i did start this on sunday, but the clock ticked over to monday by the time i’d finished. about 10/15mins.

i won’t even attempt to excuse the week that’s missing altogether. one thing i’ve discovered lately is that while i like being busy, i hate being scheduled. my life has become increasingly scheduled recently. i guess it kind of goes with the territory with school aged kids, but i’ve also started committing myself to more regular things. not that i’m not enjoying the things themselves, i just find the inevitability a bit stifling sometimes.

being pinned to the sofa by a sick, sleeping baby is the perfect excuse to catch up on some blogging, don’t you think?

this is my happiest project in a long long while, the one that convinced me it wasn’t an even slightly lunatic idea to fill my peaceful little craft room almost to bursting with an enormous, expensive new loom. this is the project that made me think “oh right, i’m supposed to be a weaver!”. i’ve come down a little from that high, i know i’ll always be a dabbler, but it does feel that weaving absolutely has to be a part of that dabbling, to round it out somehow.

anyway, the project started as an impulse purchase from squoosh on etsy. i’ve long yearned after the beautiful hand dyed fibres i’ve seen us spinners using, but that haven’t been available here (although i see that’s gradually changing, the most luscious fibres still seem to be over there). so when a friend mentioned that she’d like to learn to spin i thought it was an excellent excuse to get out my wheel again, which got me thinking about fibre, which got me browsing etsy, which is where we came in.

it’s mostly alpaca, some merino, some silk, in a beautiful smoky blue-green mix, that is showing not quite green enough in the pictures. it was an absolute joy to spin. i really haven’t put in that many hours on my wheel, so i didn’t start with much of a plan, just to let it be what it became. it became a reasonably-softly spun 2-ply (i tend towards stringy overspun if i don’t pay attention) with lots of variation but averaging 12wpi (i.e. dk).

then i decided to try weaving it on my spears #4. i think last time i mentioned spears looms here i was still on the #2 which wasn’t a happy experience, but the 4 turns out to be pretty usable. the front and back beams have teeth to hold the warp and secure with wing nuts - a much better arrangement than the smaller loom (although i believe the #3, the inbetween size, has the same mechanism as the #4). the heddle has wire loops which can be awkward as the ’slot’ threads can catch on these, and there’s no place to rest the heddle in up- or down-shed positions, you just have to hold it. still, i’d done a practice scarf on it that had turned out okay, although it showed i needed to be more attentive to skipped threads as they’re not as easy to invisibly mend afterwards as i’d hoped.

for the warp i looked for something with a similar fibre composition, but tending towards the green side as i wanted to play up on the green and down on the blue. i found some very light guage wool/silk/cashmere on ebay, although the colour wasn’t quite what i’d hoped the price certainly was. i cable 4-plied it on the wheel to bring it closer to 4-ply weight (i still wanted it finer than the handspun to give that a chance to shine) but when i wound the warp i realised i only had a third the amount i needed. since i couldn’t face another plying marathon and realised i had a cone of green cashmere that was almost exactly the right weight i decided to mix and match. i striped the two yarns through the warp, hoping the colours would even out rather than look too stripy, but since the ends were doubled (that’s how i warped the #4, not sure if it’s the official way as mine is missing its instructions) it’s a bit stripier than i’d have liked.

it turns out i much prefer the colour of the cashmere, but i do like the gleam of silk from the other warp thread and the subtle lengthwise striping counteracts the horizontal stripes in the weft, so its all good. i had a sudden panic about uneven shrinkage and decided to give the warp a hot soak before i put it on the loom.

the weaving itself was trouble free, and seeing the cloth building up was a genuinely magical moment - something so beautiful and i made it i didn’t have as much length as i’d have liked but i made a consious decision not to make a scarf. i warped it the full width of the loom so that it would be cloth rather than a strip, and if it ended up being too short to use for much so be it. it just about serves as a shawl, but i haven’t made any firm decisions what to do next - the ends are hemstitched but i haven’t knotted the fringe or even cut it equal yet, it just lies around so i can stroke it occasionally as i pass…

i love the softness and the drape (which i think comes from the silk content), i was worried the fabric was a little open on the loom, but now i think it’s perfect, especially as the alpaca is so warm. i love the subtle colour changes, although there’s one rather large chunk of green where both plies must have hit a green section together that i’m not so keen on, i’m paying more attention to colour distribution in my current spinning, bearing in mind i’m planning to weave that too.

