It’s finished

probably. There are a couple of things I want to tweak, but they are trivial and it could go to college tomorrow as it is.

So today’s photo[s] are of the book.

As usual, I can’t persuade my camera to show the colour accurately – it is actually matte gold with dribbles of sprayed bronze and gold paint.

I changed my mind about the binding and used sequin waste as a spine. The end result is a bit sloppy – I could fix it by rebinding the signatures closer together but to do that I would have to punch new holes in them and I don’t want to do that. [The actual sewing didn’t take very long but adding the beads did.]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited highlights – paper and fabric samples from the monoprinting, markmaking with ink, and sort-of-batik sessions. The pop up allowed me to insert samples which were too wide to go in any other way. The grommets and ribbons are because the pages were a bit boring before. [Beads for the same reason – well, that’s my excuse.]

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

More batik, on hand made paper, transfer printing and monoprinting, some with added stitch, and cut paper to use up a nice sample while disguising the fact that it wasn’t a very good sample.

I do seem to have a liking for things which might almost be landscapes.

Of course if you like neat, well bound books you’ll probably hate this. I like both – I'm just better at making messy ones …

A blast from the past

Today’s photo is another of the ‘reasons to love charity shops’ series – although Wensleydale described it as my mission to save all the vintage textile equipment and textiles in Hampshire from landfill.

Hands up who else had one of these when they were little? Although mine was smaller – you certainly couldn’t weave up to five feet on it, as this box claims. [Which suggests it dates from before the UK theoretically went metric, about 40 years ago.]

If you had one, did you ever finish anything on it? Or did you, like me, end up with a short piece of irregular weaving that got narrower and narrower?

I think its previous  owner  got discouraged even quicker than I did.

But that was before I knew about the exciting things you can weave with. Like sticks, and torn fabric, and pipe cleaners, and paper, and bits of cut up embroideries.

And if the worst comes to the worst Babybel can use it when she’s a bit bigger to make a short piece of irregular weaving that gets narrower and narrower …

History and Art

but not history of art.

To make up for the lazy days I’ve had recently [not Wensleydale - he’s been demolishing a concrete pond] - we had a busy day today.

This morning we went to a course on ‘Tracing the History of Your House’ at the Discovery Centre. Essentially it consisted of an outline of the records available in the County Record Office which could be used for the purpose.

Our house is only about 70/80 years old but one of the questions we have is when exactly it was built – although we have the deeds, they don’t make it clear. We are also interested in the history of the land on which the house was built. We didn’t get answers to the questions on the course – but we now know where to start looking for them!

In the afternoon we went to the Hillier Gardens, as it is ‘Art in the Garden’ time again. No Border Collies so far this year, but we only saw about a quarter of the exhibits, so we may have missed one.

There were some other animals  - the ‘Velo-ciraptor’ [top right] by our favourite from last year, Daren Greenhow, and the wolves by Carol Orwin, [underneath it] were particularly striking. They could give you something of a shock if you came across them unexpectedly at night.

 

 

There were also people  - or angels [by Charis Jones, bottom right]. The ‘Garden Angels’ [!] were suspended from a tree.

The lumberjacks, top right , by David McDiarmid, were interesting, because of what they were made from. At first glance I thought they were wood, as the saw is. But the figures are made from one of the least likely materials for outdoor art.

Today's photo is a close up which  might give you a clue. And if you have seen the most recent issue of ‘Fiberarts’ magazine you may also have an idea.

 

 

Yes – it’s cardboard.

 

A bit of this and a bit of that

It’s been one of those days when I seem to have been busy all day but have nothing to show for it – apart from some repotted plants, but they’re not very exciting. I have finished an alphabet piece but you won’t see that till later.

Before potting the plants I had a wander round the garden – so today’s photo is a result of that.

Not baby marrows but figs, as we are the proud owners of a fig tree. We don’t really like fresh figs, which is fortunate because the one certain way of telling that they’re ripe is that the blackbirds start eating them …

Apparently the Ancient Greeks and Romans associated the fig with Dionysus / Bacchus – I can't think why.

Our Wednesday Wander

was a guided tour by Mr and Mrs Cheddar [and Ronaldo the wonder dog, of course] to a selection of Berkshire churches.

We started at Sandham Memorial Chapel, which is probably the best known. Mrs Cheddar is a WW1 buff, we are interested art – so a chapel commemorating WW1 decorated by Stanley Spencer suited all of us. The paintings are amazing and very moving – it was a thought-provoking start to the tour.

Of course I managed to find a textile! At first glance I thought the altar frontal was woven but closer examination showed that it was heavily but subtly embroidered. It is an early 20th century piece by Madeline Clifton – I hadn’t heard of her but there is quite a lot of information about her in the Chapel and ‘Embroidery’ magazine apparently featured her in 2005. Unfortunately I don’t have a copy.

