Oh dear.

I’ve just analyzed my last post using this. It tells me that I write like Dan Brown. If Mr Brown is who I think he is, I am disappointed in myself – although I can’t be accused of plagiarism because I’ve never read a word he’s written. Or seen the film.

Still, I suppose it could have been worse. It could have been Barbara Cartland, or Jeffrey Archer – although if I earned as much from my writing as any of them I could probably learn to live with the shame…

I’ve just tried again with two other posts and it told me that I write like Cory Doctorow [who she? – oh, I've just discovered she's a he] and Margaret Atwood. I’ll stop while I’m ahead!

Bet I don’t embroider like any of them, though.

I spent the day painting Koh-i-noor on the back of all the printing and painting I've been doing, in preparation for some bookmaking – and in a little experimentation.

That’s experimentation in the sense of using up left overs, experimentation in the sense of something which didn’t work the first time, and experimentation in the sense of ‘I wonder what would happen if …’ which I learned, after a long lecture on official  experimental methodology at Uni a long long long time ago, is what real scientists do. From this guy, as it happens – oh, the wonders of the Internet. Sorry to find out he has died – he was a good and  entertaining teacher once I stopped being afraid of him…

But I digress.

My ‘I wonder what would happen’ moment involved a nasty screen-print  on a polyester sheer [pale turquoise and red – whatever possessed me?], this much more beautiful piece of work by Aimee Lee, and my ongoing quest to make fabric books which don’t involve craft Vilene.

I cut up the screen print, glued bits of it together with Bondaweb sprinkled with glitter, Angelina and leaf shapes cut from a red sheer, and started embroidering. Because I have the screen print on both sides, I have leaves on both sides, so I’m working double running stitch round them, on both sides – which you can see in the image. A bit like shadow work. I love the way it makes ‘ghost leaves’ and the stitches pile up where the prints overlap – I'm very fond of that sort of serendipitous effect.

I'm working whip stitch round each page, which hasn’t really worked, but it has dawned on me, following Kitty’s well timed comment about mark making with soldering irons, that I could have cut out the pages with a soldering iron – and done fancy edges to boot. Maybe next time – and there will be a next time, the resulting fabric is stiff enough for small pages. The next experiment will probably involve more translucent sheers. Odd how although I generally dislike man-made fibres, I'm a sucker for polyester sheers…

Just tried ‘I write like …’ again with this post. This time it’s William Gibson – another one who’s new to me. Should have stopped when I got Margaret Atwood. I learned enough about the experimental method from Dr Harzem to conclude that this analysis lacks rigour…