A good read? Craft book review, yet more gelli prints and some charity shop bargains

It's been a wet 'n' windy Wednesday, so no gardening or allotmenting, but a fair amount of staring mournfully out of the window at the deluge of rain.  Which was why I spent the morning indoors, indulging my addiction to Gelli printing.  

Out came the stencils, bubble wrap, homemade printing stamps and every colour of paint I could find.  Much of that paint ending up on my hands, my top, the dining table, I even managed to get some on my face!  

The sitting room floor ended up covered in newspaper and printed pages, and I had to pussy-foot around them.  

Let's see, what else can I tell you?  A couple of other things I've done lately - one is tootle along to my local charity shop where they were having a 'everything's a quid' sale.  

The black & white shirt and the blue skirt are both destined to be chopped up for patchwork purposes, while the purple tee shirt and gauzy white shirt will be worn by me.  I mean, £4.00 for that lot, what a bargain!  I do love that blue skirt fabric.  It's got a modern abstract painting feel to it, and the colours are those of the sea.  Maybe a sea themed lap quilt, if I can find other material to add to it, in the same colour palette.    The charity shop sale's on all week, so I might be forced to nip in there again and have another rummage among the clothes rails.  

I've also been busy making more little notepads, and finished another one today.  

There are so many methods of constructing simple books, and so many crafters only too happy on YouTube to share their skills in making them.  I'll blog how to make this particular book tomorrow, in case anyone's interested.  

Okay, that brings me to 'if it's Wednesday, it's craft book review day'.  Today I've chosen 'Mary Norden's Needlepoint', subtitled 'Fifty Folk Art Projects for the Home'. 

Like many of the craft books on my shelves, it was published several years ago.  1994, to be precise.  (Crikey, was it that long ago?  Don't the years fly by?)  I used to do an awful lot of needlepoint, the craft having been bought to my attention through Kaffe Fassett's work.  But it's fallen out of favour a bit, patchwork and quilting - and more recently, Gelli printing -having taken over.  

Needlepoint itself seems to have fallen out of fashion generally.  Cross stitch is more popular, and probably cheaper to take up, needlepoint wool and canvas being fairly pricey.   But it's a fantastic craft for playing with colour, and you can stitch any kind of pattern, from naive and folksy to modern & stylish.  

Mary Norden's patterns are inspired by folk art, but they're not quaint or clumsily simplistic.  They're produced by someone with a flair for design.  The book's divided into sections - hearts and garlands, home and hearth, lords and ladies, borders and patterns.  There's also a good, clearly explained section on practicalities. 

How to stitch.  How to turn your completed canvas into a cushion or other item.  How to clean needlepoint, etc.  Most of the patterns are for cushion covers, but there are also spectacle cases and tablemats, picture frames and bags.  

The book features plenty of photographs of the 'makes', as well as colour pattern charts, many of which are generously full-page-sized, so you're not peering at the small print.  

If you're interested in taking up needlepoint, not having tried this craft before, you could do an awful lot worse than invest in one of Mary Norden's books.  Even if you're not about to pick up a skein of wool and a chunky blunt ended needle, you're likely to enjoy leafing through this particular book.  For anyone who paints or embroiders, you could find inspiration here.  

Well, that's my Wednesday review done & dusted.  I'll finish this blog post with a couple of recent pages from my art journal, and as I do so the sun is tentatively making its first appearance of the day.  Where've you been?!!