And then there were nine.

‘Personal cloths’, that is. I just need to think of a name for it – apart from ‘number nine’.

This one was made from a collection of plastic zip-up storage bags whose zips had gone. After rolling I added smaller wrappings with shrink wrap, zapped the whole lot with a heat gun, and then incised them with the soldering iron. [I was very good and wore my Darth Vader face mask throughout – which meant I didn’t realise what an awful smell I was making till I’d finished…]

 

Then I sponged them with black acrylic and wiped it off again, before knotting them all together, rather untidily, because of the lumps and bumps.

It is hanging in the front garden, while I try to resolve my dilemma about whether to hang one in public [it’s litter! I haven’t got the bottle! They out to be out there! Think of it as [non] knit hacking!]

Insomnia struck again last night, but I kept to my new resolution to do something constructive, and made a little collage. The word was on a bag from Compton Verney and seemed very appropriate.

Nothing to do with tubes, but it’s going into the sketchbook as an idea when I get bored with rolling things.

Speaking of rolling things – POT and LAF continue to grow. I received an interesting donation for POT last week [thanks A.!] – all will be revealed in my next post [if I don’t forget…]

What a difference a day made.

At 2 a.m. on Wednesday I was convinced that my college work had wandered off up yet another dead end – I didn't know where it was going, didn’t think it was saying anything, and I was missing stitch – to the extent that I got up and worked some blackwork samples inspired by security envelopes.

But I took some photos of the tube-y things I’ve made so far into college and begged for a tutorial.

Amazing what a difference someone's positive reaction makes!

Suddenly everything seemed much better than I thought it was:

• it’s not just doing the same thing over again, it’s ‘working in a series’
• POT was ‘ a very strong idea’ and I should consider doing something similar with e-mails
• the photos I’d taken of the other pieces outside were very good and I should put them all outside and photograph the changes over time – this was before I’d mentioned that T&T were living outside
• I should use some of the photos, enlarged up to A2 [!!!] as part of the degree show.

So

• all the other suspended tube pieces have gone outside permanently and been photographed for posterity.
• POT has also been photographed, for the sake of consistency

 

 

• and I have started a new piece – hereinafter known as ‘Love and Friendship’ [LAF]. I abandoned the idea of using all my e-mails – or even all the spam e-mails – there are just too many of them – and decided to use just selected ones in white [you can guess which from the image] – plus e-mails from friends and family in green.

Mmm – perhaps I need more friends?

I was very tempted to call it ‘Love and Freindship’ [especially as it was an epistolary novel] but decided that trying to show off would just lead to most people thinking I didn't know how to spell.

I have plans for 2-3 more in the outdoor series – and then I'm done up till Christmas  – apart from the paperwork, the contextualisation, the work book, and the PMS.

But I still like the blue blackwork security envelope patterns…

You might think…

that having done nothing for college while we were away, I’d be busy  making up for lost time.

Er – actually – no. 

POT has progressed – this is how he looked on Saturday.  I though there would be a lot of envelopes waiting when we got back – but we appear to have had very little post. [The postie has made up for it since.]

I’ve been collecting envelopes for about a month and POT is just over 2 feet long – which means that by Christmas when he is due to be handed in – he could be 6 feet long. And if I carry on till the degree show [aaaaagh!] – he could reach the 20 feet Sue the tutor suggested when she looked at my first 9 inch effort.

Not sure she really meant it seriously …

Today I managed to get round to assembling this lot, which have been sitting on my desk for too long. This one [‘No Entry’?] is definitely not long enough, and it would be better if the diagonals were higher up – but I was interested in whether the technique would work – and as you can see, it did.

But three a day? Depends what you count as three.

1. feed sourdough starter
2. add envelopes to POT
3. work on Very Important Sewing.

Baby Bellerina has a birthday soon, and I had a request for a bag for her ballet kit, as part of her present. A pink one. With dancers on it.

With a little help from the members of the British Quilt List, I found some fabric [thank you Angelika] and made this. 

Not sure her mum will be able to wrestle her tutu into it, but it should take her shoes and cardigan.

 

Babybel’s mum also asked for a couple more aprons for herself, a bit longer than the last one. That ought to have been a quick job – but of course I couldn’t resist adding contrasting bindings, and pockets, and embroidery. Or, unfortunately, making mistakes, unpicking, resewing, unpicking etc. etc. etc..

Last but not least, the VHC needs a Christmas stocking. His big sister has one, and I can just see his little face looking at me saying ‘Where’s my stocking, granny?’ OK, he will only be 4 months at Christmas, but he has a very expressive glare.

I’ve got as far as cross-stitching his name for the top, and tomorrow will be spent making some patchwork for the rest of it. And quilting it, if I get up early enough.

