Happy International Womens Day!

March 8th is International Womens Day, and though I received this card in respect of another celebration - my recent birthday - it still seems appropriate. I loved the image so much I've been attempting to recreate it in needlepoint. This is my first practice attempt.

It's clumsy and I haven't got the bonnet right, so I'm part way through stitching another version which'll hopefully turn out better. This idea is to send it to the friend who sent me the card, as a Thank You.

I haven't been watching the TV adaptation of Margaret Atwood's Handmaid's Tale, but I remember when I first read the book, and it's impact. How disturbing this dystopian vision of a future society is.

At the moment I'm reading Elizabeth Kostova's 'The Shadow Land' which is proving extremely good. It's one of those books I picked up in a charity shop, and has sat on my To-Be-Read pile for ages. So far, the central character Alexandra has arrived in Bulgaria to take up teaching there. She's managed, due to a mix up, to pick up another passenger's luggage, inside of which are someone's ashes from a cremation. The chapters alternate, going back to Alexandra's childhood in Virginia and her brother going missing while out hiking. It's beautifully written, and it's interesting to have the novel set in Bulgaria as it's a country I know nothing about.

That's all for now. I'm not moving off the sofa tonight. We've had a few, sparse snowfalls today, but it should be much colder and snowier tomorrow. Ideal weather for staying indoors and crafting, huh?

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Threads of Freedom and charity shop bargains

It's Saturday afternoon, and I haven't done half the things I'd meant to. Partly because I spent most of this morning messing about with paints, stencils and the gell plate. Never mind, everything on today's 'To Do' list will join tomorrow's 'To Do' list ... it's hardly life or death if I don't haul the hoover around the room or pull up weeds in the front garden. I thought I'd show you what I made on Wednesday. I'd gone to my monthly StitchArt group, and this time we did something a little different. There's a project called 'Threads of Freedom' which is working with various community groups across the city. It's about creating little stitched pieces, some of which will be included in a textile panel to go on display at Leeds art gallery. There was lots of fabric we could choose from to sew with, and I picked this vintage tray cloth with the roses embroidery. My own embroidery's not a patch on those flo...

Another week's flown by ...

Saturday's rolled around again, and it's not been the most eventful of days. Cleaning and hoovering, a walk to the shops to buy groceries, an hour on the allotment, then home to do some odd tasks in the garden. The strawberry plants are sending out runners, so I've been dealing with those, plus deadheading the perennial sunflowers, and cutting back the gone-over flowers on the sage and marjoram. I'm sad to see those blooms gone as the bees loved them. This afternoon I spent a few hours finishing 'Dawnlands' by Philippa Gregory. It's a really good book, a page turner where you care about the characters and want to be reassured everything's going to work out well for them. Plus you become enraged about the corruption of the so-called justice system at the time of the Stuart kings and queens, about transportation of prisoners to the West Indies, and about the vile nature of the sugar trade in the 1600s and the vast profits made from it....

Folding a zine and an alternative use for a bank card

Hello again, and excuse me while I scratch my insect bites. I don't know what it is, but at this time of year I'm invariably itching like crazy because I've been bitten by bugs. It seems to coincide with blackberry-picking season, but whether that's purely coincidental I don't know. Whatever's biting me, I'm obviously a tasty morsel in their world! I might try using a highly scented oil like Tea Tree oil, see if that deters them. Anyway, let's get on to more pleasant matters - I'm having a go at making a zine style booklet. Because I didn't have any paper large enough, I joined together two A3 sheets of sketchpad paper, using torn pieces of book pages for the joining. I thought that'd look less noticeable than packing tape or similar. Having chosen my colour scheme I used acrylic paint and an unwanted plastic bank card to apply the paint. Plus a stencil, sponge and modelling paste. Applying paint with a ATM card wa...

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