I have been speaking to various people via Skype today and generally having fun. Great little piece of free software that.
Sara told me off for not changing the dead looking teddy on here ... so tomorrow, I promise to update my pages. Sorry I have been so neglectful of them recently.
I thought I might upload a picture tonight but Blogspot won't let me.. so that's the end of that.

Marysia mentioned Alpaca this morning.

So I thought you would like to see Alpaca Ted playing dead on the scanner!

He's nice isn't he?

Here are not very good pics of my not very good Celtic Fragment!The detail is meant to show the stitching but you have to look hard!The colours are OK though except for that purpley colour on the edges of the canvas... it isn't really there, just an artefact! It's this border that I dislike so much... very ermmmm Brown!This is a mixed media piece of paper, felt, wax crayon, stitching.

I'm back now from my sojourn in Ferndown learning how to make little books. I really enjoyed it... especially after I asked the hotel to change my room as the first night was near a very busy road. I find that they quite often give the least nice of the double rooms to people who book a single!
Here is the view from my window overlooking the River Stour after they moved me... very peaceful. I couldn't get a really good picture as the window didn't open far enough.





I would love to do it all again having learned a little about how some of the effects are done. I made a start on three books.
One is a childs board book. I didn't use an old one but a new blank book. My theme for this one is daisies and I started by cutting a hole in the cover. This was originally intended to have something displayed in it but I might change my mind about that as I like what happened when I forgot to protect the page behind the cover before I painted it!
Here is a pic of it as it is at the minute but it will change. It looks a little darker here and you can't see the interference green overlay. It is going to have the word Daisy in little wooden blocks somewhere on the cover.




The second one is a pamphlet type using painted and stamped papers. This one is called 'Aspects of the Heart' and features some stamped words, a beautiful rubber stamp and some paper castings made from stamps.
The third is more like a folded pamphlet than a book and hasn't got very far yet. This one will display some of my odds and ends of samples. The reason it hasn't got very far yet is that I think I chose the wrong colours for the background and I need to reconsider.... I love the idea though.

Still working with the genealogy pics.

Now then, Who do you all think these are?

Bet Margaret can guess!

This is what I have been playing with this morning. The first scanned, hand coloured picture has a shrapnel hole in it from the Nov 1940 raid on Coventry. I have had a go at repairing it in Photoshop Elements. Thought some of you might like to see it.

I think if I am going to use it though I will have to re-photograph it as it doesn't all fit on the scanner.

I have also been having a look at how Paul Klee might have used the computer to produce his picture of the Golden Fish. Here is my version. I had to make the background of several layers in order to somewhat reproduce the effect. I then overlaid it with his images of the fish but these could also have been made .

I think he would have enjoyed having the use of a computer.

Hi Folks, it is high time I updated this.... been a bit busy getting things ready for my upcoming book classes. One of them is going to be about daisies I think. Here are a couple of background papers I made using a scanned image of a pressed flower.

I made another using a dropped shadow ... not sure which, if any I will use.

If I have time I will also print some onto shrink plastic and see what that looks like.

Excitements!
I went to a good exhibition yesterday at Letchworth Museum.

On the way back I called in at Art van Go! and discovered that they have their new brochure out now. So, on the spot I booked a two day course with Frances Pickering, called Textured Treasures. Little antique looking books. (she has a website)

Then this morning I booked a four day Summer School with Ruth Issett... I tried to resist but I just couldn't honest! I think I shall be exhausted at the end of all this. (I am already going to one with Maggie Grey in June!)

However... this is my Summer Holiday... I don't go on conventional ones any more!

The exhibition at Letchworth Museum was really good.

(When I finally found it that is! I rang in advance and was told to go into the multi-storey car park behind the Town Hall where there are disabled spaces. Guess what? No multi-story. It was an ordinary street level one. So I thought I was in the wrong place and went to another multi storey nearby. Duh! This didn't look right as they had said I could see the Museum from it. I asked a couple of folks who said there were two museums... which did I want? In the end a nice lady suggested that I tried the other car park again and she turned out to be right. Grrr! None of this would have been an issue if I could walk better.)

