blue

i tried my hand at a couple of cliche blue sky shots today. my blossom/sky/vapour trail didn’t quite cut it, but i’m surprised at how much i like this one. i did one away from the sun, for the intense blue, but i thought i’d try for the flare here. didn’t get the flare, but i like the variety of cool (that’s as in cold, not groovy) shades it’s given the sky and i like the silhouette. the composition would normally be too symmetrical for my taste, but it doesn’t bother me here, keeps it very simple. phone cam again.

lie in

i have the whole place to myself all day today. bliss.

hangers

it was my last day at work today.

one of the things that convinced me to go ahead with the 365 project was realising that i don’t have to lug the nikon everywhere with me. i have a perfectly decent camera on my phone. it’s got zip-all character, mind, which just means i’ll have to concentrate more on subject and composition, it’s all good. this was a bit of a rush grab when the shop was empty. now i want to go back and straighten the hangers a bit more.

den

i’ve upped the ante and decided to join one of the 365 groups on flickr. my personal goal will be to take it a month at a time, as i think i respond better to smaller challenges.

in about a month our second baby is due. while i envy those women who are driven/able to keep working on their own stuff with a very small baby, i’m also very much aware that i’m not one of them. our experience last time (of a very unsettled baby) combined with my understanding of my own limitations tells me that i’m unlikely to be rocking the cradle with one foot while working the sewing machine with the other, or crocheting during feeds. actually the latter sounds more possible, but i think it’s unlikely that i’ll be together enough to be planning projects, yunno. and besides, i want to turn the focus onto being a full-on mum for a while at least.

i have 3 works in progress - one crochet, one knitted, and a quilt - at least 2 of which i hope to have finished before junior arrives, but otherwise i don’t expect to have much craft to show over the next few months. i will undoubtedly still be reading so will probably have links and ideas to post, but my guess is they’ll be sketchy and sporadic.

i do want to keep some kind of momentum going, though, as i’ve found the blog a really valuable motivating factor in pursuing a rewarding crafty side to my life. so i wondered whether a photo diary might be a good low-key project for me during my “break” (ha ).

i really enjoyed the colour week exercise and a single photo a day isn’t too onerous. it’s a good excuse to play with the polaroid (haven’t got my hands on it yet…) as well as the nikon, which i haven’t yet really come to grips with, although it’s turning out some nice pix for me. and while i won’t be posting baby pics as such (cos i feel i have no right to post pix of my kids in a public space until they can give informed consent) i’m sure junior will get his/her share of attention once the camera is out. everyone says you take fewer pics of your second (and subsequent…) so i figure this should level the playing field a little.

now i’m not promising to post a pic every day, but i will try to take one. i understand this totally changes the focus of the blog for the reader - and these days i appear to have quite a few, which alarms me more than it really should - but it’s totally consistent for me as this has always been my journal/notebook for whatever i was pursuing at the time, it just so happened that those interests overlapped in a semi-coherent way. but apologies to those who demand craft content, although i’m sure normal service will be resumed in - oooh - a year or so? perhaps sooner.

and maybe there’s one or two of you out there who are taking first/second steps in learning how to take better pictures who fancy coming along for the ride. (heh, what this post could really do with is a few pictures…)

just a couple for now, expect this to be updated.

radiant vista: i found this when searching for the photography podcast equivalent of craft sanity. nice long in-depth podcasts, message boards and genuinely useful multimedia content e.g. video photoshop tutorials and daily critiques.

utata | @flickr: massive photography community, projects, articles, loads here.

anyone got any other good suggestions for me?

the minute i saw these i thought “quilting patterns”. perhaps not exactly, but inspiration, certainly. not that i’m getting ahead of myself or anything

tinsmiths

can’t … resist… must have… new category…

a quiet week here that i’ve spent mostly stalking the elusive sx-70 across the plains of ebay. it’s not that they’re hard to find, just damned expensive for something that’s utterly outdated and ridiculously expensive to feed. of course they also happen to be damned gorgeous and produce inimitable pictures. damnit. i haven’t found the perfect one (i.e. cheap but working and not one of the brown and black ones which really are too ugly for words) yet, and given that patience isn’t one of my greatest virtues i’ll prolly end up paying more than i’d like just so i can have one sooner rather than later.
update: found it yes i maxed the budget but it looks like a winner, fingers crossed.

if you want to know what i’m on about see this fab film (crappy sound quality):

and if you want to know what they can do see polanoid (filter by camera sx-70) or flickr or oliver wang’s archive - i love this picture beyond words:

i was very taken by an interview i heard earlier on the radio 4 arts programme front row with the scottish design team timorous beasties on the history of toile de jouy. they’ve produced modern toile fabrics and wallpapers in the original spirit of social documentary (as opposed to the more recent twee sentimentalism they pin firmly on the victorians). i also love the sound of the casino carpets they’re producing in vegas.

