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.

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.

When life gives you snow...

do some snow dyeing. It was all a bit ramshackle, because it must be at least 2 years since I last did any, and I couldn't find the instructions I used then. This is the drawback to throwing out lots of printouts on the grounds that you can always find them on line...

I think last time I used a grid to hold the snow over the fabric, but which grid I have no idea. And as always, I forgot about threads till the last minute, so they got too short a soak in soda before going into the cat litter trays vat with everything else.

I found one set of instructions which involved stirring the dye into the snow and tipping it over the fabric, but I bottled out of that when I realised how much snow I needed. (A third of a table top, 10 cm deep, for each.) So I put the snow on top of the fabric and poured the dyes over the snow. 

I'll bag it up for batching later on. Nothing else is going to happen to it till Tuesday afternoon, and possibly not till Wednesday, depending on whether we are needed on Tuesday to look after a poorly, poxy VHC. (We knew something was up when he went off his food. The VHC never goes off his food.)

When not spreading blue dye over the house and garden, I've been working on some designs for yet another Karen Ruane class, called 'Alchemy'.

Yes, I know I still haven't finished the work for her last class, and I've got a book to make for the NEC in March, but I find her ideas so inspirational that when she offered another class I couldn't help but sign up. This one explores the design process from first idea to product (notice I didn't say 'finished product').

My theme might be described as Lancashire mill girl meets Japanese Boro cloth. I've researched my family history, and unsurprisingly, given where I come from, most of my ancestors came from Lancashire - apart from the Yorkshire ones. And all of them were working class. And where did working class Lancastrians work in the 19th century? In the cotton mills, of course. About a fifth of those I've traced so far worked in the mills, and others were dressmakers or hatters. Textiles run in my blood. 

Given their low incomes and large families, I think my foremothers probably spent more time mending than doing embroidery - which led to ideas about patched and darned cloth, and these stamped, drawn and collaged ideas. Apparently mill girls wore long aprons called 'brats', so I have a vague idea of making a Boro-ish apron. Or perhaps a book. Or just a cloth. 

But as soon as I've finished adding stitch to the left hand collage, I'll be back to 'Moving On'. Honest!

Serendipity.

As so often happens at the end of the year, it has turned into clear out time - old clothes, old magazines, and a few apps, because I decided I had far too many. Of course before I decided whether to delete them, I had to find out remind myself what they did. Which is where serendipity came in.

I started with this - Saga tubes - and bunged it into 'Glaze' which has so many options I find it a bit overwhelming. I made several versions, and I can't remember which one I chose for the next step...

which was 'Type Drawing', using 'Bradley Hand' font (hereinafter known as 'Sir Bradley') (sorry, couldn't resist). 

Yes, the so called original is square and the other is rectangular. Don't ask me why.

Then I used step 2 in 'Kyoobic' (ouch), 'Percolator' and my favourite, ’Decim8’. The 'randomise' button in the latter is responsible for the excess of images. 

But serendipitously, in one of them I spotted the motif I am currently besotted with. 

This one has the chevron motif lurking at the left side. So now it's gained a backing of wadding and the makings of some raw edge appliqué, and tomorrow it will get quilted and become page 4.

Unfortunately what was going to be page 3 has assumed the status of 'a sample to go in the work book to show what not to do'. I still think I have the basis of an interesting design, but it needs some tweaks, and the embroiderer needs to improve the standard of her stitching more than somewhat. 

However I haven't got enough of the right colours of thread to start again just yet, so it will have to wait till I can get to a thread shop.

On a more cheerful note, the third Karen Ruane block is finished - not a very good photograph, I'm afraid, there is so little daylight at the moment to try to get decent images. The snowflakes are actually lavender in colour, not this strange grey.

The initials are mine and my mother's - and that is a pocket in the middle. I think I shall put photos in it when the thing is finished.

In case I don't post gain before Tuesday, I wish you a happy new year, and a somewhat drier one for everyone in the UK, or anywhere else affected by the deluge  we have been treated to!

Slow progress...

on my Karen Ruane piece.

This is the third block, and definitely not finished yet. For a start I don't like that running stitch, so it will either come out or have something added.

The initials are mine and mum's, the hanky is one of mum's. 

Slow progress too with the cover for 'Moving On', because I keep changing my mind. (Autocorrect changed that to 'much mind' - I wish!)

First I tried couching in a sort of brick stitch effect in a thicker silver thread. Then I decided the stitches needed to be closer together, in a chevron pattern. But when it was nearly finished I realised it looked boring, and the silver was overwhelming the blue. 

Fortunately it was easy to cut out.