It was the work of the Images in Stitch Group, many of whom are members of our branch of the Guild but some from further afield as well.

Not everything was to my taste of course but I think the ones I particularly liked were those of Lynne Abbott whose stumpwork figures always make me laugh out loud when I see them. One called "The prayer of the 21st century Gran - Please, oh please bring back the pram". This is an image of a Grandma with shopping and a baby in her arms struggling to open a modern pushchair.The second one is called "Forty years on, the children are gone, peace and quiet, **** the diet". This is of a couple sitting relaxed in the garden with a glass of wine.Very comical.
Claire Wood's work a series of life poses was good too.
Sue Blake's work, who I don't think I have come across before was really delightful and different.
I always like Annwyn Dean's things which involve paper and stitch. (she lives partly near here and partly in the frozen north.. I think in Anne Honeyman's neck of the woods?).
Jill Izzard has done some really nice stuff based on messages I think in connection with a trip she made to India.
Liz Holliday has done a lot of work based on rock pools and fossils. She has previously done a lot of Mola work and I thought these showed the influence of that but she has moved it on a lot.
Liz McIntyre - Brown had some nice pieces there... although I have met her several times now, I hadn't seen any of her work and I liked it.
Rosemary Graver's Flower Studies were super.... very unusual.

Where is everyone today... all having a lazy day?
As promised, here is a pic of the THING being worn. The model was shy and didn't want her face shown, hence the awkward stance!
I think you will agree it looks better being worn.
I think it might look good if it had ties on it here and there .... what do you think?

I made a 'THING' today!
I have no idea what it's real name is but it doesn't know whether to be a necklace or a scarf I think.
I am not a knitter but a friend showed me one of these and when I next went to quilting class at the shop, they were selling the yarn and a free pattern for it and two others.
It is made in Sirdar Firefly yarn and I quite like it.
The pattern said to cast on 33 stitches, using the thumb method) onto 10mm needles. I did this and I thought it was far too wide and then ended up too short for me. It would be OK for someone skinny at that size though. I undid it (had to anyway as I dropped some stitches when casting off and couldn't pick them up again!) and restarted on 9mm needles tried 28 stitches... still too wide I thought... so I ended up doing 24.
You knit the whole ball of yarn in stocking stitch, then cast off loosely. You have a rectangle. Put one twist into the rectangle and then sew the ends up.
Voila! A THING!

I couldn't take a picture of it being worn, but I'll try to get Ann to wear it tomorrow and take one of her. It looks nicer on than off.

I know you are all waiting to hear about my grand Day Out with Jan Beaney and Jean Littlejohn .... so here goes.

It was an absolutely super-wonderful day.

I had been a little bit worried about what they would be like but they were so nice. Good tutors and very giving. I was concerned when I arrived that that there were so many students .. about 30 in all .. and we were split in two rooms but Jan and Jean circulated among the two rooms independently and all went well. I happened to have settled myself in the room that they set their wares out in and when they wanted to talk to everyone the others came into our room to listen. It worked very well.
They had lots of samples to show and they let me take pics but I can't post them I'm afraid.

They handed out little bags of materials they wanted us to use.

We were shown three techniques, all for making textures pieces.
1. Iron some Bondaweb onto background fabric. Iron gold film on top of that... try to make it a broken image... not too solid. At this stage it looks really garish and horrible. Next stage was to do some lacy knitting on big needles (15mm) spread that out onto the Bondaweb and iron it on. Then on top of that build up layers of texture with curonnes, threads etc. Makes a lovely textured piece in the end with that awful gold only glinting through.

2. Another textured piece, this time with irregular knotted buttonhole stitch worked in layer upon layer. Finally do some whipping stitch into this.

