Canvaswork . . .

I finished the canvaswork piece we started at West Country Embroiderers this month. Except that it needs some more beads and sequins. And I have to decide what to do with it! As usual. I really enjoyed doing it, and want to do some more.
This is my practice piece. Having only tried canvaswork once before, a small and unsuccesful attempt, I thought I'd try a few threads and see what worked best. I had bought single canvas with a larger mesh (eyesight) and wanted to see before the workshop day which ones would cover it enough. We did paint the canvas first, so bits showing were not a problem. I guess with white canvas you would want to cover it all up? I thought it needed the thicker threads - stranded cotton, soft cotton, some wools, thicker perlé, those knitted ribbon things or else finer ones used double. Our tutor used some torn chiffon strips but I didn't get round to trying that.

Easter celebrations . . .

A representation of the empty tomb we had in church at Easter. It started life as a pair of stocks (!) but some creative people with hammers, cardboard, paper and paint transformed that, others worked on the garden setting , and with the candles lit on Easter Sunday it made a great visual aid for the resurrection message. Interestingly, this cross is made from the tree we had in church at Christmas - an interesting symbolic link.

The flower fades . . .

My Mothers' Day tulips now. DGD asked, quite politely, 'Grandma, why have you got a vase of dead flowers on the table?' The answer could have been of course that I hadn't got around to clearing them up yet. But the real answer is that Ive been finding the drying, twisting petals so fascinating! 'I see,' grandaughter said, a bit hesitantly! The last 2 amaryllis when they were beginning to open. They are coming to an end now, more a soggy mess than interesting curls, so soon now the flower stalks will be cut off and when the leaves have died down they will be put away till next year.
This is the first one I bought, several years ago, buy one get one free in the Co op in Marple, and I gave the other one away as a Christmas present. I wonder if that one is still flowering?
How to keep amaryllis flowering year after year:
When the flowers are finished, cut off the flower stalk. Keep watering the leaves till they are dying down too. Put the bulbs away somewhere dry. After Christmas somewhen take the bulbs out, soak them in water for half an hour, pot them up and put them on a windowsill. Keep a little watering going. Eventually you will have the excitement of spotting the first shoot - is it a flower shoot or just a leaf? - then keep them well watered and they will flower for you.

Mothers' Day and Amaryllis

Mothers' day flowers from eldest daughter, who called round with her three daughters bearing a card, a jam sponge cake and these lovely and unusual tulips:

rivalling for a while our only double amaryllis:
'Apple blossom' is a good name for this colour: Seven out of the 8 plants with flowers this year. (The ninth is a baby and had no flower)

Not quite an oscar . . .

, but it comes close! SewIknit2 said...
"I nominated you as blog "which bring you inspiration and make you appreciate the blogosphere!" If you wish to participate please nominate your choice of 10blogs and let them know."

Thank you so much Sew1knit2. How nice that you enjoy my blog and how kind of you to let me know in this way!

I hereby nominate my choice of 10 - I could have picked 20, so don't feel bad anyone, please, whom I don't mention, I appreciate all the stitching and art blogs I read regularly. There isn't always enough time to leave a comment, unfortunately.

I'd rather be in India

Occasional Jottings

One Hundred Quilts

Spirit Cloth

Margaret Cooter

Musings of a Textile Itinerant

Exploring the Surface

Little Works of Art

Purple Missus

Threading Thoughts

All these have a good variety of pictures / types of work / bits of stitching / etc, and have me hunting for needle and thread or getting the paints out. or wanting to, only its time to get the tea or something! Any of these will feed my soul a bit. Thank you to all of you for blogging as you do. And because I don't like to do a blog entry without a picture, here's one of my favourite views - Chesil Beach in Dorset, from a viewpoint high up the hill at Portland. Nothing to do with anything! I just like it.

Two more current projects . . .

Part of a 27" long strip 3" wide being made for a group entry for a Quilters Guild challenge. Infinity, the local Comtemporary Quilt group I belong to, gave itself 3 ideas as inspiration - India, folded fabric and equilateral triangle. One of the granddaughters did some nice handprints for me, 7 year old Hannah. She enjoyed getting paint all over herself and chose her own colours after I'd got her to do the white ones. It will be one of my entries for the Inconvenient Truths exhibition (see previous post when I couldn't remember the actual title of it), and also one of the CQ journal quilts for this year.

Battlestar . . . .

. . . . Galactica. Stupid, I didn't ever watch many episodes, was more into Babylon 5, butwhen playing with this lovely glitter stuff (see previouspost) at West Country Embroiderers I couldn't help putting the 2 words together! These were my pieces, not snapped till today, and apart from the round stencilled shapes I didn't get on so well with stencils. Painting off a cut or torn edge of paper suited me better - less precise. The flower shapes were printed with interference acrylic and a blob of glitter put on with a plastic knife.
Using a bit of velvet as a paint rag gave quite a nice glittery result too.