Then I tried small, closely-spaced patches, arranged at random by rolling a die. Still overwhelming.

So now I'm using a much finer thread, which looks better. Unfortunately it is really meant for couching, and doesn't take kindly to being pulled through the fabric, so I'm having to use a big needle and very short lengths. I just hope it works, I can't face starting for a fourth time.

And this afternoon we made a slow and stately progress round the Winter Garden at Hillier Gardens (this cold weather and my arthritis do not agree).

The sun was setting, and the light was beautiful.

The tea and cake were pretty good too.

Bad stuff and good stuff.

Bad stuff

I had to have a tooth out yesterday - and I don't have that many to spare. I was eating toast on Saturday morning when I heard a crack, and one of my few remaining, much patched molars became painful and wobbly. It turned out that the root had broken, so it was goodbye tooth. In the words of Pam Ayres, 'I wish I'd looked after me teeth'.

Good stuff

My lovely Welsh dentist told me to go home and put my feet up. I didn't need to be told twice - and so I have finished my first Karen Ruane block. Maybe. It may get extras when I come to join it to its brothers and sisters. (I should point out this is straight out of the embroidery hoop and it needs blocking to make it look better.)

I like some bits better than others - although  I like the look of the cutwork, I wish I'd made it smaller, but that isn't really something you can unpick.

Now on to block two. I wonder how long I can spin out this 'I've got to sit down, the dentist told me to'?

Playing around...

with my Karen Ruane piece.

Look at this piece and admire the dedication that made me tackle two of my least favourite stitches - cross stitch and bullion knots.

I must admit that I love the look of the cross stitch hearts on silk, so much that I bought some more waste canvas.

And my bullion knots are better now that I know the right way to do them (milliner's needle, wrap clockwise). Not good, you understand, just better.

The more I do on this piece, the more I like it. I can see so many things that I could have done better, but I still like it. As there is a lot of stuff in it which I inherited from mum, I find myself thinking about my somewhat ambivalent relationship with her as I work on it, which is quite bittersweet, and adds to the process.

Working on it has reminded me how much I enjoy flitting from one process/stitch/patch to another - low boredom threshold! Only having a little bit of cross stitch or a few bullion knots makes them tolerable and doable. And, as Karen points out in her videos for the course, you can always add more. I like to kid myself that I have a 'less is more' aesthetic, but  sometimes nothing succeeds like excess. 

I think it may become a work in intermittent but continuous progress, as I make more blocks to add to this one. 

I have also been playing with my tiny Sandra Meech sketchbook. I have a collection of printouts from the Internet for ideas for sketchbooks, and I decided to work my way through them with no very clear idea of where I was going. It ended up being a very productive process, giving me lots of ideas for my piece for the NEC in March. 

Hence the scribble on the yellow spread. 

It is definitely going to be called 'Moving On' (maybe).

It is definitely going to be a small concertina book (maybe).

It is definitely going to have eight pages (maybe).

It is definitely going to include those arrows (maybe).

It is definitely going to involve patching and layering fabric (maybe).

It is definitely going to use the indigo fabrics I dyed with Tiggy Rawlings last year (maybe).

It is definitely going to be hand stitched (maybe).

That led to some explorations of ways to join fabric together - only with paper. They are mostly stitch, although I have to admit that a little glue was involved, purely as a temporary measure, you understand.

The second image is the reverse of one side of the first one, and I included it because I like the way the backs of the stitches seem to develop from the black marks on the left - a B&W print of the over-enlarged detail of foliage on the right of the top image. The foliage is in the apped photo of a truck at the top, except I ripped that bit off.

I trust I make myself clear?

More joinings. I vaguely remember doing something similar for City and Guilds, except that variations of faggotting were involved in that one, and mine, which was black and magenta, ended up looking like a section from a tart's corset. Which in turn reminds me of the Rocky Horror Picture Show, although I don't remember any magenta corsets in that, even on Magenta... 

And as I correct yet another nonsensical autocorrection, I must point out that any post which is even more gibberish-ish (yes, autocorrect, that is what I meant) than usual is all the fault of Paddy the iPad (maybe).

Conflict of interests.

You may have noticed that I haven't been posting much about my work for Karen Ruane's latest class. Well, I haven't been posting much of anything, despite all my good intentions, but nothing about 'Embroider, Embellish, Create'. 

That's because I haven't been doing much work for it, as I wanted to complete two other things first.

Thing 1

(I diagnose too much exposure to Dr Seuss.) But I digress. Thing 1 was the 'Attack' series I posted about lat time. (I suppose that should be 'Things 1'.) They were the last bit of the last lesson of 'Embroiderer's Ledger' (although not my last use of the techniques, or the ledger), and I knew if I put them on one side I'd never finish them.

