More days out!

The tension is mounting as we have had five viewers since putting the house on the market three weeks ago, but as yet no buyer! So as the DH had to go to Beverley on Thursday, I decided that rather than sitting at home waiting for the phone to ring, I'd go on the Bernina Club outing to the Abakhan Mill at Mostyn in north Wales.

So a leisurely drive along the M62 in a very large coach in some rather nasty heavy rain, with a stop on the way for a coffee and we arrived just in time for lunch. There is a very large selection of fabric, yarn and craft items and so there was plenty to entertain us.

As I obviously don't have anywhere near enough fabric in my stash, I bought more! It is strange to be buying fabric by weight, but the staff were very helpful and I managed to get some bargains, although I had to look carefully as what was on offer was a bit of a mixed bag, most of it seconds and some of it badly marked or damaged. Here's what I chose!

The colours are a bit deeper than they appear here, but they all blend together well. All I need is a bright colour to use as a highlighter and I'll be all set. My plan is to make a quilt using the cutting double technique. Take two square pieces of fabric the same size and put one on top of the other, right sides up. Then make two cuts across the width of the square. Now you have six pieces of fabric so you mix and match them before sewing back together.  You can make things more exciting by inserting thin strips of fabric as you go. There's a really good book that explains this technique called Thinking Outside the Block by Sandi Cummings. For those of us who are just stepping into the murky waters of contemporary quilting and who haven't yet decided whether to become a "textile artist", it's a good book to start with!

But no time for that today because we went to Tockwith Show where my lovely granddaughter was entered in the young person's sheep handling class! Thunder, lightening and really heavy rain, but she did us proud and won second place! Her lamb, Roy, didn't seem to be all that excited, but she was so proud of her rosette, and there was prize money too! Here they are in their pomp!

 It was lovely to see them winning a prize and although Isobel looks a bit uncertain, she was very proud of herself and of Roy! As to Roy's future apparently, his rear end isn't wide enough so it's doubtful that he will make it as a breeding tup! Oh dear! What will Isobel do if Roy ends up as lamb chops?

So after all the excitement of the competition, we explored the show and it was only when there was a torrential downpour that we voted with our feet and came home.

Such a pity that it rained as it spoiled so much for people who had been planning, practising and working hard to get ready for the show.



Next up, a visit to the Leeds flower show to help out on the Alwoodley Quilters stand. Will this mad social whorl ever end!

Art in Action

We decided to extend our trip to Oxfordshire and visit the Ashmolean Museum to see an exhibition of "Treasures from the royal Capital of Macedon" entitled from Heracles to Alexander the Great. We were not disappointed! However, the down side was that no photography was permitted and there were a large number of security staff lurking ready to swoop at the sight of a camera. So I bought the catalogue instead and all the photos I would have wanted to take are fortunately included. Can't show those on the blog either, but here's a photo of the front cover by way of compensation.

I will use some of theses photos as the basis for the work to be included in my Sketch Book 2012 project for which I have chosen the theme "Prehistoric". My aim is to try to capture the distinction between primitive and prehistoric. The people that made the beautiful items in this exhibition were certainly prehistoric, but definitely not primitive.

And so off to Art in Action on Thursday with camera, water bottle, notebook and umbrellas! It was as wonderful as always and as usual there was simply not enough time in the day to get around everything we wanted to see. I had a great time in the printing marquee and here is my very first etching!

It's a dry point etching scratched onto perspex with an old dart. The printer, a lovely lady called Barbara Jackson inked up the plate and then put it through an enormous press and hey presto!
Here is my selection for the winner of the best of the best competition. It is a tapestry woven by a peruvian weaver who uses Alpaca yarn rather than wool or linen.

Full of colour and texture and a snip at £5,000! We decided to save the money and didn't buy it. In fact there were a number of items we didn't buy saving us over £10,000 on the day!

On Friday morning I spent some time in the Textile marquee as it was quieter and it was possible to get close to the stands. I signed up for a workshop with Dionne Swift and met some very interesting people. Somehow I think it's time for the organisers to invite some fresh blood into the textile marquee. It seems that there is a core of people who are there every year and so there's not always much new stuff to see.

However, there is a lot to see and do generally and lots of lovely food and drink. This year we went for the Heavenly Haloumi burger from the Veggie table. Yum!

So back to Leeds on Friday afternoon and a lovely sunny weekend relaxing in the garden.

Hand Quilting Experiments

some leaf like shapes

So I have been a busy girl what with whizzing up and down the country for various cultural and artistic ventures! The visit to Art in Action was brilliant but details will have to wait for the next post.