Then we went on St Mary’s Church in Aldworth. This is the home of the Aldworth Giants – 14th century carved effigies of a family who seem to have been even taller than Babybel’s daddy!

It also has a rather nice altar cloth

  and, in the churchyard, a ‘thousand year old’ yew – not sure how they know how old it is, but it has certainly seen better days!

 

 

 

 

Our final visit was to St Clement’s Church in Ashampstead. This was my favourite of the three. It is a small church which contains a number of beautiful medieval wall paintings.

Can you imagine what it must have looked like when the walls were covered with images like this

 

 

 

and this? And I love the [modern] dove over the pulpit, on the left – and the light fitting.

 

 

However, this is my favourite image – and today’s photo.

Thanks, Mr and Mrs C, for being chauffeur and guide.

I think they are breeding

Today’s photo is a result of a bit of tidying in our back garden .

You may wonder why a pair of sportsphobes [I’m sure there’s a real word for that] have so many footballs.

So do we.

They appear intermittently in the back garden, but no-one ever comes to claim them. I knew there were four but when I tidied up another three emerged from the undergrowth. [Our garden being the sort where you can easily hide three – or more – balls in the undergrowth.]

You may wonder why we don’t just lob them back – but 6 [!]other gardens back on to ours and we are not sure where the balls come from. Demographically there are  probably only two possible sources, but we don’t know which of the two has a footballer – possibly both.

And to be honest, if the erstwhile owner[s] can’t be bothered to come round and collect them – I can’t be bothered to try to find out whose they are.

The young rugby players in the bottom garden come round and ask politely for their lost balls, so why can’t the soccer players?

Ronaldo the wonder dog would probably like the smaller one, but I think the others may be a bit big. We have already given some to our immediate neighbours, who have 13 grandchildren to entertain, but there are too many even for them!

In complete contrast - if you have some time to waste - this is quite entertaining, although they haven’t included the work of Susie MacMurray.

The site has gone into my ‘favourites’ category entitled ‘Things to do when I’m bored’!

Why I love charity shops – an occasional series.

£1.50 – still with his original ‘Build-a-Bear’ label. I shall remove the collar until Babybel is a bit bigger and won’t try to eat it. The white blob on his arm is a label which says ‘Press Here’. If you do he sort-of-barks, sort-of-laughs. Larks? Baughs? Perhaps not.

 

 

 

£3. OK, it’s in French – and my French is rusty to say the least – but look at the plates.

 

There are about 20 of them, and diagrams as well.

No date, but I would think it is about 100 years old, judging by the William Morris-ish / Art Nouveau-ish designs.

That was the good bit of the day.

I did finish this – but after three attempts using different threads I’m still unhappy about the long stitch binding.

 

 

 

 

  I’ve done long stitch before and liked it – I think it’s just not right on this book.

I may have another go tomorrow. Or maybe not.

 

 

 

 

 

 

As it has been another sunny day – another photo from outside. Not our garden, I'm afraid, just a quiet corner near the Cathedral.

OK, I admit it …

I have been whingeing a lot about the weather recently.

But today has been beautiful.

So we went to the seaside.

 

 

 

 

To be honest, we’d already decided to go to Bournemouth whatever the weather.

We spotted these wonderful things on the railings by the path down to the pier.

 

 

As it was a lovely sunny day – we went inside. Here.

We’ve been wanting to visit the Russell-Cotes Gallery for a while – even before Jeremy Paxman included it in his programmes about Victorian art. Today we finally made it.

The interior is even more amazing than the exterior – middle class High Victorian at its gob smacking highest.

If you saw Paxo’s programmes you may have got the impression that all the paintings were Victorian soft porn – which isn’t completely true, although the nipple count is quite high, including Venus Verticordia by Dante Gabriel Rosetti.

And for something completely different there is a delightful temporary exhibition of mosaics by Cleo Mussi, entitled ‘A Hand Book – A-Z’ [with accompanying book.]

We weren’t surprised to discover that Mussi trained in textiles, as I had gone round thinking about how like embroideries her pieces were …

The gallery has the necessary nice cafe, and a small but very pleasant garden.

Which brings me to my picture of the day.  The fountain in the garden, from the grotto.

According to the information leaflet you can order a picnic lunch from the cafe to eat in the garden. Wish we’d known that in advance.

I’m glad to say

that today has been a bit better than yesterday – although the weather has been worse.

We had an unexpected visit from Cheese Major – which is rare and always nice, but meant that nothing got done. I was going to finish off the purple book but I think it will have to wait until Friday now.

So no books or embroidery to show you – you will have to be content with this. That isn’t a grave stone in front of it, it is a concrete edging to what used to be the vegetable bed. When the snails got more of the veg than we did, I gave up growing veg!

