I'm glad I had those socks to work on because...

1. in my flurry of finishing I'd left myself without any sitting-on-the-sofa-listening-to-the-TV/Radio 3 embroidery (and in case, last night's TV was Alistair Sooke on Egyptian Art, which required watching as well as listening, for at least two reasons). (Andrew Graham-Dixon tonight, for those who prefer their art historians a little more mature.) And because...

2.  Good job I finished some the new ones last night.

I've started another pair, as although I have accomplished several things today, starting any sitting-on-the-sofa-listening-to-the-TV/Radio 3 embroidery was not amongst them. 

I did pin the Traveller's Blanket together, which should provide several weeks of sitting-on-the-sofa-listening-to-the-TV/Radio 3 embroidery, but before I can start work on it I have to do a bit of design exploration - like working out how many little patches I can get out the fabric. And before I could do some design exploration I had, of course, to make a sketch book.

I've fallen in love with the single section case binding in Heather Weston's 'Handmade Books', so that is what this is. The images come from scans of my fabrics, but the printer was running out of ink, so the colours are a little bit duller than in real life.

After my pinning and book making, W. dragged me out for some fresh air at Hillier Gardens, where I took some photos in the winter garden. When I got home I played around with my new favourite app, 'Waterlogue'. Before-and-after images above.

Let's hope that tomorrow I manage to start some sitting-on-the-sofa-listening-to-the-TV/Radio 3 embroidery - except that it's subtitle reading night, so I shall be knitting whether I have embroidery or not...

Where did the last two weeks go?

I won't bore you by telling you, but we have been a little busy. 

'Visual Marks' was all about drawing. We all brought items which, for us, symbolised 'connections', which were used to assemble a still life. We then drew it from different positions. Now, as you may have gathered, I am not a confident drawer, and it took me quite a while to settle in to this exercise, so my efforts will not receive widespread publicity. However, inspired by some of the things our chair, E had done with the previous session's group graffiti, I did play around with them in a couple of apps.

These were produced using Mirrorgram, Flipomatic and Kaleidoscope apps for the iPad. (It was Mirrogram which produced all the helmeted warriors!) I learned that the effects work best if you zoom in to very small details.

I also tried the low tech approach of using tracing paper and picking out interesting shapes from two blind contour drawings, one in chalk, one in oil pastel, on top of each other.

More little figures emerged.

I'm not sure how these will develop into stitch, if at all, as I have ideas for a couple of the drawings I did direct onto cloth, and which have been ripped up to be reassembled in a new improved format. Maybe.

You have no workshops for a while and then two come along at once. Last  Friday was Contemporary Textile Workshop day. We took in images of 'landmarks' - in my case, photos of organic and inorganic things on the ground, like twigs, leaves, puddles and gratings - which we used to inspire hand made stamps.

Like these - a mixture of eraser and fun foam stamps, plus a new idea I found here. I modified the idea slightly, because I forgot the suggestion to use a paint roller to hold the pipe insulation, until now... 

I made a miniature rolling pin by inserting a smaller tube into the pipe lagging - in this case, the inner tube from some ready rolled icing. (Or it may have been marzipan - in either case, I knew it would come in useful one day.) The inner tube was slightly too small, but wrapping it in duck tape solved that problem.

I used a Fiskars craft knife to slice and dig the foam out - the sharper the better! And as my friend A. suggested, instead of cutting away, you could apply or wrap things on the surface of the foam, like string, lace, rubber bands, self adhesive fun foam etc. 

The gold and turquoise sections above were done at home, printing on to black fabric, including stretch velvet. My current plan is to make a bag with it, once I've finished the plant images for VM - three down, one to go.

This week should be a bit quieter than last, so I hope to have the time and the energy to pick uo a needle!

The forecast was for sunshine...

Wensleydale fancied a trip to Stourhead, so off we set on another Tuesday trip, passing the Stones on the way. No, not the Rolling Stones, these Stones.

(I have to confess that there has been a certain amount of editing of this photo.) 

As we got nearer to Stourhead the weather got gloomier.

(There has been a certain amount of editing of this one too.)

D

As we got nearer, I began to wonder if the place was on fire (no editing apart from a crop).

The good news was that the house is, as far as I know, still standing.

The bad news is that we never got near enough to find out. Half the population of southern England seemed to have decided to go to Stourhead too. Wensleydale and I are impatient souls, and when we realised that we were in a traffic queue to get onto the road that leads to the road that leads to the car park - and the queue wasn't moving - we decided to go to Kingston Lacy instead.

This involved a scenic drive along the back roads of Cranborne Chase - and very scenic they were. (A touch of tilt-shifting.)