My travels have involved a lot of sitting on trains and in cars and to while away the time, and in the car try to take my mind off the chaos on the roads, I have been hand stitching. This follows on from my CQ summer school workshop with Helen Parrott.

using variegated silk thread

I have used some of the hand dyed cotton kindly donated by my dear friend Sandra and various threads just to see what happens. Strangely, although it's only rows of running stitch, quite a lot happens very quickly. Sadly though, not all of it is as intended e.g, this sample using silk thread doesn't look right. I think the thicker thread tends to dominate taking the eye away from the "ripples", and the ripples are what it's all about!

sand ripple sample using cotton thread

 So here is the first of probably many similar samples inspired by ripples in the sand after the tide has gone out. Using longer stitches meant that there is also rippling inside the stitching and I'm not sure this is how I want it to look.

So I will block it and see if that makes it more acceptable.

 running stitch using cotton machine thread

In the meantime, I'm putting the stitching to one side while I play with the toys  I bought
at Art in Action. Namely the fabric crayons, the Inktense blocks, Sue Rangley's book, Embroidered Originals and a lovely new journal sketchbook!

So, blogging may have to wait a bit!

The benefit of reading the small print

 So the DH, seen here doing his bit in Trafalgar Square, having received his senior railcard decided we needed to have a day out in London. The plan was to have a nice lunch and spend some time at the Cartoon Museum to see Steve Bell's cartoons and then to perhaps go to the British Museum for a bit of culture before having a nice meal and catching the train home.

But of course, being us, we failed to read the small print and discovered when we arrived at the CM and tried to open the door that it was closed on Mondays!

So we decided to walk down to the Embankment and go to the Watercolour Exhibition at Tate Britain instead. Strangely there were a lot of people around and not all of them English.  London it seems is a popular tourist destination!!!
Walking through Russell Square we helped two very nice young men find their way using our ancient and very tatty AtoZ. We were also accosted by two rather insistent people of uncertain nationality who spoke no English who wanted to change a £20 note for four £5 notes. They ended up almost destroying the DH's peace of mind by grabbing his wallet and checking that, no as we said, we couldn't help before trudging off muttering in some unknown tongue!

 So onwards and Southwards we went, passing some lovely buildings and pausing briefly to look at some of the sights.

This statue is on Whitehall just opposite the Household Cavalry and I don't remember seeing it before. It is extremely moving and although the photo only shows one side of it, I didn't feel like standing in the middle of the road to get photos of the other sides!

And just across the road were two members of the Household Cavalry on duty,  resolutely silent and still despite the throngs of tourists and this one.......


.....is a young woman! Who'd have thought it! I'm not sure how aware most other people were  as most of them were surrounding her male colleague. I didn't know that women were allowed to join, but I'm glad to see that they can and do!

I didn't take any photos of the peace camp in Parliament Square, just because it was difficult to find a spot to get them in where I wasn't likely to get run over, so here's Big Ben instead. They are obviously very well organised and dedicated, but I'm not sure how much notice the tourists were taking.  Good on them and I hope a good few of our politicians learn something about morality and justice from them!






And so to the Tate where after the exhibition we rested in the cafe for tea and cake. No images from the exhibition I'm afraid, but it is well worth a visit. The DH and I fell completely in love with Turner, and although there were other gems, his sketches small paintings had the most impact.

Then outside to get caught in a heavy shower, but fortunately we were able to shelter under this lovely plane tree. I had forgotten how lovely these trees are and there are so many of them!


Despite the rain I managed to get some photos of leaves and bark and the seeds which have a lovely texture.

Very ominous clouds over the London Eye, and very choppy conditions on the river. So we didn't go for a trip on the Duck, but we did see one driving along the Embankment with a lot of very wet people on board. Next time perhaps!
 

A "Duck" on the Thames! Just what you want on a wet day like today!!!

Summer school

I'm feeling a bit flat today after a weekend at CQ summer school at Belstead House in Ipswich. The workshop with Helen Parrott was very enjoyable and relaxing, but above all it was FUN!!!

As I am not renowned for the quality of my hand stitching and find using a thimble nigh impossible, I had visions of a rather bleak weekend. I needn't have worried. Noone, including Helen, produced a thimble and I soon learned the difference between hand stitching and hand quilting!

Our first task on Friday after dinner and introductions was to quilt a traditional pattern onto the fabric sandwich Helen provided. We then moved on to stitching parallel rows of running stitch across the width of the fabric. After a while, the fabric began to ripple, although I was quite slow so didn't get quite as far as I had hoped with mine.



After the class broke up, we decamped to the bar where several of us stayed until quite late. As I am so new to this sort of event, and know so few people, it was really lovely to meet and talk to other members and put faces to names I had seen on the Yahoo messages.

On Saturday Helen put us through various exercises in stitching and design and I had a real eureka moment. Helen had brought lots of photos, postcards, magazine articles etc and we were asked to choose up to 15 images that pleased us. We then had to arrange them on our table in a way we found pleasing and write down what we felt about the images we had chosen in our secret book! Then everyone went around the room and wrote down on little post it notes  what we felt about the images each had chosen . Then there was a general comparison of notes and a discussion of how we all felt about it all. It was interesting to see what other people had written about someone else's choices and amazing when I found that someone else had made a comment about my choices that was exactly the same as my own.  Helen did not tell us why she had asked us to do any of this until afterwards when it became clear that this exercise is a way of getting started on a design process!

