Stitching and Sketching

Another late post. Ah well, while we aren't blogging we are living life! So it follows I must have been doing a lot of living!

I've certainly been doing an fair amount of stitching and sketching. I finally finished my Mystic Moonstruck Hare cushion, and it went with me to lovely Lizzy Doe's house warming party on Tuesday night; I think she liked it. You can never have too many cushions, and the hare is one of Lizzy's special images.

Not an easy cushion to photograph, as it is quite plump. The words say: Leaping, Lilting, Landbound no longer, Thou Mystic, Moonstruck Hare.  I searched all over the place for a short poem about hares to stitch around the leaping hare, but came up with nothing I could use. So I wrote these lines myself. Originally I had "leaping, lilting , landlocked no longer....' because I loved the alliteration, but then I realised that the hare is not landlocked, wrong word entirely. Earthbound would probably have been the best substitute, but I wanted to hang onto a bit of that alliteration so Landbound it is. A compromise.

Detail of  fastening. I don't do zips. To be honest I usually sew all round and unpick when necessary!

          The text is stitched using a whipped running stitch. The spacing gave me a lot of grief!

                     I'm very fond of using variegated wool when I work with felt or flannel.

There was a super spread at Lizzy's, she'd spent hours and hours preparing a vegetarian -vegan even - feast, and we all took a dish of something to add to it. I think she will be eating the tabbouleh I took for the rest of the week - it was a HUGE dish! And very garlicky.

                                               Part of the spread...there was lots more!

I was so enjoying working with the felt I had to start another cushion. The ground fabric is an old blanket, which last saw light of day as the base for Katy's "One Bird" cushion. The pattern is from the French magazine Quilt Mania, and designed by Kate Harmon.I would normally design my own, these naive flowers are not difficult to draw, but the design was there, ready to go, and I was working on impulse. (same old, same old!)

I'm using a mixture of hand-dyed felt and felted woollen blanket. I've tried to keep the colours fairly muted, I didn't want bright primaries this time.

I use a simple stab-stitch, which I prefer to blanket stitch. When all the applique is completed I shall embroider using wool yarn and cotton perlè, as I have used on one of my quilts; lovely to look at and very enjoyable to stitch. I might also add a row of triangles down each side; even when I 'borrow' a design I like to add my own elements.

I took this with me when I had a doctor's appointment the other day, I had time to wait so sat in the car stitching away happily.

On the sketching front I am still stuck with copying but I think it is good practice anyway. I did have a go at sketching a trout from a ceramic model Jim provided. I have to re-carve my trout block!

Not brilliant, but truer to life than the very 'carp' looking creature which I had previously carved! Now I just have to reduce this to a usable size.

                                                   Cabbage. You guessed, of course.

     OK, so I'm no water-colourist either. But I love filling this sketch book with images and colour.

                     I did a quick little carving and stamped out this 'proof' using stamping inks.

I'm trying, I'm trying. So many other things get in the way of sitting down and just drawing and drawing. Like music! I have promised myself I will sit down each day and actually PRACTISE not just PLAY. I'm a bit naughty about it but I know it makes sense.

So, to finish up I'll leave you with a couple of photos I took leaning out of my sewing room window - a bit tricky as it opens the wrong way for taking photographs!

It was a rather dull day when I took these photographs, so not the crispest images. However today - like yesterday - the sun is shining - HURRAH! I'll ignore the somewhat cool breeze! I hope it's nice where you are, and lingers on throughout the weekend. Have a good one, Y'all!

Snowdrops, Poems and Promises

Saturday afternoon in the garden. Lovely sunny day, blue skies, birds singing, bulbs burgeoning through the soil...another couple of degrees warmer and it would have been just perfect. But I'm not complaining.

When Jim goes for his early morning walk to fetch the newspaper, he takes a short-cut through the church-yard, and he came back with these lovely snowdrop images for the blog; what a star!

A toddle down the garden path revealed all this 'emerging' going on under our very noses.

                                                    RHUBARB! RHUBARB! RHUBARB!

Feeling positively springlike earlier this week, and knowing I was going out early for the evening to play some tunes with friends Rob and Marj, Jim suggested we have lunch out at a local pub.

                                                            Getting ready to go out.

   
So now onto the POEMS bit of my post. One of my musical friends from the Burwell Bash - indeed, she was the assistant fiddle tutor-  Lizzy Doe, Musician, Artist, Photographer and maker of stunning jewellery, was nominated for the Fenland Poet Laureate Award. I tootled along to the Wisbech and Fenland Museum, in a lovely part of Wisbech I'd never been to before, to hear the poems and watch Lizzy walk away with 3rd place!  The standard was very high, and she was very pleased with her placing and hopes to work with Aetelier East in the future, based more on her music and photographic work. Well done Lizzy!

                                    Lizzy looking bashful, receiving her certificate.

We got back to ours about 10pm, and unwittingly sat up nattering until gone 3am which really didn't do either of us much good the following day - Lizzy had work to do and I felt quite hungover, still getting over the tiredness of the journey back from New Zealand. Feeling my age!

Now as to the PROMISES, well, I made a statement of intention last post, about getting my act together, and getting myself organised. I've made a good start. I've been reading up on menu planning, organising food storage and other useful topics. I've been through both freezers and thrown out the really beyond it things, and listed everything else, labelled things which I had to identify first! Later today I shall sit with my lists, my diary, and a couple of my favourite cookery books, and menu plan for the next couple of weeks. Off the topic of food, I have been through my wardrobe and weeded out a pile of clothes which are now in a large black sack and heading for a charity shop in town later this week. So I feel that I am well on my way...the hard part is keeping up the momentum! I know I have more to do in the sewing room, stuff to do on the stitching front, and music to keep up with. Lists! I must make lists!

Reading the latest post from Penny (L is for Love blog) I see she has acquired a beautiful new journal for list making. Or rather List Making, as Penny is not doing hers the way I do, on cheapo Reporters' Notebooks! Looking forward to seeing her lovely pages.

So, anyone daft enough to have made New Year Resolutions this year? How are they going? And is the thought of Spring giving you the urge to clean, sort, organise, and make plans?