We stopped off for a very good smoked salmon sandwich at Cranborne Manor Garden Centre, and found no queues and no trouble parking at Kingston Lacy.  Perhaps the autumn colour wasn't quite as spectacular as ar Stourhead, but there was some - and we had probably left it too late anyway.

There were also roses

mysterious doorways

pumpkins

and lost wellies.

Bet you don't get all those in World Heritage Sites.

And on the way home I got to take more of my signature photos of the car wing mirror - which only needed cropping.

(All photo fiddling with Snapseed and Color [sic] Accent.)

Doing things...

 we don't seem to have had time for recently - like mindless needlework [cardi for the VHC] and going to exhibitions. Oh, and watching cycle races.

It seems like years since we last went to an exhibition. so on Monday we visited two - although they were in the same place, one upstairs and one downstairs. And, surprisingly in this almost all sport-hating household, both had an Olympian connection. And even more surprisingly, we enjoyed both of them.

Upstairs at the Discovery Centre is 'Faster, Higher', a video installation by Susan Pui San Lok, which is as much about the politics of sport as it is about sport - probably why we liked it. I also liked the way she used the 5 screens, which gave me ideas of ways of using photographs - I'm not quite up to video installations yet...

Downstairs is 'Sporting Heroes' which is probably of most interest to locals. Highlights for me were 5 Greek vases with sporting scenes on them [courtesy of Winchester College] and the opportunity to see a time trial bike up close. [My tastes are nothing of not eclectic.]

Today the Olympic Torch came to Winchester. Bah, humbug.

So we went to Whitchurch - to the Silk Mill to see a small exhibition of Midsummer Night's Dream fairy costumes by Anna Nowicki. A fascinating variety of techniques - I was specially struck by Oberon's costume, which had a real Stuart feel to it, despite being made with very twenty-first century materials and techniques.

We didn't manage to avoid the torch, completely however - on the way home it passed us going the other way, heading for Andover. It was in stealth mode - they hadn't asked anyone to walk/run/stagger along the A34 - but the caravan of other vehicles and the escort of all the motor cycle cops in Hampshire were a bit of a give-away.

Much more exciting, as far as I'm concerned, was spotting this in the front garden when we got home. At first I thought it was one of those plastic balls with holes in we used to play with at school - but no, it's a fungus. No idea what, but I hope someone out there does.

The flies seemed to like it even more than I did.








Isn't that a wonderful form to inspire a 3D textile? Possibly even craft Vilene.














And speaking of photos [how's that for a bad segue?], today's iPad app is Blur FX. Nothing to do with a musical group whose lead singer's father Wensleydale used to work with. [Three degrees of separation to Damon Albarn, three to Sigmund Freud - my contacts are nothing if not eclectic.] [And only two to a fifties actress called Sabrina of whom none of you will have heard...] [But I digress.]

Blur FX does what it says on the tin. It makes your photos go blurry. Then you can wipe away the blur with your finger - an effect I like. With a bit of luck I can do it with the camera, but it's nice to have a retrospective option.

Blur FX also offers you a few filters, which you can apply to the blurred or clean areas. or to the whole thing...

including inverting the colour.


OK, it's another one trick wonder, but it is a very clever trick, and one I like [and use] a lot.







Tomorrow the gasman cometh, so I'm planning a bit of non-mindless needlework - oh, and possibly a bit of cycle race watching...

The gaps appear to be getting longer…

No reason apart from not having a lot to say – must be a first for me. That is because not a lot has been happening on the creative front – just housework, shopping, sorting and reducing stash, optician’s appointment [=£££s for new specs] half - a quarter - about an eight of the porch ceiling falling in [=£££s I expect, but we hope the insurance will pay for it].

Just a normal sort of week then <g>.

All I’ve done which is at all creative was take a very simple drawing of a bottle…

 

 

 

 

 

use Photoshop to bend it, bend it, just a little bit [if you are now singing you are as old as I am], and colour it -rather unsuccessfully.

 

 

 

 

 

But a bit of pixilation in Picnik and saturation in Picasa work wonders.   

 

 

 

 

 

 

And now I'm going to find something entirely unrelated to college work to do…

I didn’t mean to disappear…

but sometimes life gets in the way of art – and blogging. A combination of several insomniac nights and some unexpected events [some good, like an evening’s Babybel sitting, and some less good] left me with little energy for PMSs or PCs – or even SAMs – still lots of ideas, just no motivation.

The only thing I managed  was a revived interest in playing with Photoshop. I had been trying to work through a ‘Classroom in a Book’ but I've decided I much prefer working with my own images, not ones selected by the author. So I bought myself a companion volume to PFAEC – this one is Photoshop Photo Effects Cookbook. [PPEC.]

