Brrrr!

This is what a combination of sub-zero temperatures and a leaking overflow pipe will give you – roof to ground icicles.

I suppose it is a good thing really, as the water had obviously been trickling down behind the rampant ivy and we wouldn’t have noticed it otherwise.

 

 

 

The weather meant it was a good day to stay in and be creative. Here’s something I knocked up on the back of an old envelope or two. These were stamps I made in my Tamsin Van Essen phase, plus a blue ink pad and some blue patterned security envelopes, in the still life sketchbook. Love those envelopes – wonder how well they take stitch?

 

And while I was at it – grey security envelopes in the landscape sketchbook – sorry about the camera flare.

 

 

I was about to write ‘definitely better than paperwork’ - when it dawned on me that it is paperwork…

You may have wondered…

what I was going to do with the hank of sari silk [although some of it feels like sari polyester] I bought earlier in the week.

You and me both.

However, today it told me it wanted to be a Lois Walpole bowl,  in these muted colours, so I had to go through the hank removing the brighter ones.

I have another piece of this corrugated card, so I hope there will be enough of the other colours to make a second bowl.

I also did a proper landscape drawing [sort of], on some paper which had been washed with inks. I picked out some of the foliagey shapes with Inktenses, and deepened some of the colours in the ‘water’ and ‘grass’. I’m quite pleased with it, and may have another go.

This was all this afternoon – in the morning we went to a small exhibition by students from Winchester School of Art, in the Theatre Royal. I was particularly impressed by Amy Madron’s projected images and Melanie Evans’ layered sheers with screen printing [?] and a tiny amount of stitch. Worth visiting if you are passing, although it finishes on Monday so you’ll have to hurry.

You will probably have guessed that I’m avoiding talking about the landscape I started on Wednesday. I spent an hour or so last night, while listening to a rerun Rebus [don’t get me started on what a waste of Ken Stott/Ian Rankin that series is] putting running stitches in the hills, and half an hour this afternoon taking them out again. Too heavy [I’ll have to go down to a single thread of floss or hand stitch with machine embroidery thread] and I need to think very carefully about stitch direction.

While I was unpicking I pondered on why I don’t want to machine embroider it, although everyone who's commented on it obviously thinks I’m mad not to. Partly it’s because I’m not a very competent or confident machine embroiderer – and yes, I know I'd get better if I practiced, but I don’t particularly want to. Embroidery for me is a slow, contemplative process - and machining isn’t. I also find machine stitch quite restrictive – basically all you can produce is a line. It may wiggle, it may have blobs, it may have loops of the bobbin thread showing – but it is still a line. And usually an unbroken line is not what I want – although in this case it might be...

I did take a good look at the piece and to try to decide how I might machine embroider it – and it didn’t actually solve the problem of the orientation of the stitching. It would just be quicker to sew and  slower to unpick.

So sorry machine embroiderers –  I admire what you do, but I don’t want to do it myself.

Just like half-marathon running – ‘Go Mrs Cheese Minor’ who will be hitting the streets of Gosport/Lee on the Solent tomorrow while the rest of the family cheer her on.

Here’s one for the railway buffs…

if there are any out there.

This week’s topic in Drawing Studies was ‘Landscape’ – we were asked to bring an image of a landscape which was important to us and make sketches from it, preparatory to producing a stitched piece. ‘Sketches’ could include computer images – so I pottered around with Picasa and GIMP and some of my photographs.

I quite liked this one,

 

 

 

 

and these,

 

 

 

but in the end I went for this one – the version middle right. [How long have I been using Picasa without realising that you can move the pictures around in ‘Picture Pile’?]

The original is top left,  and for those who aren’t married to men with an [always denied] interest in railways, it is the Ribblehead viaduct on the Settle – Carlisle line. I don’t think it is ‘important’ to me, I just liked the mucked-about image, and the one thing I didn’t want to do was a conventional landscape.

I took some painted papers to college with me and made a torn paper mock up. The squiggly lines were an attempt to represent the texture/stitch – it looked better without.

Then I made several attempts to do the same thing in fabric, brought it all home and started again.

This is where it is at the moment. It has some machine stitch holding the viaduct down as well as machine tacking. But I didn’t get round to selecting threads before it got dark, so I have a selection of red, yellow and blue embroidery floss waiting to be matched in daylight – although the dark blue is going to be problematic as it is almost violet and I don’t have anything like it. [I’m using floss because I want to use finer thread in the background, getting heavier as it moves forward.]

I also have to decide on stitch – I was going to use free cross stitch/herringbone, but I'm veering towards running stitch [again], or possibly fly. Anyone got any bright ideas?