October, we went to the very edge of England to learn about 'Food and Health', and I came home with a sprained ankle.

Last Wednesday I was walking back from the gym and fell over. And sprained my ankle. 

Maybe I should give up trying to be healthy, at least in October?

This led to a reorganisation of our plans for grandchild sitting on Thursday. Babybel, whose affections seem to have switched from cows to heavy horses, had already changed her mind about going to Manor Farm and asked to go to the Heavy Horse Centre instead. 

So grandad took her there, the VHC went to nursery, and Granny stayed at home with an ice pack feeling bored, lonely and decidedly miffed. (Granny likes horses too, heavy or otherwise.)

This should have provided an opportunity for lots of embroidery, but the only thing I had to do was a lot of small tent stitch in cream, which got boring very quickly.

Today I've been a bit more mobile, as recommended by NHS Direct, and worked on my Karen Ruane sketchbook. Much of this had already been done, and I was able to work on the flaps while sitting down.

This exercise involved finding shapes in an image, and then using them to make abstract designs. The photo, bottom left, is one of my own, apped with Laminar (I think) - and all those shapes are there, honest, just smaller, more irregular, and in different colours.

I really like the interlocking arrows, and got a bit carried away with them, as you can see. The arrow shapes in the needlepoint were interesting to do, but the background isn't, as I may have mentioned. I have  ideas for other stitched versions, but as 'Embroider, embellish, create' has just started, I will have to put them to one side for now. And once I've assembled the cloth for that, there will be lots of hand embroidery I can do sitting down. What a good excuse!

Catching up...

with Karen's class.  This section has taken me a long time, partly because of all the other commitments I've been whinging about, partly because I had so many ideas - and I still haven't got them all down on paper.

We started by looking at lace for inspiration. Now, for someone who lives in jeans and t-shirts, I have rather a lot of lace. Some inherited, some sent to me by a kind on-line friend, some bought, little of it ever used. 

Drawing the lace was more of a challenge than finding some. I made a few sketches before we went on the drawing course, but when we got back I started again... Still not brilliant, but definitely better than before.

That was just the start of Karen's ideas,  as you can see - although the ribbon and tassel were my own. The little edelweissy things are embroidered inserts, as suggested by Karen, (although she puts hers in much more neatly) and inspired by this lace, which has what look like woven picots in one of the motifs. I wish I knew more about lace - any experts out there?

It's not stained, by the way, just a c**p photo.

At about the same time we started this section, I came across this image, which got me thinking about the difference between black lace and white lace. How different the 'feel' of the portrait would have been if she had been wearing white! 

So things turned a little dark.

For this page, as well as this weeks ideas, I went back to some of the first techniques Karen taught us, as she keeps encouraging us to do. I really enjoyed making the little blackwork stitch sampler - just wish I'd mounted it straight... 

Lots of room on this side for more explorations, but I want to get on to the final section of the course before too long, as I've signed up for Karen's next one, staring soon.

More pictures of my work, and everyone else's, here.

Twenty five years ago today...

we were awoken in the morning by Cheese Minor, standing at our bedroom window, and telling us that there was a tree in the drive.

'Don't be silly', I said.

He e-mailed me this morning to remind me. I told him always to believe his children.

For those who don't know what I'm on about, it was the morning after 'The Great Storm', a.k.a. 'The Hurricane of 1987'  and there was, indeed, a tree in the drive. When we went to bed It had been in the garden of the house opposite, the owner of which subsequently complained because we still had power, and she didn't. I pointed out that it was her tree which had brought down her power line - and her drive was unblocked.

Wensleydale subsequently cut up the tree, and struggled into work - where there was no power and therefore no students (Health and Safety). He's like that.

I took the boys to school on foot (I'm like that), and discovered that the school had no power either, so I had to bring them home. I'm surprised Cheese Minor didn't remind me about that as well, but perhaps they've forgiven me at last.

Speaking of education, we enjoyed our drawing for beginners class at Walford Mill. Some bits were familiar to me, but it was all new to Wensleydale, and the teacher, Yvonne Lee, was very good at explaining the purpose of what we were doing.  Inspired by what we'd done, I had another go at some drawing I'd done for the Karen Ruane class, and improved it a bit. No pictures of that yet, but I do have some of the previous exercise, based on transfers.

The results of some of my design explorations, all starting from the transfers you can see at the bottom. Before they were ripped up, glued down and stitched into.

The two page spread - the blue flowers on the left hand page are embroidered using one of the transfers before I ripped it up.

I love the interactive nature of what we are encouraged to produce, very inspiring. I can feel a hand made book coming on when if I get some time.

When Wensleydale saw some of these he looked at them for a long time in silence, then said 'It's not like your usual work. It's pretty'. I'm still trying to work out whether to be pleased or annoyed...