Thing 2

is this. (Haven't blogged about it either.)

Four of the bits I made in the last Contemporary Textile Workshop, embroidered, mounted, and turned into an accordion book. The next CTW is sometime next month (my diary secretary isn't here right now), and again, I wanted to get it finished because I was afraid I wouldn't, if you know what I mean. I wasn't sure quite what we were supposed to do with what we'd made, so I did my own thing. (Now there's a surprise.)

I'm pleased with the result, both in itself, and as a try-out for an idea I've had for a book for our exhibition at the NEC next March. (Which is something else I need to get started on, pretty soon.) (And which will look nothing like this.)

Finishing that left a little time for some embellishing. 

I'd love to claim that I made the little bird motif, but I cannot tell a lie, it was one of several I found in mum's stash when I inherited it. This seemed a good time to use at least a couple of them.

You may also be able to see an outbreak of cross stitch on the waste canvas at the bottom. Long time readers of this blog will know that I hate cross stitch.

Never say never. Still don't like it, but it looks so effective on Karen's pieces, I decided to give it a try. I've been breaking up the monotony by working some of the other sections in between hearts.

(Mmm - rereading this, I seem to have used up this year's supply of parentheses.) Whoops, there's two more gone...

Attack of the Killer Tomatoes

Bet you're all too young to remember that film.

This is my version.

 

Karen Ruane's emulsion paint and watercolour technique, with a bit of stitch.

It has a companion piece, Attack of the Killer Fried Eggs.

We went to a very important birthday party today, so I'm too tired to be sensible. A good time was had by all - in fact the birthday girl was having such a good time we saw very little of her. The VHC had a good time too, despite being a bit under the weather, and despite not being able to get into the bouncy castle to join big sister, no matter how hard he tried. And rotten granny wouldn't help, because she was worried about him getting bounced on by all the big girls already up there.

The cake was good too. (I don't think I've mentioned that Babybel is an apprentice mermaid.)

And to end a perfect day, there's 'The Killing III' on TV tonight. What else could one ask? (Well, unfortunately we had to sacrifice watching the cycling for the party, but there's more on tomorrow.)

Things are looking better.

Thing 1

is definitely better for a touch of emulsion paint. It is whiter in real life, photographing it in artificial light turns it yellow. I've added some beads and some more tiny French knots.

Thing 2

went black overnight, with a touch of red rub-on.  Also an improvement, I think.

I worked on a few more of the sketchbook pages, using the arrow motif which emerged from Kare Ruane's Ledger class. I'm not sure if I've mentioned that the Eastleigh graduates have been invited to take a stand here, which is very scary. Our theme is - guess what? - 'Moving On', and although that isn't why I started taking photos of traffic, they seem relevant. Of course the arrows are a long way from the photos, but the motif did emerge out of the picture bottom right, so there is a connection. I see possibilities in a couple of these.

I'm beginning to think that I prefer working with linear/geometric shapes - hence all those tubes. Have I discovered my 'preferred way of working' at last? Who knows - I could decide something completely different tomorrow...

Back to work...

after all the excitement.

Today I did something I haven't done for ages. I made a book.

I recently bought  Sandra Meech's new book, 'Connecting Design to Stitch', which includes instructions for making a small, interesting sketchbook. 

So over the last few days I have painted paper, printed off images and details of images in colour and B&W, and painted some of the B&W images, and today I sat down to assemble them into a book.

Well, either I was feeling very dense today, or there are some errors in the instructions. Has anyone else tried them? I know enough about book making to cope, but anyone who doesn't might get a little puzzled. If you do have the book and you want to have a go, I would recommend finding instructions for making 5 hole pamphlets, and using those to assemble the signatures. And don't use the elastic bands until you are ready to weave the pamphlets together, at which point they work very well...

I do, however, like the result, although this is all the actual  'sketching' I've done in it so far. 

I'm thinking of trying some of Karen Ruane's techniques in it, as well as Sandra Meech's.

I don't like the cover, though, it will have to have some attention - like more emulsion paint.

While I had the paint out I screwed up my courage and overpainted this.

Definitely an improvement. When it's dry it will get a few beads and possibly some more French knots. 

Tomorrow we have a day off from grandchild-sitting, as it's Babybel's birthday - hard to believe she's five! Instead we will be making our Christmas cake, using our usual excellent recipe. Which is about all the preparation for Christmas I shall do before December. Bah, humbug!

Where did that week go?

