Pink blossom and a robin

There are lots of these beautiful blossom laden trees around, and the gusty winds we've had lately have been scattering pink petals across grass verges and pavements like confetti. I've still got a garden full of tulips, joined now by bluebells and anemones in their jewel-like colours. There are even flowers beginning to appear on my strawberry plants, so lets hope for a bumper crop of berries this year.

I nipped into a couple of charity shops today. Two interesting looking historical novels for 50p each, plus three crochet magazines for a quid each. I don't crochet, but my niece does and these will be going to her. The magazines are good quality and full of patterns to try, but if you really really peer at the small print on the cover you'll see their original price. £7.99 each. Yikes! That's why I don't buy glossy magazines any more, the prices are way too high for my taste. I'd rather spend on craft books. No adverts, plus you can pick up no end of books second hand for a fraction of their retail price.

Talking of things craft related - I made a second bag based on the triangular design found on YouTube. I upsized it to make a bag rather than a coin purse, and used a patchwork of fabrics for added interest.

I tried using some nubbly dark blue wool for the fastening, but settled on this silver ribbon instead.

After finishing my blue bag I decided to make another embroidered bird, this time a robin.

As with the blue tit I made, I stitched on to unbleached calico, using my RSPB bird book for reference. My robin's a simplified version of the bird, but I'm reasonably pleased with it. I made the beak slightly larger than needed, so hopefully when the backing's added the beak won't disappear in the same way the blue tit's did. The colourway isn't as appealing as the blue tit's yellow, green blue, black and white, but I tried to use different shades of brown and red, plus white and cream so the body and wings weren't just solid blocks of single colour.

I'm off to Leeds city centre tomorrow afternoon as there's a talk about a textile piece on display at the Art Gallery. The Leeds Tapestry, about which I know nothing, so it'll be educational at least, fingers crossed it'll be fun too.

More about that, hopefully with some decent photos, to follow.

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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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