Rerturn of the Wanderer

It's me - I'm back and I have missed you all. I have been on a retreat at the Dorset Wildlife Trust's Reserve at Kingcombe, near Dorchester. This was with our stitchy group that used to meet at Urchfont and we met with great misgivings that it would not be the same as our beloved Urchfont.

Of course it wasn't the same, but it was lovely and we had a wonderful time. The surroundings are fantastic with brilliant walking so, although the weather wasn't wonderful, we managed to explore a lot of it. It also enjoys poor reception for mobiles and my wi fi dongle wouldn't work, so it was something of a reteat as well. I had become so overloaded with work before I went that I felt quite poorly, but I could feel the stress dropping away.

You can see us in the pic above in the workroom. I'm afraid that I am the one with the laptop as I had to finish some editing on the Lynda Monk book which is coming around the end of November. That didn't take too long and then it was on with the stitching. The workroom had a huge log fire and, as I was sitting nearest, I was the log lady (anyone remember Twin Peaks?).

The centre was wonderfully welcoming and friendly and although we did miss the Urchfont puddings, most of us felt less bloated. The cakes were well up to Urchfont standard.

The place is very well designed with the modern additions complimenting the old agricultural buildings. We slept in the cowshed, seen here. No cows but en-suite bedrooms.

Lovely hidden gems in the grounds, too. I came across this metal-worked fawn and just loved the way it was made.

Note the detail of the spine, shown here.It has given me an idea for a piece I am working on which started as a tutorial for the third free lesson from my Dissolvable Delights book.

It will be  a large hanging, mostly metal, with inserts of water soluble stitching and solid free machining. Will show you that next time.

Clive came along for lunch on Friday and then we took Jane Lemon down to Totnes, Devon for the AGM of the West Country Embroiderers, a good sized group of stitchers in Dorset, Devon and Corwall with around 1000 members in total. 

I am rather scared and humbled by the fact that I have taken over from Jane as the President of the organisation. What a hard act to follow, she is such a towering figure in our embroidery world, having been awarded an MBE for her services in bringing ecclesiastical embroidery into the modern day.

West Country are a lovely group - I have been a member, on and off, for years and have always enjoyed my teaching sessions with them. http://www.westcountryembroiderers.co.uk/

I gave a talk called Visible, Invisible, one of my favourites, which covers not only dissolving fabric (a natural for the title) but is also about making things appear from unlikely base materials and covers working through concepts to produce art.

The members are all really committed to their stitching and have great tutors on a (mostly) monthly basis.To celebrate the AGM they had all worked book marks and there were some stunning ones, as you can see, right and below.

It was a lovely afternoon and a sunny drive home through Devon and Dorset. I'm glad to be back at last.

Cloud Nine

I'm having a new hall carpet and I'm on cloud 9. No, I really am, as you can see from the pic below. That's what the underlay is called. It bodes well for peace and harmony.

I

Can't remember if I told you about our disastrous flood in the kitchen which resulted in new tiles in there as well. Actually, they look much better than the previous floor.



















Seems to have taken over our lives as we thought it wasn't worth a new hall carpet if we were going to paint the walls later. So that turned into a full scale paint everything job. I am blaming all this for the fact that  I'm running late with the last free on-line class, linked to my Dissolvable Delights book (on the d4daisy site). I now have the requirements on the daisy chains blog and the class will be there next week, I hope. It's based on the wonderful contrast between metal shim and water soluble lacy stitching.


I have been interviewed by the Colour Queens for their on-line journal and used the piece below to illustrate one of my points. Do you remember her? I made her for an exhibition just before we moved into this house. One of you blogging mates left a comment calling her the Angel of Relocation and after that I really couldn't sell her, so had to make my buyer another one. Not the same though, as I can't bear making the same thing twice and that is why I rarely work to commission, unless I'm allowed a free hand. If it was you who christened her, do let me know as I'm so pleased that I kept her. I sold all of my Ancient Faces series so it's good to have one for me.

Thanks for comments about blogger v wordpress. I think I am with Robyn and Heather and will stick to the devil I know.

Smudge's poor paw has mended very slowly and today is the first time I have been able to let him out. He is helping Clive in the garden and I shan't let him stay out too long. I am more than ever convinced that it was a fox or a dog as it was a bite, but much deeper than a cat could inflict. He thanks all his friends for their concern and says that you should have seen the other guy. I think his self-esteem has suffered a knock as he has been quite subdued.

