No Tuesday trip this week either

as I had a hair appointment. I did take the opportunity to visit the latest incarnation of the Pound Shop in the city centre - it's got more expensive but has a good selection of stationery items, including big stencil letters [about 8 cm high] and similar sized fun foam letters which I will make into stamps.

This afternoon I got on with the 3D work. I painted some silk in leaf and leaf-mould colours. I took A's advice about watering down the paint and i am much happier about the shades I got.

I am thinking of adding snippets to the relevant areas of the shade, holding them down with free motion embroidery. One of the problems with making a lampshade is that the back of the stitches will show through when it is illuminated. I could do shadow work but FME will be quicker.

by the way, neither of these is Quality Control's litter tray - she has a much fancier one provided by her previous owners, although she much prefers the gravel drive.

If you think the drop cloth underneath looks familiar you must have been a Clothkits customer about30 years ago!

I also got started on the shade itself. Making the full scale mock up had convinced me that I needed to think carefully about the layout of the trees - I couldn't just do a few tree shapes as the fancy took me. So I made a 'window' in the proportions of the shade and moved it around on the Klimt picture until I found a section I thought worked.

Inspired by the this section I made a freezer paper stencil and ironed it to the silk. then erected A's ginormous silk painting frame. [You will get it back, A, honest!]

I had to assemble the frame on the hall floor which was the only space big and empty enough. Then I stretched the silk, manoeuvred it out into the garden, and painted the wax on. Fortunately it has been a really nice day!

The technology of the frame means that I couldn't prop it up vertically for the photo. It is finishing off drying now, flat on the conservatory floor.

So far I think it looks good but I can still ruin it when I add the paint. If we have another nice day tomorrow I will try to make myself paint it. [I do have another piece of silk if the worst happens.]

I must also remember to paint some threads in case I decide to add some hand stitching.

I haven't lost my marbles ...

I missed last week’s C&G session on marbling because I was in Yorkshire, so I spent yesterday catching up. I had marbled before so I had a vague idea what I was doing – and of course I had most of the materials somewhere – I just had to find them.

While I was waiting for the medium to mature I did some shaving foam marbling – not sure it was in the class but it’s fun. I usually use inks but this time I decided to try some left over silk paints, and found that they worked well - they seemed to go on producing prints for a long time. Unfortunately I didn’t have a wide range of colours but some of the prints are quite effective. The pale one at the top is on crystal organza.

Once the marbling medium had set I tried that, this time using the ‘right’ paint. With these I usually only got one print – sometimes there was a bit of paint left on the surface which gave a paler second print. The circular one is on a cheapo paper doyley from the Pound Shop.

You get more control with ‘proper’ marbling but as I’m not very good at it that isn’t a major advantage! The big problem is that these are taking for ever to dry, perhaps because it’s quite humid in the conservatory where they are.

We are apparently going to be using these in class on Thursday which is why I wanted to get them done.

Today I have made the full stage mock up for the 3D piece. I had hoped to get more done but I’ve run out of drying space so the mock up is drying on my work table, which is preventing me from starting waxing the silk for the real piece. It’s not procrastination, honest!

I haven't fallen off the planet -

I’ve been on holiday. [This is a long post because my fried A. said she was looking forward to reading what I wrote – so blame her if you get bored!]

The co-grandparents, R&S, had told us about the cottage in the Yorkshire Dales they have been to several times. Wensleydale has had a very busy time governing recently so when the chance to go there came up at short notice we leapt at it.

When we got there we understood why R&S [and Skye, their amazing footballing border Collie] love it so much – this is [part of] the view from the front door. The cottage is in a village of 35 houses up a single track road a looooong way from anywhere.

This is the water supply for the cottage - the water is filtered and irradiated and perfectly safe although it is the colour of over-watered Scotch.

In the photo of the fosse [waterfall] you can just see the end of the footbridge over the river which is at the foot of the garden. From the opposite bank you can see the cottage at the right hand end of this building.