I thought I'd be spending most of it on the sofa with my feet up, but it didn't quite turn out as expected. Of course we still had small people to look after on Monday and Thursday, I have recovered more quickly than I expected, and it was pretty boring sitting on the sofa, even with embroidery to do. In any case, the NHS Direct advice was not to sit on your backside all the time, so I didn't/couldn't.

There has been some painting, which I could do sitting down.

This is Karen Ruane's emulsion and watercolour technique. Karen showed us some of her work from university, where she had painted on strongly patterned fabric, then drawn and stitched on the painted areas, which were almost completely hidden. It's an excellent technique for adding stitch to fabrics.

As I can't draw, my efforts are a little more pedestrian. I used the perspective lines from my source image to make freezer paper stencils for the emulsion paint, then added watercolour when it was dry. Now I'm pondering on whether to add some lines in pen - and then, some stitch.

Some embroidery has been done. This is an emulsion paint and ink piece from the Contemporary Textile Workshop. As soon as I'd done it, I thought 'French knots' - but now I'm not so sure, I think because the big ones are too pale. (This image is greener than it is in reality - and that orange dot is not permanent!)

I'm swithering with the idea of giving it another coat of emulsion, to reduce the contrast, and then adding a few more knots and some beads. Any comments or suggestions gratefully received!

And I've got started on a block for Karen's new class, 'Embroider, embellish, create', which is an excellent class for anyone with a stash of odd bits of fabric, lace, old hankies etc. A lot of mine came from my mother, so this is inspired by her - that's why it's purple.

So far we've covered making the block and adding seam embellishments - on Friday we move on to decorating the empty bits. Mine looks a bit boring restrained, compared with other people's, but I'm encouraging myself to get a bit more adventurous.

However, not much more work will be done before the weekend. Tomorrow is a Babybel and VHC day. The VHC now has a name for Wensleydale and I - the same name. 'Gaga'. It may or may not be appropriate, I'm not committing myself.

Then on Friday it's G Day - graduation, that is. I and my colleagues will go and collect our bits of paper from the VC (I think) of Winchester University, and then process out of the Cathedral in our finery. Then we are all heading for Brasserie Blanc, entourages in tow, for what a colleague has called a 'large, jolly party'.  And as W. and I intend to go in on the bus, we may be jollier than the rest.

You may wish to avoid the centre of Winchester tomorrow...

Another anniversary. Unfortunately.

Last October, we went to the very edge of England to learn about 'Food and Health', and I came home with a sprained ankle.

Last Wednesday I was walking back from the gym and fell over. And sprained my ankle. 

Maybe I should give up trying to be healthy, at least in October?

This led to a reorganisation of our plans for grandchild sitting on Thursday. Babybel, whose affections seem to have switched from cows to heavy horses, had already changed her mind about going to Manor Farm and asked to go to the Heavy Horse Centre instead. 

So grandad took her there, the VHC went to nursery, and Granny stayed at home with an ice pack feeling bored, lonely and decidedly miffed. (Granny likes horses too, heavy or otherwise.)

This should have provided an opportunity for lots of embroidery, but the only thing I had to do was a lot of small tent stitch in cream, which got boring very quickly.

Today I've been a bit more mobile, as recommended by NHS Direct, and worked on my Karen Ruane sketchbook. Much of this had already been done, and I was able to work on the flaps while sitting down.

This exercise involved finding shapes in an image, and then using them to make abstract designs. The photo, bottom left, is one of my own, apped with Laminar (I think) - and all those shapes are there, honest, just smaller, more irregular, and in different colours.

I really like the interlocking arrows, and got a bit carried away with them, as you can see. The arrow shapes in the needlepoint were interesting to do, but the background isn't, as I may have mentioned. I have  ideas for other stitched versions, but as 'Embroider, embellish, create' has just started, I will have to put them to one side for now. And once I've assembled the cloth for that, there will be lots of hand embroidery I can do sitting down. What a good excuse!

Catching up...

with Karen's class.  This section has taken me a long time, partly because of all the other commitments I've been whinging about, partly because I had so many ideas - and I still haven't got them all down on paper.

We started by looking at lace for inspiration. Now, for someone who lives in jeans and t-shirts, I have rather a lot of lace. Some inherited, some sent to me by a kind on-line friend, some bought, little of it ever used. 

Drawing the lace was more of a challenge than finding some. I made a few sketches before we went on the drawing course, but when we got back I started again... Still not brilliant, but definitely better than before.

That was just the start of Karen's ideas,  as you can see - although the ribbon and tassel were my own. The little edelweissy things are embroidered inserts, as suggested by Karen, (although she puts hers in much more neatly) and inspired by this lace, which has what look like woven picots in one of the motifs. I wish I knew more about lace - any experts out there?

It's not stained, by the way, just a c**p photo.