I like the effect of removing the colour from the background.

The books were written for an earlier version of Photoshop but I have managed most of what I’ve tried so far.

Apart from the pen tool.

 

This morning, after a couple of good nights’ sleep, I got up raring to go.

I intended to work through some of my ideas for free machine embroidery [which you may remember I don’t do], but started with a little ironing :>( and a bit of tidying. I have realised that if I tidy the work room first, even minimally, it clears my mind for later, more creative activities. And I find things.

Like the pin weaving board I warped up ages go with some left-overs from Daisy and then put on one side.

“I won’t get started on it now, but I’ll go and look for those bits of wood found objects I thought I would include in the weft.” [This led to a cat in a cupboard, so it has had to be left open until she decides to emerge.]

“I'll just push them through and see what they look like.”

“Not bad but I don’t like that bit of bark, I’ll go outside and look for a stick.”

“I could hang it up from that stick.”

“I wonder if this shrink wrap I tried making machine wrapped cord with* will work as a weft?”

“I'll just go on till lunchtime and then I’ll get the machine out.”

Bet you can guess what happened. I was enjoying myself far too much not to finish it**. Completed the weaving, made tassels [shrink wrap and floss], and a twisted cord [shrink wrap – surprisingly, but reinforced with floss], hung her in the window and took photos. Might not be art, but I reckon that’s a Personal Cloth, don’t you?

I was going to try zapping her, but like her too much to risk spoiling her. Gives me ideas about natural objects and plastic as well: this is turning into an exploration of plastic, rather than litter. [Told you I was weird…]

I might do a bit of reverse engineering, make some smaller pieces as ‘samples’ and try zapping them. How many times can I go into Superdrug, buy a packet of paracetomol [39p] and ask for a bag before they begin to wonder if I’m contemplating suicide?

* It kept catching in the hole in the plate and breaking. Black bin liner worked better – just.

** her – Penelope.

I’ve caught up…

but I expect to fall behind again tomorrow!

Days 11 & 12 of the 30 day photo challenge are ‘something blue’ and ‘sunset’: one of these was much accessible than the other.

There are a lot of blue things around here, apart from jeans – sofas, curtains, carpet, vases, crockery, towels, eyes – yes, we like blue.

So what to choose? I've already discovered that I’m too impatient to spend time arranging still lives, and carpets and curtains seemed a bit restrictive – so I pulled a few things out of the sideboard, and photographed them individually, before deciding to go with this.

In case you can’t work out what it is, it’s a millefiori paperweight – which is blue – just not this blue!

This is the ‘silkscreen’ effect from PFAEC, which gave lots of practice in extracting shapes and using layers – and I managed to work out how to add a frame border –PSE calls it a border, who am I to argue?

‘Sunset’ was rather more of a challenge: yesterday was overcast, so no sunset, and I’ve given up expecting one today as it has been raining heavily all day [has summer come?]

So I cheated.

When we went to ‘Another Place’ last month, I was a bit disappointed that there wasn’t a proper sunset, although I did take some photos of the light on the water.

 

 

 

PFAEC has an effect called ‘luminous landscape’ – or in my case, seascape. 

Quite pleased with that.

Tomorrow is Babybel and gym, so I don’t know if I’ll have the time to tackle ‘Myself with 13 things’…

Just a couple of steps behind…

so no change there.

While we were on holiday I came across this, and as I’m trying to improve my minimal photography and Photoshop skills, I thought it would be something to add to the roster of things I’ve started but not finished try.

I think the idea was that we started on June 1st – and I really meant to – but we were on holiday and other things took precedence – like the aforementioned eating and drinking too much.

So I started today, but I have taken several photos in an attempt to catch up. I haven’t photoshopped all of them, photographing being quicker than photoshopping, at least the way I do them, but here are the first two.

The first challenge was a self portrait, but shy, retiring soul that I am, I ducked out of the problem of trying to work out how to take a self portrait which actually showed what I look like, and went for a reflection instead.

I’ve been playing around with ideas from ‘Photoshop Fine Art Effects Cookbook’, which, as it’s written for Photoshop rather than Elements, has been even more of a learning experience. ‘Fine Art’ in this context includes historic photographs as well as paintings and prints.

This is my attempt at a fake wet plate collodion print from the 1850s to the 1890s. It was taken in the conservatory looking into the dining room so there are quite a lot of reflections of things other than me.

The second challenge is ‘What I wore today’. Now this runs into the same problems as a self portrait – how do I photograph what I’m wearing? I could take it off – but it’s not bed time yet.