for the next week you can hear the interview here, around 5 mins 30 sec into the programme (link launches bbc radio player).
guardian interview here.

i love my garden, it makes me very happy. it’s repaid many times over the effort that went into planning and building it, even though it’s been sadly neglected over the last few years. it’s also gradually filled with various odds and ends, tiles and bricks, and discarded kitchen utensils, that might be planted, or used in planters at some unspecified future point. personally i feel it adds to the charm, to the feeling of a victorian garden gone to seed. even though the only things that are as we found them 5 years ago are the boundary walls/fences, shed and washing line, parts of it look as though they’ve been here forever.

we did all of the work of breaking concrete, laying paving, mixing mortar and building walls ourselves. we had an optimistic plan of work that had us sipping g&ts on the patio on day 10

we used reclaimed slates and tiles and handmade bricks throughout. the tiles are the victorian ones used in all the houses around here - we have them on our dining room and hall floors, not as extravagant as the colourful encaustic ones in the bigger houses, but easier to live with i think. my textile fetish shows a little in the variety of patterns incorporated in the brick and tilework everywhere. i deliberately planned the paving where possible to be porous - to conserve water and to allow mosses and other plants to seed in the gaps. this worked a treat although the recent dry weather isn’t seeing them at their best. to echo this we laid fireplace tiles in the paving gaps in the section nearest the house - i figured then something would always be green in the garden. it’s planted partly for produce - we have an appple tree, rhubarb, grape vine (which had grapes last year! a single miniature bunch, about 3 inches long ) and a succession of various herbs, most notably rosemaries which grow like a weed around here. the remainder of the plants are mainly what i think of as typically victorian - ferns, ivy (which does it’s own thing, but i actively encourage it in places), honeysuckle, lilac, many different clematis, jasmine and roses. there is an oversized white/pink rambler that grows over the pergola and shed that blooms at my birthday, only for a few weeks but prolifically. nearer the house we have a few plants with a spikier, almost tropical feel.

when we took out the previous plants, many of which were well established i wanted to replicate the shady corner down by the shed created by a large (unidentified) shrub. so we put in the (now rusted, natch) pergola, with a permanent seat underneath. this is such a wonderful place to be, now the mosaic of scented plants have grown over it. there’s room to put a table and chairs or spread out a blanket on the tiles, and it’s totally secluded and calm.

M has her own amenities too - a sandpit and playhouse, the latter rather grudgingly at the expense of my little camomile lawn which had begun to establish itself well. we even have space for a decent sized compost heap, which goes back into planters and raised beds twice a year (or when i remember…). we’re totally organic, with a healthy and varied insect population, although most years we seem to get a plague of some sort - last year it was caterpillars, the year before aphids, and we’re constantly battling slugs, hence the copper tape on the planters which is patinating beautifully.

more pix.

i’ve recently been looking forward to the time when i can start sharing my love for textile crafting with M (as opposed to painting, gluing and glittering where she’s already waaay ahead of me). she’s fairly adept with a blunt needle - she can thread really tiny beads - but she’s not ready for real sewing, crochet or knitting just yet. but i hoped that perhaps weaving might be manageable at a slightly younger age.

to that end i got her kids weaving by sarah swett for her birthday. to be fair i’ve seen it recommended as a great beginner’s guide for adults, with its design for a bargain loom made of plumbing pipes, so let’s call it a joint present (who was it doing all the hard work 4 years ago, eh?).

i was really impressed at how quickly she picked up the first project, weaving paper strips together, i only had to show her once and she was away. and while i knew she wouldn’t have anywhere near the patience for the little woven bag, made on a cardboard loom (hell, i barely had the patience to finish the thing… ), i was impressed at how she maintained her interest in the project as i worked it. she did manage to thread the needle through the warps, even though she found it really tricky, but it became her main job to flatten down the “hill” of yarn with a plastic fork. she got really into it, insisting she could do it without further direction “don’t tell me what to do mama!”. my willing assistant did tend to wander off at intervals taking her fork with her though, as the tale of mrs fork she was weaving concurrently with my efforts took her in other random directions

as for the finished article, i’m quite impressed. i remember rigging up similar cardboard looms as a kid, but not having any guidance i had no idea how to warp them to actually produce a useable item at the end. so i’d end up with a piece of cardboard with raggedy bits of wool attached that would eventually get binned. this on the other hand is a proper little baggie. not having a vast stash of wool yarn and not reading the directions to the end i used cotton yarn for the weft, not realising it was supposed to be fulled to hold it all together. as it is there are fewer holes than i expected and the only modification i would make for using cotton yarn is to knot in the ends of new threads rather than just overlapping. it’s supposed to have a drawstring that weaves through the little square sections (that have gaps between) but once it got to this stage we discovered it made a perfect sleeping bag for a gruffalo - his arms go out the side holes - so we never felt the need.

