tricoter?

I saw this beauty at the Musee D'Orsay on Saturday. I can't work out if she is spinning or knitting or sewing. She also had this little beauty in her hands.

On a more rustic note - anyone for a crocheted tree cozy?

this blog is temporarily unvailable....

Back next week....

In the meantime....

Look here....http://maryruffle.tumblr.com/ almost too pretty

And here.....http://www.drawing.org.uk/ something I will get to one day

And here....http://www.sarajofrieden.com/

Also, if you fancy and have the time...

Send me some links you think I should look at....

A bientot mes amis!

creativity slip?

I am now, officially, a victim of the current economic climate. I have, somehow, during the last month become our family's sole wage earner (I haven't actually been paid yet but that is a secondary issue). This is a brand new experience and, I hope, a short-lived one.

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This shift in our family roles and responsibilities is likely to be seismic for several reasons:
- I am the one who gets to choose if I do paid work or not
- I am the one who can spend days dreaming up ideas and projects
- I am the one who can fill my days with endless, fruitless activity
- I am the one who can look at a pile of envelopes and see art

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Now, however, I appear to be filling my days with, firstly my project work - 3 days a week and, secondly my extra-curricular knitting/craft projects and, thirdly, it seems some (possibly paid) writing.

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This leaves approximately half an hour every seven days for daydreaming and inspiration.

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I'm going to have to be quick.

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I'm going to Paris and London at the end of this week. One for fun and one for work (and fun). I live such a country-bumpkin life these days that the excitement I feel when the possibility of train or airtravel is slightly overwhelming. I have to look at my tickets - a lot. I plan my magazine reading. I spend hours working out how much I can fit in in the time I have on pavements and where I can get to, what I can see in the shortest amount of time.

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We're taking the kids to Paris and there are so many things I want them to see. I want them to smell that Metro-smell that I associate with the city and see that amazing street washing thing they still do there and sit in a cafe with a hot-chocolate and watch the world go by. I want them to gasp in awe and wonder. I wonder if they will.

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out of season

The weather was funny the first time...and from behind a window, with the fire on, wrapped in a pashmina and wearing 'improved fur' M&S ugg-style slippers. This morning, in the car, across various Wiltshire hills, it was just bleururururughh. Fog, hail, fog and ice. Nasty.

I went to a meeting. So far, so uncreative. However, I remembered a fantastic treasure I'd discovered on the way back from a meeting at the same place over two years ago. I took a detour on the way home.

It's a kind of mini-rural-shopping heaven....

There's a farm shop; http://www.planksfarmshop.co.uk/

There's a fabulous papercrafting shop: http://www.potatopatchcrafts.co.uk/

And there's a wonderful cafe slash homeware slash vintage shop http://www.mipo.co.uk/

There's also a plant nursery and I think some other things.

If you're ever travelling between Devizes and Andover, look out for it. It's a find, a rural hotspot of retail therapy and the coffee is fantastic.

thank you m-d

As inspired by the first Mason-Dixon knitting book - log-cabin knitting. My second attempt. Each square I make gets flatter and squarer, an improvement by anyone's standards.

I'm using the ends of any sock yarn I can get my hands on. It's going to take a very long time to make anything resembling blanket-size. That's a lot of socks to knit too.

better late than never....

No pictures today. Sorry. The light, you may have noticed, has been awful, either bright and harsh or dark and gloomy. I haven't been around at the right time or near the right light source.

I have, though, had a little embellish. I've been trying out russian dolls (I can't spell their proper name) and I'll get some photos posted asap, probably mixed up with something else. I've also been trying to draw with the felting machine, using yarn to create line.

Mmmm....that's going well, although I need to be more consistent in my approaches. Instead of sitting down with half an hour to have a little play. I think the better approach would be to put together a list of explorations I want to make and work, gradually, bit by bit and haphazardly through those explorations.

For example, while I am trying to 'create line', my daughter wants me to embellish a dalmation for some petshop game she's playing. Enjoyable, there is no doubt but sketchbook friendly, no.

As I've joined the world of work again, I also felt completely justified in my purchase of Embellish, Stitch, Felt by Sheila Smith. Coupled with the 2 books I have 'borrowed' from my old tutor and an embroidering neighbour, I've had a good look at a wide variety of techniques.

My main problem? I don't want to create seascapes and I don't want to make ornately embellished wall-hangings. I have a feeling though that I am going to end up with samples of these just so I can develop the technique and style that I hope will come and help me make drawings.

So...apologies for the distinct lack of imagery especially to my new follower. I've never had one before and I have to say I'm thrilled. Thank you for following and thanks to everyone who comes this way to have a look, even if I don't know you're there.

monochromatic, moi?

You may have noticed. I am a novice photographer.

It snowed yesterday and as an enthusiastic (but novice) photographer, I thought it would be great to trip out and take a few landscape shots of our sleepy part of the world draped in neige.

My problem? I love photographs but I can't take them.

The more I try to draw, create, anything really apart from knit or sew, I re-inforce my limitations and the subsequent frustration grows. I can see quite clearly why people become art critics, not artists.

It's so damned difficult to produce something that has impact, presence.

On a slightly skewy matter, I'm very interested at the moment in how parenthood and childhood are changing. I'm particularly interested in how maleness and fatherhood is becoming a kind of 'issue' for childcare professionals. In my day job people talk about 'dads and lads' as 'difficult to target', 'hard to engage'. It's as if half the population has become a minority, like we ladies used to be in the 70s.

Anyway, as I've been pottering about the webosphere, having a look hither and thither, I discovered this blog...

http://rulesformyunbornson.tumblr.com/

It's quite entertaining, especially the post that says "if your art is bad, make it bigger...if it's still bad, paint it red".

Discuss....

tick tock

I'm completely off-piste this week, what with the job and the snow and the disappearing job.

It's time to think about time.

Here goes....

7 days per week (7 x 24 = 168 hours)
9 hours sleep per day (7 x 9 = 63)

Remainding, non-sleep hours per week 105

Per day = 105 / 7 = 15 hours

Paid hours per week = 22

Remainding hours = 83 (11 + a few per day)

Time to be spent eating, cleaning and sorting stuff out: 6?

That means I should have 5 hours a day to do something, anything. That could be stitching, writing, reading, knitting, crafting, arting, visiting, painting, embellishing.

How would that work exactly? And does my mathematics compute?

In the meantime, have a look at this.....www.embroideryasart.blogspot.com Jenny Ryan updating and writing about her stitchy collaborations etc.

a little premature

Two good friends kindly donated a selection of their woolly fleeces towards my embellishing adventure. They are both keen wet-felters and are far more used to judging quantities of fleece and quality of materials. I have been making samples and test-patches on my embellisher with my patches of felt, scarves and fabric along with this new, inherited stash.

The tweety-pie above is most unlike my usual attempts at crafti-ness. I'm not a cutesy, birdy type of person, at all really, BUT, I did enjoy doing it and I liked the simplicity of its shape and it's illustrativeness. It looks kind of hopeful!

This was a mixture of yellow-based fleeces, craft felt, soya fibres and yarn. I liked the technique but am not keen on the colourway - at all.

I put this one together using layers of fleece together, slashing them apart and then re-felting them. I like the slightly more graphic effect this gives than the shadowy, shaded effect with fleeces layered on top of one another. It took a long time for a small piece. I think I need to look up a few more techniques.

A chequerboard of machine-felt, the potential background for some text-based work I think. I liked the texture this got and the fuzziness on one side was also pretty appealing.

As my job starts tomorrow, I was able to have a little amazon treat - embellishing/stitching books have arrived. I just need to carve out the time to read them!