Book Week

Book One

'Another chance to see' the CTW book, which now has contents. Adding the contents took most of Wednesday, about as long as it took to make the book itself, if you don't include drying times. That was partly due to deciding to add a fancy, but not very successful, title, which had to be designed, believe it or not. Then I added the pasta machine prints I made earlier, and some real lace. (The bits of handmade beige paper, and the smudgy blue piece in the middle, are dampened paper embossed by putting them through the pasta machine with the collagraph plate but no paint, although the blue one did get some Rub-On.)

Book Two

Continuing work in the 'tree' sketchbook. You may be looking at some of these for a while before you see any link to trees. I got a bit carried away.

I finished the four-sided stitch trees. Then I got a bit patchworky with a couple of my Gelli prints, one on paper and one on fabric. I really like the paper version, lots of little 2" square bits of inspiration. Appliqué, or surface embroidery perhaps, or canvas work?  There are also a couple more knitted samples, and some of the grottier prints cut out and layered.

My thoughts have been turning, as they often do, to vessels, so I used some Gelli prints to cut out 'sketches' of cylindrical ones.  Then I actually drew some, if you count oil pastel and Brusho as drawing. And finally I knitted a couple of tension samples for felting, using a mystery white Aran/chunky from my stash, which are so boring to look at I haven't even photographed them. And it didn't felt much either. Lovely texture, not much felting. Time for Plan B, I think.

You may be thinking 'enough of all this sampling, what about making something?'  I have to agree. Wensleydale always says Plan B is thinking of Plan C. In this case it was deciding to try to knit a cylindrical vessel like the ones I'd been drawing, to see if they would actually work. I used smaller needles, in the hope that it will get stiffer when it felts.  It took several goes to find a cast on for the base which looked as if it might lie flat: I remain to be convinced. But when it's as tall as I want it - or when I run out of wool - or when I get bored, I shall cast off and felt it in the hope I can produce something which will have a reasonably flat base and stand up by itself, even with added cables/holes/lumps and bumps etc. If not, it really will be time for Plan C. 

Mind you, it will be time for Plan C if it does work, just a different Plan C.