Updating: knitting, Advent decorations, and hands

Still knitting...

I think it will be about 3 metres long before I run out of wool. Then I shall have to start thinking about buttons - those little bumps you can see at regular intervals on the right side of the cuff are buttonholes. Fifty four of them and counting. I have a lot of buttons - I inherited 3 women's button boxes - but probably not enough of the right size and colour (whatever that is) even if I don't worry about them being all the same. I suspect EBay will be my friend.

 I've also got round to making another Advent decoration. I was sure she was going to end up a complete disaster, and I did make two bodices, two skirts and two pairs of wings, but in the end I quite like her. (Her wings aren't really wonky, though, and it reall life they curl back elegantly, as the sequin waste was on a roll.)

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And I've been playing around with a pleasing discovery in a Staples sale bin. Half a dozen disembodied hands.

Photograph them and app them with Flip-o-matic and you get lovely patterns. (Flip-o-matic always sounds to me like some thing Gromit invented.)

The most entertaining part of the week, for my audience but not me, was me trying to scan my hands. (It might have been even more entertaining if I'd tried to scan other parts of my anatomy, but hands were a big enough challenge for one day.)  I wanted to scan to Big Mac (copying would have been too easy!) which is about two feet to the left of the scanner: getting them closer isn't feasible.

Scanning my right hand was relatively easy. Except that the overview scan kept cutting off my finger tips, so I had to adjust it, using the mouse with my left hand. Fine tuned click and drag it wasn't.

Scanning my left hand involved crossing my arms. It dawns on me now that as it's a wireless mouse I could have moved it - but I would still have had to turn to the left to see the screen, even after I'd remembered that I could rotate to see it better. 

I couldn't solve the other problems:

1. My hand getting flattened on the platen, so it looks quite squelchy on the scans. (Good job I didn't try other parts of my anatomy...)
2. Not being able to get the back of my hand flat to the glass, so my thumbs are just shadows on the scans.

However, a bit of playing around with my favourite app, iColorama, and I got some passable results. My hands aren't really this wrinkly, honest.

Finished!

Or maybe not...

This is the repetitous Contemporary Textile Workshop piece. I wasn't sure about adding machine stitch, as instructed, but it worked quite well in the end, introducing a new texture and bringing out some of the details. I also used the machine stitch to attach the canvas work to a very blingy bit of lamé fabric, which is just visible through the holes in the canvas, but also provided the means to attach the embroidery to the box canvas. However my stretching of the fabric over the box canvas left a little to be desired, so tomorrow the staples are coming out and it will be reattached.

Unfortunately the Chairman's Challenge, a.k.a. the star spangled sampler is going to need a bit more work. The edges need top stitching, the top needs adjusting, and I think it might benefit from a bit of weight at the bottom to make it hang better - I'm thinking beaded tassels.

Apart from that, they are both finished!

The Traveller's Blanket has been languishing, due to this frenzy of finishing - I'm hoping to get round to assembling the layers tomorrow and then beginning to think about how to use the African fabrics.

'Visual Marks" came around again for this month. We shared our Chairman's Challenges, finished and unfinished  - amazing the variety of things we came up with, from my banner to panels, a bag, Christmas cards and a cracker! 

Then we enjoyed some 'machine networking' - work some machining on a piece of felt, pass it to your neighbour, and repeat until your own piece comes back to you - assuming you recognise it when it does! 

We were going to try both automatic stitches and free motion, but ran out of time. 

Initially I wasn't very inspired, but the ideas are beginning to flow now - inlaid appliqué? Book covers? 

And of course I played around with some apps - Flipomatic, Mirrorgram, and, surprise surprise, iColorama.

So, plenty to keep me busy. And if I run out of things to do, there are always socks...

Amazing!

A sunny Bank Holiday weekend - although it is beginning to cloud over now. I hope the weather has been good where you are too.

We don't usually go out on Bank Holidays - if I tell you that our visitors hit the tail of the traffic queue 9 miles from here, you'll know why. Fortunately our visitors, and us, know how to get where we want to go    and avoid the M3, so we did make a special trip on Saturday.

To have a picnic and see the choo-choos - and have a ride on one too. A small one, as you can see. 

Unfortunately Babybel wasn't very well - a virus generously given to her by the VHC - but as you can see, the VHC had recovered sufficiently to inspect the engine carefully. He was even allowed to sit in the cab of the Eurostar 'University of Southampton', miniature version. 

Since then, we have stayed resolutely at home. Wensleydale gave the ivy on the front of the house a hair cut, and I sat in the back garden and finished this, 

which started life like this, then met iColorama and some printable fabric.

I like it.

What I don't like is the virus which the VHC has kindly shared with us, too. He is a very generous little boy!

A little bit of stitching.

And a fair amount of bitching, since 'Posts', which is the ap I use to write these posts, and Wordpress are not playing nicely together. (Yes, I know this is a Blogger blog, but I have two Wordpress blogs as well and since I changed the passwords for those, life has got a bit complicated.) But I digress. 

These two are the first of a planned four - because I've got enough fabric to make four. Inspired by what I learned from Karen Ruane, I looked for shapes in the hand-dyed silk to create the design, and flowers emerged. Not my usual colours - I think someone gave me the fabric in a swap - but I've enjoyed trying something a bit OTT.

I'm not sure if they are going to be resolved samples, a book (a bit too 3D for that) or this morning's inspired (?) thought, a vessel.

Just before Easter I bought some daffodils - my favourite flower, and very cheering up. They got photographed, and the photograph got apped. Mostly in iColorama, but in Decim8 as well.

These two got printed, and went away on holiday to have some stitch.

 

And this is about as far as I got. There were some French knots, but those have been removed and a bit of appliquéd silk added. (Sharp eyes will notice that this is the opposite way up to the picture above!)

Then there's this, all my leftovers of grey and pink 4 ply being turned into a blanket. 

That's 5 things I've given myself to do at the same time.

So I'd better stop typing and start stitching, hadn't I?

And if there is lots of wide open space in this post, it was 'Posts' idea, not mine.

Phew!

I have managed to finish my pieces for our Hanger Farm exhibition in good time - the hanging is next week, but they are being picked up tomorrow. Framing them proved a little more fraught than anticipated, and if I had known when I started what I know now, I would have got box frames, but they'll have to do.

'Glass Flower'. For some reason I cannot get a sharp photo of this one.

 

'Glass House'

 'Glass Circles'

All 'glass' because that is the name of the set of filters in iColorama which I used to design them.