but i have to say this is one of my “oh wow” crafting moments (that i think tend to occur most often when you first realise you can do something, hence my addiction to trying new things), i’m beyond proud of it, i really really love it

the handweavers guild of america offers a free online copy of their journal shuttle spindle & dyepot. it’s a great read and i was particularly struck by victoria rivers‘ work. i love all the abstract layering and play on light and dark, in particular the series including “lucid awakening” that seeks to represent a hallucinatory experience under anaesthesia. i can imagine they would be just spellbinding in the flesh.

as a fully paid up member of the “ooh shiny!” school of aesthetics i find it hard to believe i don’t already own at least one copy of her book shining cloth. in an attempt to rectify the oversight i’ve added it to my amazon wishlist

i’m not around much at the moment as i’m temporarily working 2 jobs in my non-G time. G’s only napping about an hour in the day and going to bed around 9, so in what time i have to myself the crafting is getting priority and the blogging is taking a back seat.

this is what it’s been taking a back seat to this week. i got me a louet kombo 4-shaft table loom, the big one - 70cm/28″ weaving width. i’m about two thirds through warping it after working on it all day yesterday, and i doubt i’ll get to do the throwing the yarn back and forth bit - which i always through was weaving but turns out to be about a quarter of weaving - until the weekend.

i actually drew this yesterday, so “sunday” it is very quick, 5 minutes.

introducing a guest blogger for this week’s sketch (by the skin of our teeth) monday.

very last day of the holidays today, so i’m really hoping i’ll have time for proper sketching from now on. but by way of celebration that we all survived unscathed i had to share some of M’s fantastic drawings she’s been doing lately. they crack me up. i particularly like the begging action-hands of the sister at left, and the evil naysaying mother (”can’t you tell she’s evil by her grin?”).

more of M’s stuff on my flickr

i didn’t even get round to doing this until yesterday, but since bank holiday mondays = sunday hours round here i reckoned i might just get away with it. but sleepless children kept me from uploading it till gone midnight, so tuesday it is.

this is part of a playdough toy where you squeeze the dough through and it makes tubey shapes, it’s scaled about 2:1 and that gave me a bit of trouble getting everything to match up properly. i don’t know exactly how long it took, but it was aaages. i didn’t realise until i stood back from it to take the picture quite how bendy i’d made it. oops

there’s been lots of crafting going on here recently, just no time to blog it all, will hopefully catch up when the kids go back next week, but in the mean time there’s pics on my flickr

just a fragment today, not even a direct observation, more an impression, to remind me of what i liked about this quilt by claire higgott (again, no link, please let me know if you know her website). i figure i can just about get away with it thanks to my brownie points for a) taking my sketch book and b) actually drawing. i did try a couple on the journey, but people/the train moved too fast for me.

i had an unscheduled day out yesterday, thanks to our last minute decision to cancel our planned festival because of the weather forecast. i know loads of people with young kids left this particular festival early last year because the weather was so dreadful and i didn’t fancy being part of the action replay. the promised rain did materialise and on balance we’re happier to be warm, dry and relaxed at home than we are disappointed to be missing out on festie fun.

my added bonus was that i got to swap one kind of festival for another and headed off to birmingham for the festival of quilts. i’ve not been before and i have to say it was pretty overwhelming. there’s only so much embellishment one woman (well, this woman) can take in one day! there was a lot there in the way of both quilts and shopping that was not to my taste. there’s so much exciting work going on online - in both modern and traditional styles - that i tend to forget the things that put me off the idea of quilting before i somehow fell into doing it. those things - notably fabric and colour choices - were visible in abundance at the festival, although considering the average age of the audience i shouldn’t be surprised that i found a lot of it rather old fashioned.

but that’s not to disparage the time, skill and effort that went into all the work on show, i can still appreciate those things even though i don’t necessarily share the aesthetic. in particular there was some beautiful hand quilting that was astonishingly accomplished and patient. and thanks to the size of the show there was still plenty to inspire even this picky bugger although i think that seeing so many quilts en masse dilutes the power of the individual pieces somewhat, which is a shame.

i did take pictures but i’m wary of publishing them here, not least because i didn’t spring for a show guide so i can’t properly credit many of the competition entrants, so i’m limited to namechecking some of the better known quiltmakers who merited a place in the whitewall galleries, although i think i was actually most impressed by some of the entries in the children’s classes, particularly the under-9s, which showed real originality along with surprisingly skilful use of tools and materials.