No-one in the family likes rhubarb except me, so over the years several overt and covert attempts have been made to kill this plant, which was in the garden when we moved here. Cutting it down, digging it up, weed killer – you name it, my sons tried it.

The sons have moved on – but the rhubarb is still here, bigger than ever. Trouble is, it is not visible from the house and I forget about it until the rhubarb season is over.

Now my mind is running on rhubarb and ginger crumble …

Could you break a CD?

Me neither. But someone at ‘The People’s Post Office’* can.

Babybel’s mum and dad sent us a CD of Babybel. In a jiffy bag, which tends to suggest that the contents need a little TLC.

Someone seems to have folded the jiffy bag. And the CD. Possibly our postie when he put it in the letter box.

Monetary value of a home-burned CD that can be replaced? Pennies.

Emotional value? Enormous. It feels like they have hurt Babybel.

* Note to non-Brits – ‘The People’s Post Office’ is the ‘re-branding’ of what used to be called the Royal Mail. I’m no royalist but since the service was established by Charles 1 in 1635 [ah, the wonders of Wikipedia!] I see no need to bugger around with the name, even if you have buggered around with the service.

Of course my mood is not helped by the weather. This is today’s photo, from about the same place as this one, taken just a week ago. [I didn't lie on the grass to take this one – I'm not completely mad.]

Is it possible to have SAD in the summer as well as the winter?

Looks like rain?

That was the forecast for today – and so far, as you can see – wrong, wrong, wrong.

I had intended to stay in and tackle the tatty fleur-de-lyses – but when we woke up early and the sky looked like this – we decided to go out.

First we went to Walford Mill – well, to be accurate, first we went to the Mill cafe, and then fortified by coffee and brownies we went to the Mill.

We wanted to catch the  exhibition by Caroline Sharp before it closed at the weekend – and we were glad we did. Beautiful contemplative pieces that made me think both of Andy Goldsworthy and Hilary Bower, whose exhibition was the last thing we went to at Walford.

I was particularly struck by one of these, although I don’t think these images do them justice. [This is a better one.]

Think of a giant [1.5 metres or more ] dandelion clock made of twigs. And the shadows it cast were beautiful too. [I have a thing about work that casts interesting shadows.]

Then we went on to Kingston Lacy, which is one of those places we have driven past saying ‘Must go there sometime’. Today its time had come.

We realised as we drove in that there was a sculpture trail, and we fully intended to visit that as well as the house – until we realised how much there was to see in the house. So we postponed the sculpture trail till another day and after visiting the house, we went and had a cream tea in the cafe instead. We enjoyed the scones and so did the chaffinch. 

[I should point out that in between all this calorie-laden food we had a healthy picnic lunch of cheese salad … ]

Not many embroideries in the house and strictly no photography, but we did find something textile-related in the laundry outside where I sneaked a photo.   The one on the right looks like my 19th century model although mine doesn’t have Egyptian decals, unfortunately.

Opposite them was this. A bit more robust than the one my aunt used to have, but I think she did rather less laundry.

So one of these two images is my daily photo – I can’t choose between them.

 

 

And finally – the arashi dyeing. Low contrast as I expected, but quite interesting. I'm thinking about re-arashi-ing them and  then discharging to get a little more contrast – I’ll see what I feel like over the weekend.

The arashi gods were smiling

I think. the pieces are dyed and washed, and drying as I type. The colour effects seem – er – subtle – might have been better with a stronger dye solution, but they may look different when they’ve dried. Photos tomorrow. Subtle is not a problem anyway.

I have spent the afternoon trying to produce tatty fleur-de-lyses [think worn tiles] but my machine and the copper thread I want to use are not on speaking terms, so they are tattier than intended. I think it may be time to go and sit outside with some hand sewing …

Today’s photo is of the most common flower in our garden, and another of my favourites.

Changing horses in mid stream …

or more like one step out from the bank.

I know I said yesterday that I was going to show you A-K of the alphabet pieces I did before C&G – but I have decided to make that an occasional series, interspersed with daily photos actually taken on the day I post them. Like all the other photos on the blog.

This is partly because the alphabet currently stops at ‘'K' – and there are a few that post-C&G I want to redo – and it has been such a lovely day today I wanted to show you this.

A blue sky, without a cloud in sight. Very rare these days.

Yes, I did lie on my back on the grass to take this. Fortunately that bit of the garden isn’t overlooked – and Wensleydale knows I’m nuts.

I have been thinking of using daily photos for the daily photo for a while but I was afraid it would just end up being a series of photos of our not-very-inspiring garden. [We don’t do gardening …]

So if we haven’t done anything interesting to photograph – you’ll get the next letter of the alphabet. Which should give me some time to move on beyond ‘K’ – although K is one of the ones I want to redo. Along with I and H. Clearly something went adrift towards the end, although J isn’t too bad.

