On photography

Five Squares

On Saturday lots of things were going on round the house Mr T was busy on the computer in 'my' studio and had CDs spread all over the table so I thought I would do a bit of photography. It was exceedingly dull and cold so even picking a few bits from the garden was enough to chill to the bone. For the photographers out there I got out my 50mm 1:1.8 which is a fixed lens, meaning it does not zoom in and out, but it does allow you to shoot in really low light without a flash. However, the light was so low on Saturday I should have used a tripod as I had to use such a slow shutter speed, but I couldn't be bothered. So these shots are not very sharp, they have a soft focus appearance which comes from f/2.2 and a 1/50 sec shutter speed.  

Finally, here I am in soft focus, with rather a lot of camera shake announcing that I will be organising a give away very shortly as I have now clocked up 100 followers. I have a very busy week coming up, so it might not happen for a few days. However I am well on the way to putting together a couple of packages.

Meanwhile, keep your woolly socks on - the cold hasn't finished with us yet!

December's here

Congratulations all of you who have pledged to keep up the art calendar for twelve months we are nearly there.  So here is my completed November.

 Which looks so much more colourful now it is filled in - and December...

...a blank canvas. Who knows what the next 31 days will bring!

I will say again what great fun I find this to be, and I love looking back and seeing what happened when over the previous months. So helpful when you have a brain like a piece of sequin waste (in-joke there).

Today I should have been having lunch with the 'Nutty Knitters' group which I recently joined. However I am a bit of a wuss when it comes to icy and snowy weather so I sent my apologies. Our hostess lives up a lane about 12 miles away in the Bedfordshire countryside, and although she did e mail to say the road was passable  I am Mrs Cautious these days and full of "what ifs".  So I've been moping about thinking what a wimp I am. However to redeem myself here is my second blog in as many days. 

Firstly here are my attempts at knitting.

No, I am not knitting for a three legged baby with a split personality, they are supposed to be mini Christmas stockings. Even a wash and a hot press hasn't evened up my stitches! Just be grateful I'm not giving you one of these to hang on your tree when I come round! I am much better suited to the other kinds of needles.

Here are the two little journals I have made  covers for, in what I have called distressed patchwork as there are lots of frayed edges.

The embroidery was inspired by the bleached denim marks, I am pleased with the freer designs.

 They come with 4"x6" narrow lined journals.

Below is the last purse I managed to finish before the sewing machine seized up. I am not expecting news before the end of the week at least.

This purse is slightly stiffer than the previous ones and I am offering to add a cord to turn it into a little shoulder bag, for when you don't need to carry anything but you bit of plastic and a few coins.

What do you think? They are now in my Etsy shop.

PS You can view everyones calendar pages here

November snow

Like many of you here in the UK I woke to snow this morning. I volunteered to dig up some carrots for our beef stew and dumplings.

 So here is my garden this morning.

 The cotoneaster which never seems to be eaten by the birds until after the New Year. Then we often get flocks of red wing and fieldfares.

My pots of bulbs protected by pieces of netlon to stop the squirrels digging them up. They don't seem to eat the bulbs, but use the soft compost to bury nuts in.

My neighbour's coloured clothes pegs.

My watering cans lined up for the winter.

So glad I bought a hydrangia, it is worthy of a few close-ups,but not this morning.

Must go and get that stew on the go - keep warm.

B*******!!!

I was really determined that I was going to write a post this week and not leave it so long, so I have managed 

six days so I have just about fulfilled my brief. I seem to have been really busy with visits for x-raying Mr T's knee (which is no longer giving him pain), the chiropractor and the hairdresser as well as spending a good few hours with the Nutty Knitters. I actually did some knitting this week, but ... well I might share it with you... I don't think I shall be knitting again for a while.  I have finished an order for a couple of book covers and a purse for a friend and a couple of mini-journal covers, but  I think this cycle of making has almost come to a close.  I had to remind myself that my Etsy shop is somewhere I can offer for sale the things I make rather than feeling I must make things to sell, which was not the point.  A little part of me feels I ought to exploit the Christmas present market, but only a little part. It has made me also realise that my urge to create is much stronger than my urge to make  money.

So I am going to share with you my next project, although the final idea I am keeping to myself for a while. 

This is my sketch book developing the idea of a tree in each of the seasons. I sketched them onto four 8cm x12cm rectangles of pelmet weight vilene.

I then coloured them with some Koh-i-noor watercolour dyes

and then enhanced the colour with my  lovely soft, waxy,  blendable Karisma colour pencils which are no longer available.

I then free machine stitched each panel over layers of coloured voile and organza .... but just as I finished with the orange/yellow thread on the foliage of the autumn tree my sewing machine seized up!!  I cleaned all the fluff out of all the accessible bits but that didn't help... oh no... B*******!!! have I done something wrong, or is it a fault with the machine?   I bought it locally from a very long established supplier so I do hope Mr Theobald is able to help me tomorrow.  Luckily I had finished my orders.