However, I know what he means, but although I might never follow up any of this design work directly, the techniques are great and I will definitely use them again, perhaps with some of the stuff from the Contemporary Textile Workshop last Friday.

After seven or more years...

of attendance, it seems that I just can't keep away from Eastleigh College. So I signed up for the twice termly 'Contemporary Textiles Workshop', which I used to attend in the hiatus between C&G and the degree. Yesterday was the first meeting for this academic year.

I was not my usual cheerful smiling self, having been given a lovely cold by the VHC, or his sister, or his father, and that may be why, to begin with, I was a bit underwhelmed. Monoprints (never my favourite), emulsion paint, stick and ink drawing, waxing - a touch of déjà vu here. I'm never sure what to do with this sort of open-ended design session, but I decided to go with the weaving and do lots of cross-crossing lines - and in the end I enjoyed myself and made some little bits I quite like.

A string stamp dipped in wax, painted with Koh-i-Noor and ironed.

Wax,  scratched, Koh-i-Noored and ironed.

Emulsion paint monoprint on tissue with Quink on the back.

Emulsion paint and ink-drawn-with-a-stick lines.

You may notice a square theme here, although some pieces refused to comply.

Ink-drawn-with-a-stick, scraped with a credit card, then waxed, etc.

Labels, ink-with-a-sticked, cut up, stuck on calico and emulsioned. I like the look of the ink under emulsion, but the labels are reluctant to stay stuck.

In the afternoon, after one of those exercises I hate and so will say no more about, we used some of what we'd made to construct a 3D something no more than 6" wide. So I made a book. But I can't find it to photograph it, not that it was that wonderful.

However I am going to add stitch to some of the others, and make a book for them, perhaps with some Karen Ruane type design exploration work - which I think was the point of the exercise, although my head was so fugged up I may well be wrong.

Well, that's my excuse.

Tomorrow to fresh fields and pastures not so new - W. and I are going to drawing lessons at Walford Mill. Just hope I doesn't rain like it did today.

An Embroiderer's Ledger: Part Three

Sunday seems to have become my 'trying to keep up with Karen's course' day - perhaps because I am out of the house at some time on every other day of the week. You can see lots of images here  of the inspirational ideas Karen is showing us.

And here are my rather less accomplished efforts

Stitch inspired by the colours and shapes from the first exercises.

More design work.

A different approach - the inspiration for this came from embroidery transfers, of which I have a large, and vintage, stock. Good to find a good use for them.

I really, really wish I had done this course before I did C&G - and before the degree, obviously. The style of Karen's embroidery is a long way from my own, but that doesn't matter, because what she is teaching is a methodical approach to design work, and I do like 'methodical'. Even when feeling uninspired, I could work through some Karen's series of exercises and expect to come up with some ideas -  for example motifs to embroider on photos.

The other thing I'm enjoying is that the result of our efforts - the 'ledger' itself - is a great object in its own right. Karen is very neat, and as long established readers will have noticed, I'm not - but the emphasis on neatness rubs off and pays off. Karen emphasises that what we are making is a resource for the future, something we can enjoy looking through and continue to find inspiration from.

A day of two halves.

It was a good morning – despite having to be at the bus stop at 9.01 a.m. [Yes, I know, I used to get up earlier too.] [9.01 because I can’t use my bus pass before 9.]

In pursuit of this week’s theme of any course that’s on offer that isn’t related to college work, I’d signed up for the first of a series of recycled jewellery workshops, run by Jacqueline Rolls. The first one was wire, which appealed because Wensleydale gave me quite a lot of redundant cable, and tells me there is even more in the garage, though by rights it belongs to Cheese Major.

These are my efforts – completed one on the left, too big and a boring shape , so therefore to be deconstructed and recycled on the right. I’m told the thin multicoloured wire is phone/IT cable - which makes Cheese Major’s left-overs even more interesting…

Although recycled wire is not  litter, I have some ideas for using it for college work – when [if?] I make up my mind what I’m doing. I’ve come to the conclusion that I want to use what I have [heaven knows there’s enough of it] rather than buying more – and therefore what I make has to be adapted to the materials I have. Plus litter.

Then I met W. for a nice lunch at the usual place, and we drove over to Hobbycraft for some retail therapy.

Where the Vilene shelves fell on me - and I hadn’t been rough with them, honest!

So we went to Haskins for coffee to recover – where I dropped my change in my coffee. It’s not even Friday 13th!

Everything has been relatively peaceful since then, apart from the normal M3-on-a-Friday-afternoon traffic coming home. [Fortunately we managed to miss the end-of-shift-at-the-Ford-factory traffic.]

I spent 15 years commuting up and down the M3 – from before it was the M3 - but I still forget that it is always worse on a Friday afternoon. Lorries in the inside lane, car drivers who are going slower than the lorries but think the middle lane is the place for cars, and boy racers on the outside. Grrr!