My collage of images.

So on came the light bulb when I realised that you don't have to know what you are actually going to do before you start. You can just play with images, found items etc and the ideas will start coming!  Not knowing what the end result was to be is why I have found it so difficult to actually get started on anything, but now I feel energised and full of confidence. So thank you  to Helen for helpimg me realise this.

Saturday afternoon gave me an opportunity for a short walk around the lovely grounds before getting back to the stitching. More chat in the bar on Saturday evening before turning in and at last getting some sleep! 

On Sunday there was more stitching, including French knots, and different techniques for distorting the fabric , e.g stitching spirals, knotting and making huge loopy stitches! There is so much variety from just very simple stitches. Why had I not realised this before?  Well, like many others, I've got very absorbed in fancy gizmos and had just forgotten what you can do with a bit of thread, a needle and some plain cotton fabric!

Would I do it again? Well, I'm not keen on being away from home in unfamiliar surroundings, but it was wonderful to have met so many lovely people and to have had the luck to get a place when so many others had been disappointed and I'd love to go again sometime.

I was a bit remiss in not taking photos of the event, but here are a couple of the lovely surroundings to whet your appetite! I hope there will be some more photos to see on the Yahoo group message board.

Now I'm really looking forward to going to the Festival of Quilts to meet up with some of those lovely people again. I hope by then I'll have some wonderful rippled hand quilted work to show off!

Grasses in the meadow

Textures on a wall

Bark on the Scots pine by the front door

Lavender in the garden

There and back again

So, the great Hebridean trip is behind us. We've done our duty and visited the various  relatives in Cornwall. but we still can't settle! After a lovely a trip to the North West Contemporary Weekend Group on Sunday, I really thought I'd be rearing to go on Monday, but it was so hot that the DH and I collapsed in front of the tele and watched the tennis!

Still, I have not been entirely idle. Sandra made some lovely colour themed packs for the NWCWG and mine is a "sea" pack. Here it is!

There are 11 bits of fabric, thread etc and we have to use 6 of them in one item and the instruction is to play! I feel so guilty that I haven't really done any sewing recently, but as I'm off the CQ Summer School on Friday, I'll aim to get started then. I'm doing the Hand quilting course with Helen Parrott. Her work is very contemporary and I'm hoping to learn a lot from her.

While we were in Cornwall, we used one of our free days to visit St Ives. It was beautifully sunny, and as my DH has led such a virtuous life, there is always a parking space in the Island car park. Not today though, and neither was there any room in the car park over the Tate.  We should have parked at the park and ride, but couldn't face going all the way back so we drove down the coast road to Botallack and had lunch in the pub there. On the way we visited the Schoolhouse Gallery at Morvah . Their latest exhibition was really good. Paintings by Cath Ensor and textiles by Wendy Hermelin. All the work was related to the lovely scenery around this part of the Cornish coast, especially Cape Cornwall. Very inspiring!

On the cliffs we met a young man from Bradford who was just overwhelmed by the colour of the sea. As he said it's quite different from the brown stuff you get at Whitby! Exactly!

Here is what he meant!  Although the photo's a bit over exposed, it still looks lovely! I really can't begin to imagine what it must have been like to actually work in those mines!

And  here's a rather windblown Peneller digesting crab and prawn pasta rather nearer to the cliff edge than is truly within her comfort zone! Full report of Summer School next week!

Another day; another beach!

After almost a month away in the Outer Hebrides, getting back to the routine is proving somewhat problematic. For our week on North Uist, the sun shone, the wildlife (except the otters), performed, we discovered Salar smoked salmon and other seafood delights and we had a lovely relaxing time. For the two weeks on Harris and Great Berneray, the weather was not so kind and the wildlife not so prolific. They were probably all inside sheltering from the vicious wind! We tramped through a large number of bogs where we were assured that otters, red necked phalaropes and other rarities would be sure to be found, only to get very wet feet and to discover that they weren't! But, we did see lots of Gannets, Eider Ducks  and all sorts of little waders so we can't really complain. I have also collected yet more shells, driftwood, sand and dried seaweed to be used (or not) in my mixed media art projects and we have over 500 photos on three cameras to delight out friends and family! Here's a taster!

On the way home we discovered the lovely Sleat peninsula on the Isle of Skye where we stayed with Emma and Dave in their B&B at Barabhaig and although it rained, we managed to spend out last day exploring this lovely part of Skye.

The drive home was pretty scary due to gale force winds rain and sleet, but we made it and although our bodies have returned, our minds haven't! So we're just going to have to go again next year.

Now I must get down to getting some of my memories recorded in our journal and I hope to be able to get a quilt underway at last!