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.