Then making sourdough bread.

And rolling up envelopes.

And trying to find my recipe for Christmas cake, which has to be made in half term week. It’s a tradition. I used to make Christmas pudding and mincemeat as well, but we don’t really like the first and don’t eat enough of the second to make it worth while.

I’m exhausted just thinking about it. Good job I have a good excuse got not going out much at the moment…

What’s been happening?

Not a lot.

Tubes have been made and strung. [The eagle-eyed amongst you may be able to work out that the gas bill came today. Fortunately Wensleydale was sitting down when he opened it.]

 

 

 

 

Tubes have been made but not strung – I branched out into plastic bags before returning to my favourite newspaper and Brusho.

 

 

 

 

But mostly [apart from routine stuff like the gym and getting my hair cut] – it’s been sorting out stuff for college. Which isn’t very photogenic.

We had been given rather confusing instructions about what to hand in for each of the modules due in at Christmas – which overlap just a tad – and thanks to C’s dogged pursuit of clarification - we were clarified. Basically, hand it all in, and they’ll sort it out. Sighs of relief all round.

However, I asked a supplementary about what we should hand in from all the stuff we did over the summer, which has now been rejected. [It seems that I am not the only one to whom this happened]. The answer was – not a lot, for fear of p*****g off the markers. [I paraphrase.]

This was good news – until I got started and realised that it was not a simple job. There were practical problems, such as things in the sketchbooks to be included which were on the back of things that were not to be included – and motivational problems like finding  myself thinking ‘I've done all this !”&£$£%”£^$ work and some of it’s quite interesting – and in any case it shows how my thinking progresses – so I want to hand it in.’

My solution:

1. leave the sketchbooks as they are, it's too much trouble to try to weed them.
2. put the background stuff in one folder, make it clear what it is, and then it’s up to them whether they look at it or not. Fortunately I’d done most of it loose-leaf, so it was easy to weed out the irrelevant/rubbish. I was tempted to call it ‘How I got where I am today’ but I'm not sure the tutors share my somewhat odd sense of humour.

Of course I kept changing my mind about what I wanted to keep, and at one stage found myself raking through the recycling bin because I thought I’d thrown something away I now wanted to include. [It was in a sketchbook all the time.] However, it has clarified my mind about how I got where I am today, so it has been ‘A Good Thing’ [© W. C. Sellars and R. J. Yeatman 1930].

But of course it took a  l-o-n-g  t-i-m-e.

The highlight of the week was babysitting with a princess and a very hungry caterpillar.

The princess was fine, though a little reluctant to go to bed – perhaps there was a pea under the mattress? – but she was persuaded when her granddad offered to continue his marathon reading of the collected works of Jean and Gareth Anderson upstairs.

The VHC was hungry, despite demolishing what had been left for him. [I thought my days of pushing prams full of crying babies round the neighbourhood in the dark, to persuade them to go to sleep, were long gone.]

Fortunately his mum came home just before he starved to death. I think when he was born he took one look at his dad, his mum, and the princess and decided he had a lot of growing to do…

The ultimate test…

of the 3 a day system was always going to be the day after an insomniac night.

Today was such a day – and the system worked. So often after a bad night I mope around feeling sorry for myself, and achieve nothing.

Not today.

1. Roll up some more tubes. √
2. Photoshopping X –but it is going to happen after I finish this.
3. Finish the Country Gardener √ 
   [It gets a red tick because it is so overdue.]
   Here’s the proof. I tried tying it up with some lovely red satin ribbon but it was too wide, so I ended up doing raised chain band in 4 strands of perle cotton.  I wanted the tubes to twist – and they do, as you can see – but unfortunately the red circle disappears as a result. Perhaps better if I’d painted it on both sides.

And I finished this - a cardigan for the very hungry caterpillar [VHC].

Made with the wool I indigo-dyed at Walford Mill. There wasn't quite enough so the sleeves are shorter than the pattern suggested – although they don’t look too short to me. The test will be in the wearing.

Yesterday was a 3 out of 3 day too – although I had included Mr Cheddar’s birthday bash in the list. The other items were the usual envelope rolling, and making my weekly record of progress on POT.

POT on the left, another work in progress on the right, looking remarkably similar. It is a sky scarf – 2 rows each day based on the colour of the sky at coffee time. I started the scarf in August and POT at the end of September, so the latter is growing quicker, and the weather seems to have been better wherever the envelopes have been… 

We enjoyed Mr C’s birthday at Popham Airfield, and so did Babybel – here with her other granny.

Thanks to Mr C. for the photos – hope he enjoyed it too.

Not sure about the VHC.

Funny how everyone who sees him with this expression on his face comments on his likeness to Wensleydale…