Lovely as it was, we did leave the village on most days. We went to Hawes but it was full of retired holidaymakers [!] so we passed up the Wensleydale Cheese Experience – after all, I have that all the time.

We went to Bolton Castle instead, which was much quieter. It is one of the many castles Mary Queen of Scots was imprisoned in - an embroiderer, so of course she appears in my magnum opus, the History of British Embroidery.

We followed a school party in but there were only a minibus full and they were better disciplined than the coach parties in Hawes - they didn't mill all over the place or suddenly stop in front of you.

I didn’t explore the castle fully – I don’t like heights or spiral staircases. I do like windows and there were lots of interesting ones, so I photographe

d them while Wensleydale climbed higher. Then we had a cup of tea in front of the log fire in the tea room, and took some photos from the garden of the thunder storm approaching down the dale.

We also went to Fountains Abbey – in fact we liked it so much we went twice. We are National Trust members [it's obligatory for retired teachers, you know] so we got in free – and of course, like most Trust properties it has a very good tea shop. Fruit cake with Black Sheep Ale, anyone?

I was fascinated by the contrast between the ruins of the Abbey and the 19th century church. by William Burges. in the grounds. The church looks fairly plain on the outside but the inside is a little more elaborate.

I think you either love or hate Gothic Revival – I love the intensity of colour and pattern on every surface. Unfortunately I neglected to take a photo of the organ housing made to look like a medieval house, b

ut this is the Lion of Judah. The sun was shining weakly - it

must look magnificent with strong sunlight through those windows.

On the way back from the Abbey we went to Brimham Rocks. Wensleydale remembers going there as a little boy and having a wonderful time climbing around. We were a little more restrained this time but I did take lots of photos. They are natural formations although some look as though they have been carved. This is just a sample - they cover several acres [or hectares if you prefer].

We also visited Skipton and bought cheese in the market - mostly Wensleydale, naturally, but also some called Bowland, which is the local area my grandmother was born. We also visited Skipton Castle -another Mary Queen of Scots connection, and more windows.

I bought some postcards of portraits of former owners of the castle to go in the magnum opus. [You thought I’d finished that, didn’t you?] These were 16th and 17th century residents and their clothing was embroidered, so I had to have them. Plus they were only 20p a time. I also bought a book on the Bayeux Tapestry to add to the three I have already …

We had a very relaxing time but it was good to get home and Quality Control was glad to see us back. [She did have a cat sitter while we were away, my first DIL Ginge who used to own her - thanks, Ginge!] [No, she wasn't christened Ginge.]

We were struck that in Yorkshire the daffodils are still out and, as you can see from the photos, the trees are only just beginning to come into leaf. At home the trees are fully out and our apple trees are in blossom. The weather is pretty much the same though – sunshine interspersed with gloom and occasional rain.

Tuesday Trip - not

No Tuesday Trip this week as Wensleydale was busy governing.

I used the time to work on the samples for the 3D piece. These are silk organza and habotai, with the wax added using a freezer paper stencil. This time I let the wax dry and then crumpled it to see if I could get the cracked wax batik look. As you can see it worked on the habotai but not on the organza. I don’t want to admit it but really the organza isn’t suitable – it distorted under the stencil so the trees are wonky, it is difficult to get the wax thick enough to act as a resist, and it is difficult to paint.

I have been reading Yvonne Porcella’s book ‘Colour Changing Hue’ and decided to try her silk painting method, which doesn’t involve a frame. You slosh the paint on the wet silk on a drop cloth or in a container of some sort. The paint congregates in the folds and wrinkles to give a hand dyed look. She uses fabric paint but I thought I would try it with silk paint.

The organza was done on a plastic cloth, the habotai in a cat tray. [I didn’t borrow Quality Control’s tray, it was one I keep for dyeing!]

