A fabric bowl, yet more books and ... scarecrows. I know, scarecrows!

 

I love how bizarre this photo looks.  It'll make sense later on, just keep reading.  It's a sunny Thursday morning in West Yorkshire and I'm debating whether to risk a line of pegged out washing or keep the laundry for another day.  Oh, the decisions!  It's better than trying to make up my mind about who to vote for.  General Election day in the U.K. and I'm still dithering over my choice.  I keep telling myself my one little vote won't make any difference to the overall result, so why tie myself in knots trying to decide.  But you can't think that way.  Every vote's important.  I will always vote in an election, whether local or national.  The suffragettes were imprisoned, force fed, beaten up and derided for demanding women's right to vote, so while it may sound pompous it's every modern woman's duty to honour their memory and put her X in a box.  Or spoil her ballot paper or whatever, just turn up and exercise our democratic right.  

Away from politics, I finished reading this last night.  Poor long suffering Katherine Parr.  Married and widowed three times, including one stint with stinking, foul tempered Henry VIII, she finally gets to wed the love of her life Thomas Seymour.  Only he turns out to be shallow and untrustworthy, and has a fling with her stepdaughter, the future Elizabeth I.  Katherine's longed for a child, and when she does at last have a baby she dies soon after childbirth.  

Oh well, that's one more book moved off my To-Be-Read pile.  I managed to drop a couple of novels I'd previously read off at a charity bookshelf in the supermarket the other day, helping to keep down the clutter.  Only to then wander into the charity shop itself and ...

Yup, three more books to go on the towering To-Be-Read stack.  (Sighs, rolls eyes, tuts in an exasperated manner.)  But I love Kate Atkinson's clever, witty novels, and 'The Lady of the Ravens' looks terrific.  The other book's a detective story based in Fiji.  No idea if it's any good, but at 50p it was worth a punt.  The brand new, never used tea towels were a bargain at 60p each, and will replace the tatty, tea stained, acrylic paint smudged ones I'm currently using.  I think those used tea towels will be upcycled into zokins, now I've learnt how to stitch those.  

One more crafty thing before I get on to the subject of scarecrows.  I finished putting a base on this fabric bowl.  It's a simple construction.  Two circles of black felt for the base, a slightly smaller circle of cardboard to insert between them.  The side of the bowl's simply a strip of black felt with fabric scraps covering the outside, stitched in place and with a little simple embroidery here and there.  

The combination of felt, a layer of fabric and the lines of running stitch make the bowl sturdy enough to be practical, very handy for storing threads in or small sewing projects.  Okay, time to talk scarecrows.  

Yesterday was Stitch Art day, a monthly two hour workshop at the Art Gallery.  The theme is always based around objects or exhibitions at the gallery, but it's a loose theme, you're free to interpret it however you wish.  Last month we stitched a piece based on Peter Mitchell's photographs of urban landscapes.  Semi derelict buildings, tattered shop fronts, that kind of thing.  But the current exhibition also features Mitchell's photographs based in rural locations.  That's where scarecrows come in. 

He took pictures of these weird and often unsettling, even sinister creations in the fields where they 'lived'.  They're all faceless in that none appear to have eyes or mouths drawn on them, and that adds to the freaky-ness of them.  

Our stitchy project was to create an outfit for a mini version of a scarecrow, using a wooden dolly peg for the head and body.  Normally I dive right in, full of ideas, but this time I floundered for a while before finally hitting on the direction to go in.  (What was great was that everyone did something different.  Some pretty scarecrows, some Halloween-ish.  I wish we'd grouped them all together for a photo, but there wasn't a chance to do that.)

I cut out a vaguely kimono shaped dress and added a roughly appliqued tree, lace for hands, some very rushed twiggy embroidery.  She's rather too well dressed for a scarecrow, more of a figure from a folk tale, but I liked the way the slightly stiff upholstery fabric helped the arms stretch out. 

Pictures were taken of our dolls in front of a Peter Mitchell photograph, and here's one without the hand in shot.  

Back home I stitched a couple of pieces of painted material into my fabric book, to represent the field and sky, then fixed my scarecrow doll in place.  Next month we're going to be representing lichen in thread.  I'm looking forward to that session as we'll be using water soluble paper which I've not tried before.  

Okay, I need to shower and get dressed and take a walk to the Polling Station.  Can't put off the decision any longer.  There's no party that truly speaks for me, and I'm considering spoiling my ballot paper for the first time ever.  That feels like a big deal.  

If you're reading this on 4th July and you're a Brit, please vote!  However, whoever you vote for, do it.  It matters.