3. We used Aquabond which is a water soluble sticky backed fabric. (Barnyarns have it and call it Bond) We taped that down to the table carefully and laid out fancy threads in a grid pattern. The grid doesn't have to be regular. Then fill in the spaces in the grid with something like squares of fabric. Place a sheet of Romeo water soluble on top and press it down to make a sandwich and hold everything in place. At this stage choose whether to machine embroider over it, or hand stitch. We did hand stitching as we didn't take machines. I started with a grid of knotted buttonhole and will work another over that probably. Make sure all the threads in the grid are caught in the top stitching so that they will not fall apart when the sandwich is dissolved.
This will make a lovely lacy piece to add to other work.

This Aquabond was new to me and I think it will be very useful.

We had a super lunch provided by the Regional Chairman and her helpers and it was generally a really nice day. I think Jan and Jean were surprised to find it was a special day for us being the Regional Centenary workshop, so they donated the bags of materials as their contribution, saying that the Guild had been very good to them over the years. We had expected to pay for those so we were all chuffed.
Thoroughly recommend Regional days... at least in our region I have been to three now and they have all been good.

I did take pictures of their samples but didn't ask permission to post them so I can't. Mine are not far enough advanced, but I will show you when they are.

Jean has been doing some wonderful work on her embellisher and I was most impressed with what it can do in the right hands. The samples the company shows in their promotional literature would really put people off buying it I think! I think I might need one. I did ask her what she thought about the cheaper one that is on the market but she didn't recommend it.

I am off on another day class tomorrow (today). It is an E.G. Regioanl Centenary workshop with Jan Beaney and Jean Littlejohn at the Settlement in Letchworth. I'm looking forward to it but don't quite know what to expect. All I know is that it is hand stitching and will almost certainly be on a larger scale than I am used to.
Bags are packed and ready... that's got to be a first for me! grin
I should be doing all sorts of other things rather than this but I guess they will get done as well in the fullness of time.
I'll give you an update afterwards.... might even show you what I did.... if it is fit that is!

Hi There,
Today, I had adventures. I had to drive into London for a hospital appointment. It was a lovely day and for once the traffic wasn't too bad. Three interesting things happened on the journey.

1. Seed Dispersal.

Great demonstration of dispersal seed dispersal by wind power. I was driving along Du Cane Road past Wormwood Scrubs and also the A40 and the air was white with seed heads. I don't really know what they were but assume it was from the plane trees that line many of London's streets. They were looking particularly good today in their new green dresses.



2. The Future and the Present.

As I was driving, I was reminded of a picture of the future I saw as a child.... probably in a comic or something. Driving in along the A40 there was every sort of weird venicle imaginable on the road. Overhead there were several airoplanes... one huge one which was obviously going to land at Heathrow... it was very low in the sky, and several more distant ones glinting in the sun. There was also a big helicopter I think it was watching the traffic.
It struck me that this was just like the picture I remembered, except that one was predicting the future and here I was, in it!

3. Tulips Dancing

On a traffic Island in Wembley there was a lovely little vignette of the most beautiful tulips. They were the sort with really pointy petals and in gorgeous bright colours against a dark background. Lovely shapes. They had their little faces pointing to the sun and were wide open. The wind took them and they looked for all the world like they were dancing.

I wished I could have taken a photo but I was in traffic and there was no way that I could.
I looked for them again on the way back... but the sun was different and they looked much more ordinary.

Amazing the things you see on such a journey sometimes isn't it?

Hi There,
I seem to have been completely overwhelmed with 'busyness' this week! Too many things happening all at once.
There has been a disaster with my OCA coursework. I sent some off to the tutor five or so weeks ago, knowing that he is very slow I was not too concerned at first. I emailed him last Thursday and got a very late phone call that night.. the work didn't arrive. So... it's back to the drawing board. I have all the pictures but some of the PCT has gone AWOL and will have to be re-written. What a pain and what a right royal waste of money and ink and paper.
At least he has now agreed to have it on CD which should be a bit easier and cheaper to assemble.
I have to go and sit in the local garden centre this afternoon as part of the EG's 'making Visible' week. Not sure why I agreed, but there you go. grin

Tomorrow Hospital appointment and Guild in the evening (we are due to hear about the new centre shenanikins!).

Saturday should be good... class with Jennie Rayment I'm looking forward to that.