Where's the stitching then?

West Country Embroiderers this month had a workshop with Becca Belazs using Stewart Gill Galactica paints - well glitter really in a glue base that dries clear - and stencils on velvet.

We all had a lot of fun trying out different coloured glitter. It is made to a special formula and is quite amazing stuff. Costs a lot though, I couldn't afford to buy any, and however would you choose, from a dozen at least different hues, if you only bought one?

These 2 quilts ( 2' square and 2'x about 4') are what has been keeping me busy lately. I've made them for an exhibition being held at our church in March on the theme of third world problems, trade justice, helping etc. I haven't made 'message' quilts before, but got interested in the idea of hands, and all the prepositions that can be added to the word - hand over, hand out, hand back, hand round, a hand up, a hand with etc etc. So one uses an African fabric and stitched eyelets as found on Nigerian traditional robes, and the other recycles bits of indian fabric using a kantha-type running stitch.

The amaryllis are back!

Spectacular flowers. These are the first to flower of 9 bulbs lined up on the windowsill. Apple blossom, these are called. (I must say I don't remember buying more than one of these, and a third is opening! I don't understand it.)

About time . . .

. . . this blog became active again. Neglecting it so long is very bad, especially as I did say at New year that I wanted to blog more regularly this year. Ah well, here we go again with another walk on Upton heath.

I love the textury quality of this heathland, spiny green gorse, faded brown heather and broken rusty bracken, and the misty quality of the leafless birches in the background. Silver birches and rusty bracken.

It is a site of special scientific interest where sand lizards may be found. Next time we go to where this metal plate is I must do a rubbing!!!!!

Rhubarb update

Compare this with pix on Jan 18th - I promise regular progress reports and a pic of the first rhubarb crumble!

You really want to know this, don't you.

The flowers on this bush have turned out much less exciting than I expected. With that lovely deep pink on the buds at least a lovely deep pink flower could have followed?

Spring is coming too early, the pundits say, and insects and other small wild creatures are in danger from cold snaps yet to come. An amazing sight here is the mimosa tree in next door's garden, right by our fence. I've never seen one before, and have always associated mimosa with the mediterranean, and Australia. What is it doing flowering here in chilly England, in January?

On the heath . . .

. . . just up the road. Upton heath is a Site of Special Scientific Interest. Poole harbour can just be seen in the distance to the right.

There's a small part looks like this, heath fires are common round this area, and there are houses just the other side of the path I took this from. On the other side of the heathland is a landfill site! A bit smelly when we were there yesterday! But it has recently been covered over and smoothed down as if it is to be landscaped or something.

Maybe after they have drilled for oil????? Don't know what this is, sitting on the top of the mound! There is a small oilfield under the harbour, being drilled inconspicuously in a couple of places, so that is not so far-fetched!

But you can forget about the landfill, oilwells and houses when walking along a path like this, flanked by birches,
the emerging brilliant yellow of gorse,and the rust of crushed bracken.

dorset feather stitch postcard

I used to think there must be some sort of special kind of feather stitch that was done in Dorset. But no, it is the arrangements and patterns that are the characteristic Dorset thing. Buttonhole, chain, stem, wheatear, single and double feather stitches were all used, with some variations, in these typical pine cone and squiggle shapes, in a variety of borders and groupings. It was started by Olivia Pass, in the Dorset Women's Institute. I found references to this work on two other blogs, here and here.

We were doing this work at the West Hampshire and Dorset Embroiderers' Guild meeting last week. The idea was to make a sort of case / bag to contain sewing bits and pieces but as I am unlikely to be tidy enough to put my kit away in it I thought I'd make a postcard instead.

Typically I am working on a wild version, which will also be a postcard eventually:

Untidy garden and stitching

Bit of a gap since the last post, but there has been some success this year in posting more frequently!
Still in the garden, ours is not a tidy one but the excuse is a concern for wildlife. Quite a few fallen apples were left lying and blackbirds and squirrels have been enjoying them. Mysterious things are beginning to grow - possibly weeds, we are just letting it all happen this season as we don't know what is there. A nice informal leaf mulch gives the baby plants some shelter, and some texture in the background to set off the yellow polyanthus.
And here's a piece of informal, untidy stitching to go with it, which looks better in the photo than in reality. It needs more stitching, then i might try cutting it up for postcards.

Spring is lurking . .

. . . in the rhubarb patch, and in among last summer's grass,
and beneath some shrubs in a corner of the garden.
Interesting, all the different greens. This one's an optimist, I hope it won't come out too early and meet a late frost.There's been so much rain, my chicken is starting to get rusty!