a few recurring themes emerged in what caught my eye; texture, printing and limited colour palettes being the main ones. it was the printing that really appealed to me in chrisine restall’s persephone quilt (you can see work from the same series under “gallery 3″ on her website), and i noticed a lot of text scattered around the festival. i find it can be quite jarring to be addressed so directly, so explicitly, through the work (as opposed to a title, caption or description posted alongside) since i’m in a different, nonverbal, mode when looking at quilts or pictures. but that arresting quality can be used to good advantage if used sparingly i think.

i found susan brandeis‘ use of layering computer-printed fabrics to produce an almost hologramatic sense of depth totally mesmerising. her imagery is that of encyclopaedias, landscapes, aerial and satellite photographs, which had me hook, line and sinker. i just glanced at her work as i was passing by, but it drew me back to look closer, then to take in the whole from a distance, then back up close, i literally couldn’t get away!

if anyone knows of jacqueline heinz’s website please let me know, i can find odds and ends of her work googling, but no homepage. her work reflects her background as an aspiring feltmaker (no surprise that it appealed to me really), the use of raw fibre along with her restrained palette and wonderful sense of movement provided a welcome oasis of calm in a visually frenetic show. i also found lesley alexander’s strongly textural work - inspired by that perennial student favourite peeling paint - incredibly refreshing, plus she loves pintucks as much as i do! (actually, i’ve never sewn a pintuck in my life, but i have the feet, the needles and everything, i really must get round to playing with them). it was great to have a chat with her about going to art school as a mature student, it’s strengthened my resolve yet again, just in case i was beginning to waver.

as for shopping, i was reasonably restrained, i should just be thankful i’m on more of a spinning/weaving kick right now. i bought some of the japanese yarn dyed fabrics i noticed on a few of the stalls - neutral, textural, interesting weaves, and something i would never have bought online, i can’t imagine how they would translate on screen. also a book on hungarian indigo dyeing from the hungarian patchwork guild. i just love blue and white fabrics, i’m irresistably drawn to them, but this was a tradition i was utterly ignorant of and the fabrics themselves (which were also for sale and i think i deserve a medal for resisting) are just beautiful. ooooh look! you can buy the fabrics online

i couldn’t bear to post something this long without pics so i’ve included some shots from another day out. my always-temperamental sx-70 gave up the ghost a little while ago. my always-wonderful fella got me a new one for my birthday.

it’s a bit of an understatement to say that i’m more of a starter than a finisher by nature. most of the joy i get from finishing a project comes from clearing the way to start the next thing. and tbh that’s generally tempered by the fact that i’ve usually already started on the next thing my little room has become a veritable shitheap treasure trove of WiPs at various stages of completion recently.

so today when i was given something wonderful - a whole afternoon to myself - i decided to get round to a bit of finishing. i feel sooo cleansed and productive. after 3 weeks of school holidays the feeling of making genuine progress, of doing a job and it not being undone behind your back 10 minutes later, is a rare relief.

i worked through my mending pile, sewing buttons, darts and binding, i learned how to kitchener stitch knitting and how to hemstich handwovens, and while i’m not blogging everything just now (which marks a project as well and truly finished) i took pictures which is the time consuming bit. i’ve even done some long-overdue paperwork and i may yet get round to my teetering pile of admin before the night’s out.

i only warped the loom shown in the picture last night and the project is still ongoing, but i did finish the shandy, and a couple more

pen on recycled scrap book paper, done during my break at work.

this has been a long time in the making, it seems like it’s been hanging half-done in my little room for weeks and weeks, although there really wasn’t too much to it. the fabrics are globaltex furnishing fabrics, a little heavy for a quilt but they should be perfect for the matching cushions that are past the planning stage but not yet actually in the making stage… they’re a lot more traditional than my usual taste, alarmingly kidstonesque in fact, but i reckon that’s acceptable - indeed mandatory - for camping/picnic purposes.

i wanted to do something simple, and inspired by recently reading making welsh quilts, i went for a traditional “strippy” top. i was undecided on the quilting until i’d done my practice sandwich to judge tension etc. and realised i wanted to do something curvy that crossed over itself. this pattern is traditionally used on borders, called a welsh trail in the book, although can’t find any other reference to it as that (anyone recognise it by another name?). i ran it horizontally, the chequerboards where the points cross staggered so the curves fit neatly against one another. it’s not too easy to see as the batt is poly and i prewashed the fabrics as i didn’t want it to look too quilty this time. where you can see it’s mostly because my pencil markings haven’t quite washed out (my usual disappearing marker disappeared before i could get it as far as the sewing machine).