B***** Blogspot

You may well wonder where I have been - it's all Google's fault. It locked me out of my blog and whatever I tried I couldn't get in. It helpfully suggested signing out and then in again but every machine I tried on had the wrong user name and wouldn't let me change it. I am now blogging on a very ancient laptop which let me in. This could be my incentive to move to wordpress, which I've heard is better. Anyone able to confirm that?

Anyway I haven't been idle as I've given three talks in the last ten days to some delightful branches, one of which was Winchester where I met up with my old mate, Dodie, who is back from the wilds of Cornwall. We tried to have lunch at a pub next to the talk venue but they were unable to serve us as their computerised tills were down. They had the food and the cooks but not the initiative to take orders. Ain't that daft? Anyway we went elsewhere and had a great chat and a good meal. We did our C&G together so lots to talk about.

I have been crocheting with Perle cotton, as the grandaughter expressed an interest. She is a great knitter and is coming with me to the K&S in a couple of weeks. That will be fun.

I have made the front and back of an amulet purse and mounted it on water soluble film so that I can bead it more easily. I also think that the film, if I leave a little bit in, will make it firmer. Quite enjoying this. I have written an article for Stitch on making amulet purses as I enjoyed the ones I made for the Dissolvable Delights book (www.d4daisy.com), especial;y the metal shim ones.

We have also moved more than 400 d4daisy books to a new home. This took four days and involved two vans, two grandchildren, some casual help and a lot of cobwebs. the new storage is much better so it is a relief really.

There has also been a Smudge drama which you may have seen on Facebook. He was found on Sunday, after a major search, in a corner of the green house nursing a very bloody paw. Off to the vets (Sunday fees, of course) and a lot of swearing (Smudge, not us), some shaving, an anaesthetic, and many injections, he was home again. The vet thinks it was a fight - I'm not sure and I do wonder if the fox got hold of him.

He had the sweetest bandage - a bit pretty for a boy - see right but it did have little pawprints on it.

 He had his leg shaved and now looks as though he is wearing a glove.

 Anyway we have been back to the vet today and he is progressing well. Following the visit to the vet he went under the bed and this is all that has been seen since - a small lump of fur protruding from the throw.

Do hope to back with a normal blog soon. Off to do some work on Lynda Monk's new book. Exciting stuff.

New WoW

Many thanks to all of you for saying how much you have enjoyed the September issue of Workshop on the Web and for being so understanding about the price rise.

You are saying that even at twenty pounds a year it is great value for all the step-by-step workshops.  I especially loved the ones by Sherrill Kahn and Stephanie Redfern in this issue. I always like working with slips (making pieces separately from the background and applying them) and Stephanie has turned it into an art form. Right is her bird slip on step one of the background.

Below right is the bird on the finished background. Isn't he great?  I love her stitching too - detail of the bird here on the left.

My workshop on making metal flowers caused lots of emails about the size. I deliberately didn't put this in as I thought they could be any size and for Gilby's table setting they would need to be smaller or you couldn't see across the table (maybe that is the idea!). My petals were about eight inches long by four at the widest point but if you make paper cut outs first they tend to be automatically the right proportions.

We are planning a series of extra goodies and I can now afford to continue to have really exciting contributors.We don't take a lot from the site,  it is by the way of being our hobby, but I like to pay people properly for their great articles and we have some big names.

 If you don't belong have a look at the free Taster www.workshopontheweb.com

 If you do belong, a mention on your blog is always welcome. Tell them it's a real bargain before the price rises next month.

I haven't had time to stitch out my 'Looking Through' piece yet as the mad impulse that made me clean out the workshop is continuing through the house. Clive has been infected and is painting the hall. Halls are horrid - all those doors. I am keeping him going by feeding him home made bread. I found my breadmaker in the tidying process and it still works. I remember that I stopped using it as I eat too much bread but Clive needs feeding up and Mr Panasonic is doing a good job.

Comments

Sorry Floozina - I'm no expert on blogs - anyone know how to get blog posts sent as emails?

Heather and Gilby - every meeting of stitchy friends sees me taking a large box of cast offs for folk to dip into. I've got rid of lots of stuff like this but it is usually accompanied by groans from those who couldn't resist adding to their own clutter.