The little panels are ready for hand stitching, I want to build up lots layers of embroidery and I have in mind something to make with them, but I'm keeping that quiet for the moment. My Honesty Seed head book cover is more or less finished, I've added quite a bit more stitching since the last picture,  so it is waiting to be made up into a book.  I don't need my sewing machine for any of these things thank goodness.  

(Up-date: as the machine is still under warranty it is back to the manufacturer, so only hand stitiching and paper projects for a while)

I've just noticed that I have 97 followers, so when I reach 100 I shall have a special give-away so watch this space.

November blues

What a gloomy time of the year this is, a no where land. It is bone-chillingly damp and dull, and yet I feel it is wasteful to keep the heating on all day. The lights have to be on, but  really I could just turn them all off, curl up and hibernate.

However I haven't been hibernating and thought I would share these with you.

This is the cover of my latest little book based on Honesty seed head. I have added the seeds and covered the main 'pods' with irridescent chiffon, some more stitching and embellishment is still needed.

I have also experimented with some 'cracked paper quilts' which a learned how to do through three free videos by Carol Wiebe.

It is a sandwich of paper, fabric, felt, fabric and paper stitched together with 'cracks' cut out and then stitched back with free hand machine stitching.

This one is based on a print made on ordinary copy paper of one of my photographs made at the Walled Garden. It is a starting point for some more thinking and great fun to do.

I have also been working on lots of other projects.

I am making a couple of book covers and a purse for a friend and I am working on some mini-jounal covers for Etsy. I found a denim skirt in a charity shop and by soaking pieces of it scrunched up in household bleach for various times have managed to create several interesting shades of denim. Now I need to finish these off and get to work on the Christmas card production line, then perhaps I can hibernate.

Keep warm and cosy,

Jill

PS Blogger would only let me upload one picture at a time so I went to Dashboard and then Edit posts which was the quickest way to get round theproblem. It is about time they resolved this glitch.

Good bye, hello

Selling what you have made is a double edged sword. You are pleased that someone likes your work enough to want to own it, but sometimes parting is difficult, like seeing your offspring off into the world never to be seen again. I first experienced this when I had a watercolour, which I was very fond of, accepted at the Royal Institute of Watercolour Painters open exhibition in 1989 at the Mall gallery, and had put it up for sale for what I thought was a  lot of money (£200) and it sold. I was at once delighted and flattered and also sorry to see what I felt was my best watercolour ever, (and probably still is) gone. Although I do have a rather poor photograph of it somewhere, the likes I have never achieved again. It was of greater bindweed which grew in abundance in our first garden.  Someone has just bought my leaf journal and I am very pleased and flattered. I still have it at the moment and will actually part with it next week, so I keep having a look at the pages and giving it a little stroke. Luckily this time I have a good set of photographs to remind me of my baby.

One for the archives.

However I do have another which I am adding to my Etsy shop of which I am almost as fond.

This one has a richly embroidered cover and blue pages. I hope someone falls in love with this one too.  I do love making my patchwork item and they have my heart in them, but the hand-made books have a little bit of my soul.

Meanwhile here is my finished covered journal.

 You may guess I am rather fond of French knots at the moment

It will come with a blank journal, but not a shell.

It has taken hours to take the photographs with a couple of reading lamps and an improvised light tent which I managed to melt a hole in with one of the lamps. I thought it was going to be brighter today. Oh well!

I hope you have a bright week,

Jill

Thank you for giving me the confidence...

... to set up my Etsy shop. Since I started at the beginning of September I have made at least two sales a week - through Etsy, or through friends or through this blog. I have some orders for friends and a few things in the pipeline to add to the shop.  Here is a progress report on a project...

Here are some lovely pieces cut from samples of Vanessa Arbuthnott linen union my sister gave me. It is a beautiful pale straw and grey - I scanned this and it is difficult to get the colour right. Here the pieces are zi-zagged together on a piece of thin wadding ready for embellishment.

...and here it is after some embroiderywith some alternatives for a button and threads for a cord.  This is a cover for a journal and is now ready for my shop as soon as I can photograph it. I'm hoping for some good light tomorrow.  I have enough linen samples for one more cover in a pale green colourway if this one goes down well.

In the new year I hope to experiment with some different, perhaps more adventurous items as I don't want to become a patchwork production line. I do enjoy doing it however and hope to have a couple more purses for the shop when I have finished my orders.

This will be cut down the centre vertically and become two rather bright purses.

Thank you all for your encouragement and support and to everyone who has given me lovely feedback. I am a very happy bunny. (There always has to be something however, and I got a letter from the tax man this morning saying I will have fill in my own tax assessment form - hmmm, but I do have a friend to help).

Hope you are have a great weekend - it is all work here, must get back to the sewing machine!