I don’t’ like the look where the cloth was folded, but I do like the slightly wrinkled effect. Not sure I will use the technique for the real piece – I shall consult A1, the teacher and A2, the silk painting expert, tonight [though not necessarily in that order].

The smaller samples are of the two types of fabric on the two types of stiffening I have. One is buckram, as suggested by my book on soft furnishings. This gives a more translucent result, and the weave shows. The other is sticky backed plastic which a kind person on the C&G Yahoo list sent me. It is thicker than usual sticky back plastic and is less translucent than the buckram, with no texture of its own. As I will have to sew it to the frame I tried making holes in it – my Japanese screw punch struggled a bit and tended to slip, but I found you can get a needle through it fairly easily.

I thought the buckram would be easier to use than the plastic but, at least on these small pieces, it wasn't. The big piece would definitely be a four handed job though!

What I did in the holidays.

I have had a book making frenzy recently [no, I didn’t have a flutter on the Grand National]. Call it procrastination if you like ...

I made two more books in Sue Bleiweiss’s class – the yellow one is a sketchbook, with pockets for pencils, pens etc. The cover is a piece of hand dyed fabric that was a bit too strongly patterned to use in a quilt.

The blue one is made from another piece of Japanese fabric that was too nice to cut up for quilts.. I had fun with the pages of this one, mixing hand made and copier paper in blues and rusts. The copier paper looked a bit boring so I sprayed it with walnut ink. I added pockets, tags, stamps and punched shapes.

The group of three include a Coptic bound book, a tiny Japanese bound one and my first flag book [the cover is deliberately crumpled, honest!]

I have been reading Esther K Smith’s excellent book ‘How to Make Books’ and she suggests using whatever you have lying around to practice on – so I did. These are made from scrap card, failed monoprints, painted papers, leftovers of bonded tissue paper and whatever else I could lay my hands on. They have made a bit of a dent in my stash of paper – but not much.

Tuesday trip - a quick P.S.

Thanks to Heather for her comment on my previous post. For her, and for any other Jane Austen fans thinking of visiting Hampshire - there are other Jane sites near Chawton.

The house in Winchester where she died can be seen, although it isn't open to the public - but, more importantly, she is buried in Winchester Cathedral.

Unfortunately the Cathedral charges admission. However you can also admire the Anthony Gormley statue in the crypt - which is one of my favourite pieces of art - and an altar cloth by Alice Kettle. There is also a restaurant in the Cathedral close which is open all year!

Tuesday trip

This week’s trip was to Chawton, another of my favourite places, [and I am sure it has been on TV at some time].

It is a prime example of a pretty little English village which is really no different to any of its neighbours – except that someone famous once lived there. Not so much a one horse town as a one famous resident village [1FRV?].

We once lived in a 1FRV – East Bergholt in Suffolk, where John Constable was born. I enjoyed living there – the touristy bit was some distance away and the money the tourists spent helped to keep the village shops and other facilities running.

Chawton is Hampshire’s 1FRV – and its famous resident was my favourite author, who lived there from 1809 – 1817. She is probably the only author all of whose books I own and have read, most of them frequently. The exception, which I have only read once, is “The History of England by a partial, prejudiced & ignorant Historian”, - so I bought it there, just so I could claim to own all her works. There is a very comprehensive book shop in the house, with several pictures of Colin Firth, should you need one ... [Another local boy, incidentally.]

In case you haven’t guessed, the famous person is Jane Austen, and it was her house we went to visit. We have been several times before, and never fail to enjoy it. Chawton Cottage is a lovely little house, one many people would be glad to own [including us].



The garden is also pleasant - the spring flowers were just blooming and I noticed that there is now a small 'dye garden'.



An additional treat this time was an exhibition of some of the costumes from the recent BBC production of ‘Sense and Sensibility’. I think I enjoyed the costumes more than the production.

If you are interested the exhibition continues into early May. There is no tea shop at the house – there is one across the road but unfortunately it was closed.