C'est la vie.

Tuesday. Hanging (an exhibition), shopping and cooking. All indoors. The sun shines.

Wednesday. Cleaning and cooking. All indoors. The sun shines.

Thursday. Looking after two small children who are happiest out of doors. It snows.

Tomorrow is back to housework.  I expect the weather to improve.

Easter holidays?

I thought we were going to have a quiet time over Easter. (I seem to remember always thinking we would have a quiet time over Easter when I was working. It didn't happen then either.)

To wake us out of our post Easter lethargy (not a scrap of choccolate egg has passed my lips, honest) I have an exhibition to help hang tomorrow, at Hanger Farm. Then we will be welcoming Señor and Señora  Queso, the parents of Cheese Major's señorita, for the evening. (And Cheese Major and Señorita Queso, obviously.)

Then more visitors! I've had to clear all my degree stuff out of the spare bedroom (about time). Thanks to the vagaries of Network Rail engineering works, it makes more sense for Babybel and the VHC's mum and dad to commute from our house this week than theirs, so we have them, the little ones and the dog for a couple of nights. We will, of course, have the pleasure of taking the little ones off for an adventure :<) while their mum and dad go to work :<(. 

Things should get a little quieter the following week when the Cheese Minor family is off on holiday, before it's back to the old routine the following week. 

In the midst of all the spring cleaning (spring? What's that?) this has engendered, I've found time to do a little embroidery. 

Another app print.

And a strange experiment, in which I looked for interesting shapes in a bit of hand dyed silk someone gave me, to use in a design - and somehow it turned into a flower...

I would have said I never embroidered flowers - but then I began to think about it, and there was a metal thread branch with flowers on it and a raised work bag for City & Guilds, and some motifs I took from historic textiles for a Karen Ruane course, and the transfers I used when I was feeling totally non-original last year... 

I have four bits of this silk, and the next bit has said 'tulips' to me.

This strange flower reminds me of these, which I bought last week. Mmm - daffodils and tulips? Am I suffering from Spring deprivation?

I know I had to go out in the garden to photograph what few flowers we have out there. (Isn't the sky an odd colour? I thought skies were meant to be grey.)

And while I was there I looked at a few old friends, some of whom are aging better than others.

Story of my life, really.

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.

NEC

is over, much to my relief. What with the weather and other things, it was pretty stressful. And I didn't even have the energy for much in the way of retail therapy. :<(

Take my tip, and never stay in a hotel at the NEC when a boy band is playing there. All their fans' parents will decide to sit out the concert in the nearest hotel bar and they will test the food service to breaking point. And the parents' cars will cause far more traffic chaos than the snow.

Still, here is Moving On in wall hanging mode, and some people seem to have bought some of my postcards.

Now I'm moving on to Hanger Farm. The embroideries are finished and tomorrow I shall photograph and frame them. Then I shall have to think of something else to do!

Birmingham or Bust!

On a day when you have to go somewhere, the last thing you want to read is a forecast of snow. Had we planned on going to the NEC show just for fun, we would probably have stayed at home, but as I'm stewarding early tomorrow, we decided we had to go for it.

I suggested quilts, hot drinks and a shovel. Wensleydale said OK to the flask, but then he would have made one anyway, and I got the quilts. He's lived in North Yorkshire where snow is snow, none of this namby pamby southern stuff. (He didn't actually say this, you realise, but he did gently imply I was over-reacting.)

So we set off. According to the Met Office, there was a yellow snow warning for 'north of the M4 corridor'. That's not a warning of yellow snow, you realise, it means 'be aware'. 

Here is the M4 corridor. The weather is doing what it was doing south of the M4 corridor...

i.e. raining.

We stopped at Cherwell Valley Services and I posted on FB that it was raining. At which point it turned to sleet.

Do you know how difficult it is to photograph sleet?

Just before the Warwick junction we got one of these. After which it improved a bit.

But not for long.

As the VHC would say 'uh-oh'.

I've never seen the M42 as slow moving as this. Locals may tell me I've been lucky.

A very welcome sight...

but not as welcome as this.

And now I'm off to have a very unhealthy meal and a couple of glasses of something white.

The forecast is for heavy snow, so it may be a little quiet at the show tomorrow.

Over there!

A description of how I learned to love designing on Paddy on my long-neglected college blog, Paper, Plastic, String.

And an exploration of some of the things my second favourite app, iColorama, can do, on my photo blog, Cheese Snaps.

Thanks to my colleagues from neuf, 'Moving On' is now on display at the NEC. Please have a look at the Eastleigh College Stand if you are there. I shall be around on Saturday and Sunday mornings. 

Another one bites the dust.

My first piece  for Hanger Farm. It started as a sketch, inspired by a photo of a Boro cloth I found online, went through a cople of apps, was printed on some of Crafty Computer Paper's prepared for printing cotton, and got a backing of felt and some embroidery.

I am postponing framing it until I feel strong enough. Although I am feeling much much much better, cutting it down to size feels a bit too much for me at the moment.

The other two pieces will be radically different (probably), involving heavy embroidery on hand dyed silk. I've started the design process, but it's got to the 'it'll get worse before it gets better' stage, so I have left it till Tuesday when I can look at it with fresh eyes.

If the worst comes to the worst I have more of these apped images I could print out - do you it might be better to do three  consistent pieces anyway? What would you expect to see at a selling show?