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.

Don’t get too close to the screen …

I’ve got a cold and I don’t want you to catch it.

 

The cold led to a bad night, so I haven’t had much energy today – although I did manage to finish this, which I’ve been working on, off and on, since before Christmas.

 

More off than on, as

 

• It is cross stitch
• I think the variegated thread nearly works  - but not totally
• I was underwhelmed by it until I added the back stitch outlines.

Of course. after I’d started it I discovered that in ‘real’ Assisi work, you do the back stitch first, and it should be long arm cross stitch.

But hey, I’ve got C&G, I’m allowed to break the rules!

Unfortunately, I think it would look better with long arm cross stitch  – which for some idiosyncratic reason I find more interesting than ordinary cross stitch - or free cross stitch, or blackwork. So I might do another one. Maybe.

I also continued with my exploration of things the jar-opener shape reminds me of. Fortunately we have some poppy heads in a vase of ‘deadery’ [dried flora] so I had a real one to draw. And then I got side tracked into drawing the top – I love the star shape. Looks like a tassel …

Although my drawings aren’t very good I am coming to enjoy the process – and find myself noticing lots of things that I never previously noticed.

Teasels  tomorrow. Probably.

And yet more C&G trees – string stamp on the left, a blurry photograph of winter branches on the right. It would be interesting to draw – which is something I never thought I’d find myself saying …

Not much to show you today …

apart from this.  Can you tell what it is yet?

The jar-opener shape from the collage reminds me of several fruit and vegetables  – like artichokes, or pomegranates, or persimmons.

Unfortunately, we are temporarily out of artichokes, pomegranates and persimmons at Cheese Acres.

So I drew an onion.

I’ve worked out that photos of my drawings don’t work on the net, but scans do – which gave me the opportunity to play around with the scan.

 

Like this.

 

 

And this. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I want to try printing with a cut up onion – but as we don’t have many onions either, it will have to wait until we’ve been to Sainsbury’s – or until I can persuade Wensleydale that a bit of printing ink will add extra flavour to his curry …

From onions to yet more trees. Torn paper on the left, tree-like watercolour paint marks covered with baking parchment and left to dry on the right.

Still playing around….

with the jar opener ideas.

This is a section from the jar-opener-inspired collage I made at college –

 

 

 

which, surprise surprise, I plugged into some photo manipulation software - [Paint.net, I think]   and got this  - which to be honest didn’t inspire me much.

 

But then in the early hours of this morning I remembered an idea from a book. Pleat some fabric, print on it, then spread out the pleats.

So I tried it on paper first – and realised that if you have wide pleats close together you get  a very fragmented image. [All these samples were pleated horizontally and vertically – but not all ‘horizontals’ and ‘verticals’ were geometrically accurate.]

 

 

 

I used this stamp – as I’m sure you can tell <g>. Although it doesn’t look it in the photo, it is of the  negative spaces left when I cut out the jar opener shape for the other stamp. I used this one rather than the positive shape because there is more of it!

 

This is newspaper – which looked a bit drab till I painted it with  Koh-i-Noor purple. Yes – purple. my camera is a purple free zone, unfortunately. I stapled the pleats in at the top, after it dried.

 

 

 

And this is silk – which after the paint dried was stitched to a bit of felt. The pleats were about 0.5 cm wide. and a couple of cm apart – although as you can see they weren’t parallel.

 

I’ve got this lot out to embroider the silk  – now all I’ve got to do is decide what to do with them.

 

 

 

Here are some more C&G trees. I really like these – I’m not sure why I never did anything with them. They would have been much better than my abortive attempts to cover a lampshade with Klimtian birches …

Down to earth …

and trying to get back into our routine.

I hope you all had a good Christmas – we had a quiet time on Christmas Day [no complaints about that] and then a huge family party chez Babybel on Boxing Day when a good time was had by all – thanks to her mum and dad for hosting it.

The Babybellerina didn’t want to wear her tutu at first but after her adoring fans had left she gave her mum and dad a twirl – thanks to them for the photo on the right.

Her dad had tried it on earlier. 

 

 

Today I have done a little design work and a little embroidery. [And a little cooking, but that was less interesting …]

You may remember this.

 

 

 

 

Regular readers will not be surprised to learn that this inspired a stamp. Or five.

These were made with fun foam - not today, I hasten to add, before Christmas.

 

And that shape morphed into this, a string stamp. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Which reminds me of this. But I digress.

 

The string stamp led to this – the sketchbook page was stamped with gold paint and given a wash of ink. The embroidery is whipping, beading , French knots and seeding on a Colour Catcher.

It's been a good afternoon.

Returning to the C&G sketchbook – this is also inspired by Mondrian’s trees,  but the trees are more abstract, and the colour more what I think of when I think of Mondrian.

Looking at this, I realise I’ve been very restrained about cutting holes in my degree sketchbooks – time to get the craft knife out, I think …

The only creative thing I managed today …

was some ironing. Which is not one of my favourite activities – but this was the snow dyeing.

This is some silk organza – lovely stuff. I had one dyebath with blue and red dyes, one with blue and yellow, and one with yellow and red.

 

 

 

 

 

This is a heavier silk. The red and blue has rather a lot of white left, but the others came out well.

 

This is cheesecloth – I had intended to use it with the dyed felt.

 

 

 

 

 

This dyed felt. Maybe not.

 

 

This is needlepoint canvas – or was until I washed it. I inherited it from my mother, but it was musty, so, knowing no better, I washed it. Not a good idea if you want needlepoint canvas, but a better one if you want a soft even weave fabric with relatively big holes. And even better if you then dye it. For some reason the blue/yellow piece is almost entirely green.

 

 

These are some cotton and viscose threads I dyed as well. i always forget about threads until the last minute, so they didn’t get as long in the soda soak as perhaps they needed, so they are a bit pale.

 

 

And this is a piece of calico I used the left over dyes on. For some reason it is mostly green but there are some interesting areas on it. It is darker in reality than it looks here.

These Mondrian inspired trees from my C&G sketchbook go rather well with the calico! I scanned the prints I showed yesterday, printed them and then coloured them with water colour.

 

 

 

 

And that is it for the next few days  - for obvious reasons! Have a very happy celebration of whatever you celebrate – and I hope to be back after Boxing Day.