In the meantime more orbs for you... I learnt to use Picassa this week as you can see. There are three images using tulips as the starting point and one using honesty.

One of the reasons I have been quiet the last few days is that I have been finishing off the last lesson in my Xara Extreme course. I made this collage as one of the excercises. It is based on the events of the night of Nov 14th 1940 in Coventry where I then lived.
My own account of this is now archived at:-
http://www.bbc.co.uk/ww2peopleswar/stories/26/a2044126.shtml
I wrote this, (which some of you have already seen) for the BBC's People's War series.
The collage is based on a page from my Dad's diary which I was recently given to look after and to extract anything useful for the family history.
Dad set out from work at his usual time but didn't get back to us till the following morning because of the severity of the raids that night. The collage attempts to show an event that occurred in the City while he was trying to get back to us and while we were being bombed out.
In the top right is a picture of the new cathedral which was built attached to the remains of the old old one, kept as a war memorial.
I had my degree ceremony in there when I gained my PhD. Splendid place for such an event.

I have a few more ideas for pages from this diary and other bits and pieces that are in the package.

Been a bit busy with things the last few days, but I have been thinking about what I might do with this piece of dyed silk. I did it in a Lesley Morgan class some time ago and here it is drying at Urchfont. It is quite a bit brighter than this in reality.
Anyone any ideas about how I could use it? Funnily enough, I can see better how to use those bits around the edges than I can the main piece! There are some lovely mixtures of colours in there.

I haven't posted for a few days but I have been busy working at various things (mainly my Xara Extreme coursework (poor sample above) and watching videos and DVD's. I recently got Jean Draper's video (thanks to Carol for telling me where to get it) and I have really enjoyed that. The work described is from her jaunts to the American Southwest and I love the colours she used, the tecniques and the distressed look she gave to some of the pieces. I have enjoyed listening to the way she works and seeing her working space.
I have also re-run the two DVD's I have, one of which deals mainly with Golden products and their uses for collage (Carrie Burnes-Brown). I loved most of the work that she did with hers.
The other is about making the most of the art materials we already have. She goes through the products first and then uses them to make various end products. I didn't like eveything she did but I did enjoy watching the process in every case.
Now I want to find the Jane Dunnwold one. Anyone know where to get that?

I have been watching a fascinating programme on the BBC1 this morning about the 'plague village' of Eyam in Derbyshire. Someone in the village received a bolt of cloth from London in 1666 at the time of the plague there. This resulted in about 220 deaths in Eyam over the next 14 months. The village took an oath to cut itslef off to prevent the spread of the disease. This act of sacrifice was retold in a musical version of the story by the Oldham Theatre Workshop and renacted in the Church at Eyam. It was very moving and beautifully done by this group of young people. Many of those in the audience were direct descendants of those who died.

Here is another of my scanned photos for you. Taken at West Dean some years ago on my medium format film camera and scanned with my flat bed scanner.

This was scan of soap bubbles, I then made a square selection and used the polar cordinates filter on it twice, rotating the image between the two applications.

I think I have decided how to finish my Celtic frescoe fragment now. It is worked on top of a piece of felt so I will apply that to a background fabric and do the hand stitching through both layers. Then the background fabric will be laced onto the mounting board. I want it to look like a fragment of painted wall in the end. I think this might do it.

Hi There,

I wanted some buttons and couldn't find what I wanted so I made some in Xara Extreme.
Thought you might like to see them.
Today I plan to do some handstitching on a frescoe fragment I have started. I will post a picture of that when it is finished. I might need some advice on how to finish this piece when I have completed the stitching... so watch this space folks.
I have several things waiting in the wings to be finished in time for our EG branch exhibition in July.

I was jealous of all those folks who got to see the recent total eclipse so I decided to make my own! What do you think?
I made this in Xara Extreme but took it into PSP9 to add the sunburst.

OK, so now I will try to send you a picture. This is the early morning view from my window at Ashpole Barn Studio a couple of weeks ago when I went there for a day class. Great place.

Well here it is... my embryonic Blog. Of course, I was never going to start one of my own... but there you go, I just had to do it.