i just wanted to post a quick roundup and thanks to julie for the chance to play. it’s introduced me to a whole slew of new blogs and given me the motivation to go out and take pictures just for the hell of it (even completely exhausted, the challenge moved me out of my early bed to get the day’s shot). it’s made a refreshing change from documenting either my crafts or my family life, which is what i do most of the time. i love just making pictures, they’re never going to be groundbreaking or really say anything, but when i get it right i find them pleasing. they’re quiet and i like that.

and i just have to mention maditi who i found through this challenge (flickr | blog). i’ve mentioned before my love for weird and wonderful cameras and film formats with their quirky characteristics and atmospheric colour casts. maditi, who works in a variety of formats, not least polaroid, just excels at exploiting this so perfectly. i don’t think i’ve seen a single one of her pictures i wouldn’t hang on my wall to keep looking at for years. happily you can buy signed prints, posters and postcards of her polaroids in her etsy shop.

and now i’m off to find out what the web has to say on the sx-70

where have my pictures gone?

it looks like a glitch with the gallery plugin - normal service will be resumed very soon i hope!

UPDATE: all better now
A change up at flickr broke our Falbum wordpress plugin - if you have a similar problem, see here for the (simple when you know how) fix — Dick

colour week.

you could be forgiven for getting totally the wrong impression about the amount of housework i do.

colour week.

on my recent travels i’ve been entranced by the stitch samplers i’ve been coming across. there’s something about these unplanned, unstructured, organic pieces that utterly floats my boat. particularly when they’re so deliciously embroidery-hoop-circular, like these at embroidery overlaps.

many of them have been produced as part of TAST (take a stitch tuesday: flickr: blog). i’ve been subscribing to inaminuteago for months as a general textile arts resource, without any plan to take the embroidery side of things further. but as we all know what i really need right now is another new category so i might just have to give it a go.

at embroidery overlaps barbara explains that the contemporary quilt group of the quilters’ guild has set its members a challenge for 2007: an A4 quilt a month. as a novice i’m loving the opportunity offered by tiny quilts to try new techniques without any great investment of time or money. it helps me to sustain my interest through to the end as well, always an issue for me in any project.

in the interests of research i’ve been trying to track down as many of these little quilts (mini contemporary or art quilts as opposed to doll quilts) as i can. it turns out that finding quilters who share my aesthetic is harder than i might have expected. as shannon pointed out there’s a hell of a lot of embellishing going on out there. although that certainly doesn’t put me off, i tend to lose interest in things even quicker if i’m surrounded by people doing exactly what i want to do only much better

one of the few that strikes a chord is margaret cooter. i especially like her two “kilim’ quilts that draw inspiration from woven textiles. i think that’s a direction i’d like to move towards, exploring the relationship between quiltmaking and other fabric construction methods.

the art and mini quilts flickr pool is the most varied source of different styles i’ve found to date, i feel i’ve just begun to scratch the surface there.

laundry.
colour week.

fresh new apple leaves in the garden.

colour week.

even smaller this time, just A4 sized, perfect for an apprentice piece. the background sky/tree fabrics are pieced, everything else is appliqued. since this didn’t have to withstand being washed i thought i’d have a go at fusible applique, but i didn’t want to machine it (everything is hand stitched) or have raw edges, so i had a go at stitching the pieces onto lightweight fusible interfacing, cutting a slit in the interfacing, turning, then fusing. in the main this worked well, although there are a few spots where the interfacing is peeking out around the edges, especially on the smaller/fiddlier pieces. i do think it was definitely worth saving the hassle of slip stitching everything down. i think perhaps i should have cut out behind the appliques to reduce bulk and show-through, especially behind the house, but i wasn’t convinced that the fusible would hold if it was only a thin line around the edge. the quilting is more successful in some spots than others. i’m pleased with the swirly puffiness of the sky - which comes from following the outlines of the paisley pattern - and the wavy ground. on the other hand, i don’t think the concentric circles on the tree actually do it any favours and i think the house is still unresolved. although what i should have done further with it i’m not sure, and with all those layers to work through i’m not sure it woud have taken a pleasing texture anyway.

the little details on the house - the blind, number and button handle - were sadly not at all my invention (although i did have the brainwave of taking the number from a selvedge rather than attempting to embroider it) all credit to syko’s fantastic houses. believe me i had to strongly restrain myself from duplicating wholesale all of her clever little touches.

all in all i’m torn about this, there’s something that really isn’t working for me and i can’t quite put my finger on it. i’m happiest with the tree side of things, and the little dress. but it’s all been good practice - i’m getting quite good at bindings now, i even managed a mitred corner on this one - as neat on the back as it is on the front thanks to this explanation of what to do with the back, cos the suggestion that it will somehow mitre itself on the back which appears to be pretty widespread is a long way from the truth in my experience. and my quilting stitches are getting smaller, if not much more regular. here’s a question for any hand quilters reading - when people say it’s more important that your stitches are even than small, should i be aiming for stitches that are the same size as each other, or should they also be the same size as the spaces between them?