I used to have  a spare bed in my workroom in the old house, Wabbit. It was a bit of a disaster when anoyone wanted to stay and usually meant that three feet of muddle lived on our bedroom floor for the duration. I liked the comment about it being cheaper to buy a new USB stick (I'm sure you are right)  but Bernina charge a fortune for theirs and you can't initialize a 'normal' one to take their designs so it is a matter of principle.

Interesting comments from the last post - I'll do them at the end, if that is OK.

I have had the most tremendous sort-out and declutter in the workroom. Everything got shoved in anyhow when we moved (two years ago in November) and there never seemed to be time to straighten it out. My aim was to move another desk in so that I could have my sewing machine next to my laptop and transfer designs. I had a neat little USB stick once upon a time but it disappeared in the aforementioned move. Voila!

So now I can get on with some digitizing and I thought I'd start with my looking through designs from the last blog. I scanned in a simplified version of the centre of the image and it looks OK on the printout.

The sewing machine pic looks fine so I shall stitch it out on lutrador as I want something that won't fray when I cut it out. Haven't tried this before so I will keep you posted. The plan is to free machine the two sides and blend them into the centre stitching.

Jane Wild gave me a lovely image of the Duomo in Florence that she had taken from a strange angle (it was this that gave me the idea). This is a photo of the printout, ready to be drawn into.

 Must point out to Olga that my 'cheating' idea is nothing to do computer design but involves straight from camera photo prints or photocopies. Having struggled for years to overcome the idea of computer use, especially when transferred to a sewing machine, as 'not real design' I'm not backing down now!

I will show how this print turns out next time.

can't resist showing the other side of the workroom. Rushed out and purchased lots of see through boxes for my art stuff. I still have too much even after a relentless chuck out.

Don't they look great?

Comments

I will look for that book Aussie Jo. There are some superbly illustrated cheldren's books out now.

The Quest was a great success and the kids are already badgering for another. It was based on Harry Potter's Voldemort capturing three grannies and tying them to their beds. Various spells had to done on the way along the trail, Magic beans (aka M&Ms) had to be eaten to awake dormant powers (Clive had the job of creeping into bushes and hiding these) and items had to be collected. Then they had to find a large bush of wild convulvulus flowers and do the 'Granny pop out of bed' chant. Anyone else do this as a kid? You do the chant while squeezing the bottom of the flower and it pops out and flies away.

Needless to say the poor bush was soon bare and a further hunt began for another bush. Then we all went to the handy pub for lunch. Great fun.

Further Through

Interesting comments from the last post - I'll do them at the end, if that is OK.

I have had the most tremendous sort-out and declutter in the workroom. Everything got shoved in anyhow when we moved (two years ago in November) and there never seemed to be time to straighten it out. My aim was to move another desk in so that I could have my sewing machine next to my laptop and transfer designs. I had a neat little USB stick once upon a time but it disappeared in the aforementioned move. Voila!

So now I can get on with some digitizing and I thought I'd start with my looking through designs from the last blog. I scanned in a simplified version of the centre of the image and it looks OK on the printout.

The sewing machine pic looks fine so I shall stitch it out on lutrador as I want something that won't fray when I cut it out. Haven't tried this before so I will keep you posted. The plan is to free machine the two sides and blend them into the centre stitching.

Jane Wild gave me a lovely image of the Duomo in Florence that she had taken from a strange angle (it was this that gave me the idea). This is a photo of the printout, ready to be drawn into.

 Must point out to Olga that my 'cheating' idea is nothing to do computer design but involves straight from camera photo prints or photocopies. Having struggled for years to overcome the idea of computer use, especially when transferred to a sewing machine, as 'not real design' I'm not backing down now!

I will show how this print turns out next time.

can't resist showing the other side of the workroom. Rushed out and purchased lots of see through boxes for my art stuff. I still have too much even after a relentless chuck out.

Don't they look great?

Comments

I will look for that book Aussie Jo. There are some superbly illustrated cheldren's books out now.

The Quest was a great success and the kids are already badgering for another. It was based on Harry Potter's Voldemort capturing three grannies and tying them to their beds. Various spells had to done on the way along the trail, Magic beans (aka M&Ms) had to be eaten to awake dormant powers (Clive had the job of creeping into bushes and hiding these) and items had to be collected. Then they had to find a large bush of wild convulvulous flowers