the backing is PUL, i got the fabric from a cloth nappy maker, it’s used for making wraps. i looked long and hard at waterproof fabrics and PUL seemed the most fabricy, less rustly than ripstop nylon, more lightweight than cordura. i briefly considered shower curtains etc, but having sewn with them before i thought i’d go for something designed to be sewn AND repeatedly washed. we’ll see how well it stands up to use - i could have gone for a thicker waterproof coating that might make it more stone-proof, but that would have had to come from the states. on reflection i don’t think pale blue is the ideal choice either, but we won’t be looking at that side much obviously, to maintain the waterproofing, i didn’t sew the quilting through the PUL, just the top and batting. since the PLU is stretch (which i didn’t twig until it arrived) there’s a little bagging as it’s only joined at the edges and the blanket is ~120cm by 150cm, but nothing terrible. putting it together was a dream thanks to my new discovery: 505 basting spray. it lasted beautifully through all the hefting about during quilting, and only lost its grip in the odd place on the smooth-surfaced PUL. while it’s not cheap i reckon it beats pins into a cocked hat when it comes to ease of use. kim at spoonflower recently pointed out a study that shows basting sprays are damaging to quilt fabrics in the long term, but whilst the conclusion drawn by the researchers is to avoid all basting sprays, in fact their finding was that 505 was the one brand that didn’t show any difference to the control samples. certainly for this project i had no qualms, and i will use the 505 again, but i may be more circumspect if my quiltmaking ever improves beyond the lets-see-if-we-can-make-it-hold-together-past-the-first-wash stage and moves closer to the realms of heirloom quilting i considered various strap arrangements i could attach to the blanket, but in the end decided to keep it simple with a separate long strap, looped at either end, that slips over and allows it to be carried over a shoulder. the polkadots that proved so elusive on the binding show much better on the strap (i cut along the grain not the pattern, not thinking they would be that far misaligned), although i actually think the now-you-see-them-now-you-don’t effect is rather charming.

this is going for its first outing next week when we go on our traditional music festival summer holiday, i’ll report back on its fitness for duty and whether it floats in mud

sheesh, strike tuesday, it took me this long to get the pics uploaded. sketch wednesday has a lovely ring don’t you think?

we went camping by the beach on the weekend (and had a really lovely time) and i wasn’t organised enough to make an auto post for sunday. so by way of apology here’s 1 1/2 sketches.

the first is M, although it’s only a few lines it’s not a bad likeness and i consider it finished. it’s part of a page of fragments of the girls watching a film, the only time they sit even slightly still enough to sketch and G not even then - the page is full of barely outlined fractions of toddler; an arm here, an ear there…

the second illustrates the problem of trying to find time to draw in the holidays. i briefly had the place to myself with M at a friend’s and G asleep so i thought i’d have a go at a pen drawing. i spent too long trying to make sure everything was in the right place, and before i could get to properly inking in the lines she woke up. this is about 20 minutes’ worth, another 20 and it might have been worth something, it was shaping up quite nicely i thought.

see, i don’t really know when to quit

having dropped the 365 i appear to have talked myself into a new self-imposed regime: a sketch every sunday (posted, rather than necessarily drawn, on sunday). i’m resurrecting my diy art school after spending an inordinate amount of time mooching around mithi’s blog over the last week. you prolly all saw her embroidery hoops on whipup, did you delve any deeper?

it’s rekindled my urge to ponce about retrain at art school. there’s a course local to me that looks like the perfect fit, but that wouldn’t be possible until G is at school, so a few years away still. in the mean time i’d like to broaden my basic knowledge and skills foundation-course-stylee, and mithi’s blog will be a great help since she posts many of her assignments in detail, so i can try my hand at a few.

i’ve got my own copy of drawing on the right side of the brain and i’ll be working through that, but in the mean time i thought i’d warm up with some random sketching. this is the second version of this picture. the first was my usual style and took half an hour or more. i wanted to see if i could do a proper 5 minute sketch rather than a drawing. it’s okay, and i think the shapes are actually more accurate, though maybe that’s because i’d spent so long looking at it drawing the first one.

i prefer the stylistic distinction between blanket and horse in the first version - the horse with more detail, more lifelike shading, and the blanket more sketchy, but this one’s more lively which is what i’m looking to develop in my drawings, i think i naturally tend towards overworking which can make them flat.