At about the same time we started this section, I came across this image, which got me thinking about the difference between black lace and white lace. How different the 'feel' of the portrait would have been if she had been wearing white! 

So things turned a little dark.

For this page, as well as this weeks ideas, I went back to some of the first techniques Karen taught us, as she keeps encouraging us to do. I really enjoyed making the little blackwork stitch sampler - just wish I'd mounted it straight... 

Lots of room on this side for more explorations, but I want to get on to the final section of the course before too long, as I've signed up for Karen's next one, staring soon.

More pictures of my work, and everyone else's, here.

Popping up for air.

Life has been getting in the way of courses, embroidery and photography just recently, so the only progress I have to report is this - a few picots worked for Karen Ruane's course. Since I took the photo I've added another three of these little squares, which tonight, with any luck, will get a few French knots, before being added to a lace-inspired page. 

The lace I was inspired by has much neater, more delicate little picots on it  - perhaps when I'm feeling more energetic I'll photograph it - and when I've finished the page I'll photograph that, but it won't be before next weekend, as life shows no sign of letting go its grip on my throat before then.

Next week is half term, which means less time out of the house on courses, but more time with Babybel and the VHC. We are, of course, going to Manor Farm - this was requested by Babybel weeks ago, and she asked so nicely she could not, of course, be refused. To tell the truth, granny and grandad like it too, and I suspect the VHC will be interested in the 'dogs' - everything with four legs is a dog at the moment. 

I keep telling myself that next week will be quieter - but somehow it never is!

Twenty five years ago today...

we were awoken in the morning by Cheese Minor, standing at our bedroom window, and telling us that there was a tree in the drive.

'Don't be silly', I said.

He e-mailed me this morning to remind me. I told him always to believe his children.

For those who don't know what I'm on about, it was the morning after 'The Great Storm', a.k.a. 'The Hurricane of 1987'  and there was, indeed, a tree in the drive. When we went to bed It had been in the garden of the house opposite, the owner of which subsequently complained because we still had power, and she didn't. I pointed out that it was her tree which had brought down her power line - and her drive was unblocked.

Wensleydale subsequently cut up the tree, and struggled into work - where there was no power and therefore no students (Health and Safety). He's like that.

I took the boys to school on foot (I'm like that), and discovered that the school had no power either, so I had to bring them home. I'm surprised Cheese Minor didn't remind me about that as well, but perhaps they've forgiven me at last.

Speaking of education, we enjoyed our drawing for beginners class at Walford Mill. Some bits were familiar to me, but it was all new to Wensleydale, and the teacher, Yvonne Lee, was very good at explaining the purpose of what we were doing.  Inspired by what we'd done, I had another go at some drawing I'd done for the Karen Ruane class, and improved it a bit. No pictures of that yet, but I do have some of the previous exercise, based on transfers.

The results of some of my design explorations, all starting from the transfers you can see at the bottom. Before they were ripped up, glued down and stitched into.

The two page spread - the blue flowers on the left hand page are embroidered using one of the transfers before I ripped it up.

I love the interactive nature of what we are encouraged to produce, very inspiring. I can feel a hand made book coming on when if I get some time.

When Wensleydale saw some of these he looked at them for a long time in silence, then said 'It's not like your usual work. It's pretty'. I'm still trying to work out whether to be pleased or annoyed...

However, I know what he means, but although I might never follow up any of this design work directly, the techniques are great and I will definitely use them again, perhaps with some of the stuff from the Contemporary Textile Workshop last Friday.

An Embroiderer's Ledger: Part Three

Sunday seems to have become my 'trying to keep up with Karen's course' day - perhaps because I am out of the house at some time on every other day of the week. You can see lots of images here  of the inspirational ideas Karen is showing us.

And here are my rather less accomplished efforts

Stitch inspired by the colours and shapes from the first exercises.

More design work.

A different approach - the inspiration for this came from embroidery transfers, of which I have a large, and vintage, stock. Good to find a good use for them.

I really, really wish I had done this course before I did C&G - and before the degree, obviously. The style of Karen's embroidery is a long way from my own, but that doesn't matter, because what she is teaching is a methodical approach to design work, and I do like 'methodical'. Even when feeling uninspired, I could work through some Karen's series of exercises and expect to come up with some ideas -  for example motifs to embroider on photos.

The other thing I'm enjoying is that the result of our efforts - the 'ledger' itself - is a great object in its own right. Karen is very neat, and as long established readers will have noticed, I'm not - but the emphasis on neatness rubs off and pays off. Karen emphasises that what we are making is a resource for the future, something we can enjoy looking through and continue to find inspiration from.