So what is easily visible? Well, the things I keep having to crop out of any photos I take of things on the floor.  Yes, my feet.

My skin isn’t actually blue, you understand, and neither is anything else – this my attempt at a cyanotype, c1840s, with a black line added by Livewriter without my consent.

Earlier on in the day I had collected my sewing machine from the repairers – so thanks for your suggestions, Sandy, which I will try if the Teflon foot doesn't work.

We also went out to Walford Mill to see the exhibition ‘Under and Over’, which is an interesting combination of very wearable clothes and accessories, and not-really-meant-to-be-worn art works inspired by clothes. I particular liked Carole Waller’s wonderful painted clothing, Elisabeth Hamlyn’s knitwear [oh, to have the figure/courage to wear it], and Elizabeth Forrest's combinations of recycled items of clothing and poems in calligraphy.

Funny how satisfying a busy day can be…

Tomorrow is the Research Project hand-in day. I keep finding new bits to add, so my initial plan not to include any print-outs has gone by the wayside – though I have read them all.

A day out and a day in.

Yesterday we decided it was time to revisit Highcliffe Castle, so we pottered down to Dorset, had a look at the art exhibitions that were on [some interesting ideas], spent some money in the shop [things for Babybel – 4,, things for Gran and Granddad – 0] and had a good lunch in the excellent cafe.

Then we came home and I played with GIMP, which, I’ve concluded, has much more interesting filters than PSE. This is one called Qbist, layered over one of the photos from college.

 

 

 

 

And while I was at it I had a go with the Hockneyiser

 

 

 

 

 

 

and Lunapic – this is the Obama style filter, you’ll be amazed to hear.

Then I began to have to fight with BT Total Broadband and/or Google Chrome to  get, and keep an internet connection, so I gave up, turned everything off, and watched a very good programme on Indian textiles on the telly.

 

 

Today, Wensleydale went to help Babybel’s Daddy do DIY - [and Babybel, of course, who has her own tool kit]. I stayed at home and kept busy. I:

1. painted some black paper with Inkaid, on which to print off some of the 230+ images of myself I’ve accumulated over the last few days. [Vain? Moi?] Tried to remember if I usually use two coats, as per instructions, or only one. Plumped for one.
2. Went up to local shop to buy things we forgot to get in Sainsbury’s.
3. Took delivery of parcel.*
4. Made birthday cake with ingredients bought in shop.
5. Put serviettes to dye in the washing machine. They were once white, but got a bit discoloured so a while ago I dyed them blue to go with the blue paint in the dining room. However we no longer have blue paint in the dining room so I have dyed them black to go with the black curtains. I suspect this will be their final reincarnation.
6. Made coffee. Still no reliable internet, so phoned BT. Waited while someone told me repeatedly how very busy they were– thank goodness its a free phone number. Eventually got through to a very helpful young man in India who managed to improve the connection no end. Everything now working apart from Chrome.
7. Made mock up of the triptych for Wednesday, which involved wrestling with a metre and a bit of lining paper – very curly lining paper. Decided to make the real thing bigger. Wrestled with an even bigger piece of very curly lining paper, painted it with gesso, and glued on quotes from Robert Frost and TS Eliot. [Pretentious? Moi?]
8. Took cake out of oven and dyeing out of washing machine.
9. Made a cheese sandwich and a strong spritzer.
10. Put dishwasher on and washed up the non-dishwasherable.
11. Painted triptych.
12. Found variety of papers and ironed Bondaweb on to them.
13. Made cup of tea. Downloaded Opera, as recommended by Cheese Major, which has changed sine the last time I looked at it. Felt confused, but discovered it has a mail program which might allow me to give up on Outlook – followed instructions to download it, couldn’t believe it was really that easy.
14. Tore up Bondawebbed papers and ironed the bits on to A4 cartridge paper, on which to print off some of the 230+ images of myself I’ve accumulated over the last few days. [Vain? Moi?]
15. Saw Wensleydale coming up drive, breathed sigh of relief, and put kettle on again.

* Aforementioned parcel. What could be in it? [Not the cup, that’s there to show the size.]

A lot of packaging, 4 catalogues, a receipt and a little white box – overkill packaging, perhaps?

The little white box contained this, a somewhat more expensive replacement for my £5 charity shop watch, which finally gave up the ghost last week. As the local charity shops don’t seem to sell cheap watches any more, I decided I needed some colour in my life and gave myself another early birthday present. It is rather fun

 

 

 

 

Spot the difference?

Tomorrow is the actual day of my eleventy third birthday, so we are off for a family outing to look at model trains. Not that I am specially interested in model trains  but I know a young lady who is, and watching her watching them will be lots of fun.