it was (briefly) summer here yesterday so i thought i’d waste some precious sx-70 blend film to celebrate.

two more

(since i won’t be posting so many pics now i’m done with the 365 i’m bringing them back over here, the uploading process over at click is complicated enough that with the extra step i end up not posting at all)

my advice to anyone thinking of trying a spears weaving loom (size 2) as a cheap/easy introduction to weaving: DON’T!

to be fair, yes, it’s just a toy, and i think it might be fine for short lengths - mats, pouches etc. - but the instruction book leads you to believe it’s possible to make a scarf, so that’s what we tried. the problem lies in the construction of the loom - putting tension on the warps pulls the bottom bar (cloth bar?) out of its slot. the problem got more pronounced as i wrapped more fabric around the bar, as i guess this angles both bar and warp threads so it’s more inclined to pull out. this was absolutely the longest length i could get before the loom became completely impossible to use. the system for tensioning the warps through little holes with pegs, whilst ingenious, is pretty fiddly to use too (although with the basic design flaw you really don’t want to be advancing very much anyway).

added to the problem of the loom itself was my choice of yarn. as with our previous weaving adventure i decided to use cotton as, basically, that’s all i have in any quantity. of course i soon found out why wool is suggested - the cotton is smooth and slippy and doesn’t want to hold in a balanced weave. i think we were actually okay for yarn weight/sett and something with more fuzz might have turned out quite acceptable. as it was the cotton really wanted to smoosh together a lot more, turning out more of a weft-faced fabric.

but that’s not to say we didn’t have fun along the way. it turned out to be a really good collaborative project for M & friend, passing the shuttle across to each other and taking turns to beat the weft, while i lifted the heddle (the comby bit the warp threads go through). the shed (gap you push the shuttle through) created by the loom wasn’t that big, so it wasn’t always easy to push the shuttle through, which M found frustrating at times. the girls really enjoyed me passing on little snippets about weaving in “the olden days” from my current reading, women’s work: the first 20,000 years.

in between cursing the loom i had fun too, the basic process had just the right balance of repetition and concentration, and i like how quickly it comes together at the wefting stage. i didn’t find the warping too onerous and i liked the observation that what we think of as “weaving”, where you’re adding in the weft, is actually only half of the process, that warping is weaving too. i think i would thoroughly enjoy the process on the right loom. um, anyone know if the schacht flip loom is available in the uk?

edit: fibrecrafts will be stocking the flip in about a month’s time…

new category >

a gift for friends who are emigrating. it occured to me right at the last minute (the day they left ) that i could make a little something as a welcome to your new home gift. there’s something i find so comforting about just looking at a quilt, so i thought a mini quilt for the boys’ (5 & 2) new room might be a good plan. when i realised i could use welsh wool for the appliques i was sold on the idea.

everything came together so quickly thanks to G rediscovering her equilibrium and napping for 2 hrs+ which gave time for the idea to emerge and crystalise, for me to get the fabrics selected and appliques cut before she woke. unfortunately it’s unlikely there’ll be much more of that around here now the holidays have started and there are infinitely more exciting things going on than sleeping in the mornings.

the wool is blanket scraps from melin tregwynt - this stuff is so soft, so beautiful, it will definitely be making appearances in more quilts around here.

the stars and heart-shaped rocket blast were cut from an alexander henry(?) fabric i’d stashed “just because” a little while ago. i got a few colourful funky kid prints at the same time. it won’t be any revelation to those who’ve been sewing/quilting a while but may be to any wouldbe quilters reading, just how important it is to stash when you can see a fabric you love and you can afford it, it doesn’t matter that you don’t have a project in mind. i feel incredibly indulgent when i do it, but it makes the creative process so much easier to have a wide selection of fabrics, all of which speak to you in some way, it makes combining them a real joy and unexpected combinations arise unbidden. everything i used was from stash. the chambray i bought in a fit of excitement after seeing shannah’s wonderful red cross quilt, the embroidery cottons were part of my haul from a swap night i organised with local crafty friends - i managed to get rid of more than i acquired, which left me feeling very virtuous (lol, yeah, if i could feel the virtue through the hangover…)

appliqueing the stars was a little trickier than i envisaged. i ended up sewing over a sheet of paper for stabilisation (worked a treat - you just tear the sheet off afterwards) while litfting the presser foot and pivoting every couple of stitches to get round the tight curves. as it was the machine wasn’t totally happy and skipped a lot of stitches. since i was using brand new needles and swapped to a heavier one, the remaining potential culprit for the skipping was the upper tension being too tight (i only just looked it up now), since i’d dialled that up before deciding on the paper stabiliser. luckily i wasn’t over-fussed on a perfect finish for this one. i had a good tip from the button shop lady on this one - to use a double thread in the top bobbin, but regular weight thread, rather than using a heavier thread. where it wasn’t skipping the finish was excellent.

