In which I resolve

I have 5 crafty resolutions for this year.  I don't New Year's Resolutions - I give them up in mid-February and then get depressed that I've failed.  I so decided this year to try to achieve the following 5 crafty things this year:

1. Finish the OCA Textiles 1 course
2. Start (and do most of) the OCA Printmaking 1 course
3. Tidy and organise my studio into a pleasant working space
4. Blog more
5. Draw more!

(I also want to get a bike and do more exercise.)

I love printmaking and am getting excited about the thought of the OCA Printmaking course.  So here's a picture of Bjork on a slice of boxwood, which I carved to make some prints.  Bjorks all round!

In which there is diabetes

Ugh.  Tessy-cat has been diagnosed with diabetes.  It's just like an Achewood strip, where the cat has diabetes (careful - NSFW and swears!).

Her back legs were getting wobbly and weak, so the vet recommended Metacam for arthritis, and did a blood test to check she was ok to take it long-term.  And the blood test showed up high sugar levels, so we did another blood test and.... it's diabeetus. 

Which is a bummer.  Going to see the vet on Monday - I'm hoping he might say it can be controlled by diet or pills, I don't want to have to inject Tess with insulin twice a day.  I wouldn't mind giving the jabs, and I'm not worried about the costs (although I'm guessing it won't be cheap).  It'll just be a lot harder to go away for a weekend or overnight - I guess we'd have to put her into a cattery. 

(And as I haven;t updated this blog with pet news for a long time - Yona Pog the little hog died in the summer.  She had cancer, and we had to have her put down.  RIP little spiky one.)

Madonna and Child

I took part in the Ship of Fool’s Secret Santa pressie exchange again this year, and was allocated another crafty crafter as my Santee.  I wanted to make something for her – I love giving (and receiving) handmade gifts.  They’re personal – you know someone has thought about you and what you might want, and has put love and time into the present.

 

I’d been sitting watching TV and just doodling – I love drawing faces, and I drew a round woman’s face, looking downwards.  I liked it, and drew a few variations on this, and then filled in the rest of her body.  She turned into a Madonna figure with covered hair, so I added the infant Jesus.  I liked how round and solid she was – very earthy.

I thought she’d make a nice fabric piece to go to my Secret Santee.  I had a rummage through my fabric bags and found the moon and stars fabric, and matched it with the blue and pink fabric.  I appliquéd the fabric on to the background, with cut-back appliqué for the hands and faces, embroidered the faces, and added beads for the halo.

My Santee posted to say she liked it very much.  Yay!

In which there is possible success.

I had a tinker with my textile project to see if I could make the background more interesting.  Here it is as was: 

It's obviously not finished - work in progress.  But I felt the blue background was a bit same-y, and need to be broken up.  So I played around on the computer, and mocked-up how it might look using a darker fabric to create shadows:

I like this a lot more.  I've got some satiny dark blue fabric that I'll use for this.  I think it looks a bit more dynamic and has more depth.  But I'm finding things do change once you're using fabric and thread rather than designs.  This piece seems to have a life of it's own!

In which I am an appalling bint

I meant to post loads about my textiles course in this blog, and I just haven't. Bad child.

So, here's where I'm up to. I'm on my final project, where I have to design and make a textiles piece of my own choosing. I'm basing my piece (loosely) on the stalagtites in Cheddar Caves. P and I went there on our summer holiday, and they just looked like a waterfall, or a forest of trees. And very inviting for a textiles project!

So I've played with the colours, and the piece is in blue and purple and silver and pinks, and I've moulded my fabric with PVA glue and gathered it to create surface texture. At the moment I'm appliqueing the main piece onto the background fabric, and the blue background fabric seems a little - well, plain. Not entirely happy with it. So I'm going to take some photos of where I am at the moment, and have a play with them on the computer to see if I can make it look a bit more interesting. I'd rather make mistakes on the computer than on the actual fabric piece!

Booky Wooks

P and I went to the PBFA Book Fair in York yesterday. Well over a hundred book sellers were at the Racecourse, and although a lot of the books were for collectors (the most expensive one I saw was going for £1,100) there were some affordable ones too.

I discovered Judith Mansfield Books there, and was a very happy bunny - she specialises in books on textiles and needlework. She's based in Todmorden, and doesn't have a website (boo) but I've got her email address. I bought a copy of "Textiles of the Arts and Crafts Movement" by Linda parry for £12.50 from her - a good price I thought.

Barry Clark (booksatchorlton21) also had a good range of textiles books, and Jonkers Rare Books had some delicious late-19th century Japanese pattern books. They were just little, hand-bound books with Japanese patterns, kimono designs, and drawings of animals and humans - for use in embroidery or art, I suppose. They were £200 - £300 though, so all I could do was dream...

I bought a spinning wheel!

I bought this spinning wheel at a car boot fair yesterday for £20 - woo hoo! the guy selling said he'd bought it for £60 in an auction in northumberland, but just wanted to get rid of it. He wanted £45, but I said I only had £20, and quite understood if he couldn't go that low. He did.

I’ve done a bit of spinning with a drop spindle in the past, and always fancied trying on a wheel - so when I saw this I couldn’t resist! I think it’s a proper wheel rather than an ornamental thing, it had the remnants of someone’s last project on the bobbin. It didn’t have a drive band, so I’ve improvised with a bit of pink yarn to have a play!

I’d love to know how old it is, and what make it might be - I can’t see any marks. I’m guessing it’s 1970s? There is a shop in York that does spinning classes a couple of evenings a month, so I'll pop along there some time to learn some more.