What a dreadful assignment!

First day back at college and what are we asked to do? Work with a partner to take photos of each other, manipulate them in Photoshop, print them off and make a book of the best, and then produce a paper based triptych on the theme of ‘Past, Present and Future’ inspired, more or less, by our images.

I’m sure you realise how devastated I was by this.

There were two drawbacks – first, that the college network was working at the speed of a paralytic tortoise, and the other that this implied that I should limit myself to Photoshop - which of course I ignored.

Fortunately I’d treated my self to PS Elements as an early birthday prezzie, so I came home and played with it.

This is the ‘Cut-out’ filter.

 

 

 

 

And PostworkShop – this is ‘Outlines with Scanned Brush’.

Hope the pictures aren’t meant to be recognizable.

 

 

 

 

And Befunky – ‘Holgaart’ . I'm in there somewhere.

The book is called ‘How to Survive Modern Art’.

 

 

 

 

 

And Sumopaint – the ‘Kaleidoscope’ filter, which does a good job of showing off my Frida Kahlo eyebrows.

I don’t have purple hair, I was wearing a hat with purple flowers on it.

 

 

 

I may get round to GIMP,  and some of the other programs I tried out in the great flower extravaganza, [just search for passion flower’ or ‘dahlia’ on my blog], if I decide the current 190 or so images aren’t enough.

Yes, I have spoken to Wensleydale in the interim, and looked after Babybel, been to the gym and done a few chores – although progress was helped by another bout of insomnia last night.

Then there are the other important decisions, like what sort of binding to use – currently thinking of a simple codex, but with flaps and holes and fold outs – and how I can wangle a triptych into a book format. 

This was all supposed to be doable in the college time left over from thinking about topics for our research project and having tutorials on it.

Fat chance.

Suppose I ught to write a research proposal too. My preferred topic? Artists’ books …

Not ‘make hay while the sun shines’…

but ‘play with photo-editing programs while sensible people are asleep’.

I had a mega-insomniac night, so rather than play computer games, which is what I usually do, I played with a photo-editing program.

Long term readers may remember a series of posts I made about various on-line [and downloadable] free programs which I tried out in the days before I had a degree to worry about. I  had great fun and other people seemed to enjoy it too.

If you want to know more, look in August and September 2009 on  the blog. [I notice several mentions of insomnia there too…] As I’ve changed the design of my blog, the lay-out of earlier posts seems to be buggered up. Please forgive me if I don’t go back and sort it!

One of the programs I particularly liked was ‘Sumo Paint’ – not Japanese as you might think, but Finnish – and as you may have realised, I have a bit of a thing about things from Scandinavia.

However, since then I took a course on GIMP with Sharon Boggon, I rather neglected the other programs I looked at. But in the middle of the night I decided to revisit some of them, and started with Sumo. And never left it.

I tried the paint tools, rather than just the filters, which is what I used before.

The first discovery was the star tools, in the ‘Tools’ menu on the left when you open the program. They change shape depending on the direction in which you move the cursor, and if you check the ‘Shape Trails’ box top right, and keep the line diameter [top left] low, you will get these wonderful Spirograph like shapes. [The non-Spirograph ones have ‘Shape Trails’ unchecked.] There are other shape tools to try as well.

If you change the gradient you use for the stars, to avoid odd colour combinations you also need to change the foreground colour box [bottom left]which determines the line [border] colour. I used the eyedropper tool to select a colour from a star, although you will then need to undo that star and start again if you want them all to have the same colour border.

This one started with red borders selected from the gradient, but I clicked on a border by accident when I was adding the background, and liked the effect.

 

 

For this one I started with a gradient and added the stars on top [I love gradients].

The gradient is ‘Sunset 3’ with saturation decreased and lightness increased, for both background and stars.

You can play around with the gradients to your heart’s content by moving sliders, and if you click on the arrow at the bottom of the gradients drop down menu, you get even more choice.

Of course, I couldn’t just stop there – these programs are a calorie free version of Pringles.

The ‘Adjustments’ heading allows you to play around with the colour in different ways. This is tweaked using ‘Curves’,

 

 

 

But as a negative, with increased brightness, it’s a bit Japanese.

 

 

 

 

 

This is ‘Threshold’, which I think looks better rotated.

And all this is just a start – I haven’t begun to look at what the filters can do with some of these.

 

 

 

 

 

So what can an embroiderer do with all this? Search me – although I am tempted to print some of them out on fabric and try adding a bit of stitch – or playing around with them in other ways. This black and white version would be interesting interwoven with plain black or white fabric, – or red.