Another thing which keeps necessitating a remount is this piece from the Contemporary Textile workshop, which has been lying around deciding what it wanted to be. After we went to the Frank Bowling exhibition it asked for a border of painted fabric, which it got, with a pit of patching. Then it wanted a binding of hessian but when I tried that it seemed to dominate the whole thing - so it came off.

I decided the border needed to be narrower – which is why it’s creased. I also want to add some embroidery to the border – a few French knots, and possibly some running stitch on the right  hand side – because of course this isn't a landscape.

  Or is it?

 

 

 

 

 

 

And finally – I did get round to the dyeing. Of course most people start with white fabric – but I decided to over dye some of the never-ending brown. This bit -

 

 

 

 

and this bit – which I’m afraid looks rather rude.

That’s the trouble with a psychoanalytic training, you can spot a phallic symbol a mile off. Except that I didn’t spot this one until I downloaded the photos and it was too late to take another one because -

this is where it is now. That’s the little pipe, inside the big pipe, inside a small bucket, inside a big bucket for safety’s sake.

I love all the curves in this image – I think it needs to meet Paint shop Pro for a bit of manipulation. If you know what I mean.

They will sit in the dye bath until tomorrow – let’s hope the Arashi gods are smiling.

Today would have been a lovely day to dye

especially as I have signed up for an on-line arashi course with Wil.

The sun has been shining, there hasn’t been much breeze – I could have pottered around with pipes, fabric, dye and buckets to my heart’s content.

So what did I do? I made some paper. Sorry, Wil.

To be fair, dyeing is something I can do indoors, while paper making makes such a soggy mess it really has to be done outside.

 

And I have been wanting to try this idea for embedding fabric in paper for a while.  I found the idea in one of my charity shop purchases -  ‘Working on Canvas’ by Margaret Rivers. Sorry it is such a blurry photo.

The paper is speckled because:

1. I’m too mean – er – green to use linters, I used the contents of the shredder bin.
2. part way through I added some so-old-they’re-tasteless chilli flakes to the pulp.

Perhaps I’ll dye tomorrow.

The last C&G image isn’t a sample but the panel we had to make in Part 1. Of course, because I don’t like doing representational work – it is representational.  The background is layered sheers, nappy liners etc. on canvas. The shiny bit top right is much more reticent in real life!

The cat isn’t QC but her predecessor, Snibs, also fluffy but black. I was told the piece needed a focal point – so she’s it. It also gave me an opportunity to use one of my favourite canvas work stitches, velvet stitch. I don’t enjoy stitching it, I'm always terrified when it comes to cutting it, but I love the effect.

I completely forgot

when I was wittering on about the cat yesterday, to tell you about our Friday visit to the Discovery Centre.

The current exhibition is of paintings by Frank Bowling.  Yet another artist of whom, I have to confess, I had never heard.

So we tottered up the stairs and into the gallery – and our jaws dropped.

The first painting was this one. Unfortunately this image doesn’t do it justice, as you can’t see that the pieces are layered, painted canvas on painted canvas. With added texture.

Notice the size. That was one of the smaller paintings.

It is tempting to list all the paintings and try to give you links but there are lots of images here. Not all are in the show [obviously!]

My favourite is this one. Although I keep saying I prefer abstract to representational art, it’s the most representational of the lot – but very atmospheric.

Why did I like the work so much? Colour – and texture. The wonderful use of many layered colour – but equally importantly to me – the texture. I could look at the lumps and bumps for hours. Very inspirational for an embroiderer.

From the sublime to the mundane - a pulled work sample for C&G.

Inspired by this one in the V&A.

My version isn’t very pulled, if you know what I mean, but I did enjoy working it. [the shine is, I’m afraid, the double sided sticky tape holding it down.

Going through these samples makes me realise that although my memory of C&G is of doing a lot of machine embroidery – badly – we did do a lot of hand stuff too. Perhaps because the pressure of time meant that I used the machine for a lot of the assessed pieces.

No one who knew her …

would ever describe Quality Control as ‘intelligent’. To compare her with a short plank would be unfair to the plank. [Not original, I'm afraid, I got it from a TV programme, but I intend to make it my own.]

However, she is normally a very clean cat.

Normally.

Bear in mind when you look at this that she is a dark grey cat.

 

 

So why is she so mucky?

Barbecued cat, anyone?

 

 

 

 

To finish off the month I thought I would show you some of my counted thread embroidery samples from C&G – not that I have very many.

This is extreme Hardanger – the heart is about 14 cm square. The fabric and thread are hand-dyed – I found C&G samples an excellent way of making a small dent on the metres of fabric I have dyed over the years.

I always find Hardanger very scary – I’m sure I’m going to cut the wrong thread.