i have to say all that pivoting - along with the skipped stitches, which i thought at the time was just the machine being temperamental - had my mind wandering to this little beauty that i have my beady eye on. i realised just how much use a knee lift would be if i was going to be doing a lot of this kind of thing. while i can’t find much info online about the silver viscount model it appears to be the exact same machine as the babylock quest which is getting rave reviews over in the states. i’d been tentatively scouting the market for larger throat machines for a while but couldn’t bring myself to seriously contemplate either a) a straight stitch only machine or b) the thick end of a grand. but for a smidgen over £500 this one looks like a steal.

the quilting was my favourite part of the whole thing, although my fingers aren’t thanking me for it. i used a perle(?) cotton which took a little persuading through the layers, but it was worth it for that heavy, hand-stitched look. the inspiration for this came from the habitat quilt i mentioned in the last post, which is just multicoloured lines of heavy thread quilting onto soft-as-butter neutral fabric. i really should have hooped it in some way to stabilise the layers (it’s all enveloped together) since it was so small i thought i could get away without but its puffing up rather unevenly. i busked the quilting lines, just scratching the next stretch onto the fabric with the needle.

i’m pretty pleased with this, it’s taken less than a week start to finish, with G in “not sleeping in the evenings” mode too. i love quick projects. and it’s been a good warm up for my next new project in the pipeline (heh, ignoring the wip that’s been cluttering up the sewing room for the last fortnight) with all that hand quilting…

i’ve had plenty of chance to have buyers remorse over this impulse purchase from sundance catalog. i ordered 2 in complementary colour ways and justified the purchase by deciding to give them to the girls. they’ve been on back order for weeks and the second has only just shipped. if it gets caught for customs like this one did we may not catch sight of it until the autumn.

but i’ve realised that for all the expensive blanket purchases i’ve agonised over i’ve never once regretted any. blankets make me happy. and this one turned out to be so much softer than i could have imagined. i even had second thoughts about exactly whose blankets they are to be - will the girls love and appreciate and care for them as much as i would? is it too much extravagance to give them such expensive things? they’d be just as happy with something disposable from ikea, right?

D suggested i give this blanket (which is nominally G’s, as M has her sights set on the orange and pink one to come) a trial run on our bed last night, that G was unlikely to notice. but almost as soon as she came up to wake us this morning (having been up for ages and fixed herself a peanut butter sandwich for breakfast ) M said accusingly “did you ask G if you could borrow her blanket?” and started chatting away excitedly about her orange one. i’m amazed she could see a thing through the blackout-blind gloom, but i guess that’s that cunning plan scuppered…

btw the quilt it’s resting on is last year’s expensive blanket impulse buy, from habitat

iron and ruler (last picture in my 365 project)

it had been on the wane for a while now, but i’ve decided to officially call it a day with the 365. i’m sorry i didn’t get to finish it - i don’t even know how far i got, perhaps 175?, i lost count a way back and never caught back up. the gaps were becoming more frequent and holidays have always been the time i find it hardest to keep up, so the start of the summer holidays seems like a good natural finishing point.

i started the project in the hope that it would keep me awake creatively, without demanding too much in the way of time, space or effort while i was concentrating on the new baby thing. and it worked a treat, although of course i managed to find plenty of ways of getting out of my depth and my camera collection has grown exponentially. it really got me much more comfortable with my dslr and photoshop, as well as reviving my interest in film and film processing. it helped me see in different ways, and really pushed me out of my comfort zone, particularly photographing strangers.

but my passion for the project melted away almost overnight as soon our little room took shape and i could sew again. i’m doing something textile-related every day now, so the need to keep something creative going with a camera has evaporated. i could try to push on with it, but i don’t want it to turn into a chore, and i don’t feel the need to prove anything to anyone, least of all myself.

i’m so glad i started the project, and took it as far as i did. looking back i’m rather astonished that i took some of those pictures. so 204 pictures (that’s the current count on flickr, there may be one or two knocking around here i never uploaded), 15 months (i said there were a few gaps!) and several shiny new cameras later, it’s goodbye project 365.