You find yourself watching everything from weightlifting to judo, javelin to parallel bars ...

 

The Olympics have begun, and even someone like me who's not that bothered about sports ends up watching all kinds of weird & wonderful contests.  I become an armchair expert, criticising a dive or a jump, a kick or a badly timed manoeuvre.  Of course, being an armchair expert means I can keep one beady eye on the telly and the other on some hand-stitching.  I'm making progress with my Creation themed wall-hanging, though I'm still not 100% convinced it's going to all come together and look good.  My landscape's got too much of a post-apocalyptic look about it right now.  Doesn't so much say 'isn't the world a wonderful place?' as 'the end of the world is nigh, repent! repent!'.  Oh well, I'll soldier on, it may get better.  

I finished reading this, which was pretty good overall.  The story moved along at a rapid pace, the details of life in 1938 Germany were chilling and appeared well researched.  If I had reservations it's that the novel ended with a few loose ends not tied up.  Characters and plot lines kind of left in mid-air.  Also, I felt Eva Braun was presented as a young, naive woman, very much ignorant about what was happening in pre-war Germany.  The state sanctioned violence, the repression, the emphasis on 'racial purity'.  Having seen the BBC's superb 'Rise of the Nazis' series, Braun was in real life a committed Nazi.  I think I would've been more comfortable with the book presenting her as someone complicit.  Knowing about the state her country was in, but shielding herself and allowing herself to be shielded from the horrors of it.  I suppose I felt the Evan Braun in the novel was a little too sympathetically portrayed. 

Anyway, I'm on to lighter reading with my next chosen book, another Janice Hallett one.  'The Appeal'.  I'm about 100 pages in and it's very intriguing.  A murder-mystery, though no one's died yet so I'm well and truly in the dark about whodunnit.  

The other thing I've been doing today is gell printing, stenciling and stamping.  I want to make an art journal for someone's present, so am adding colour and pattern to pages of A3 sketchpad paper.  

I found a couple of blank cards and splashed the paint on these too.  They might get added to the journal. 

One more thing to draw your attention to.  

Have you seen this 10 minute technique video by Jeri Bellini?  It's such a simple idea.  Tearing long strips of fabric and attaching them together to make fabric yarn.  I like the way she crochets the yarn, then pulls that crochet apart in order to crumple up the yarn and make its texture more pleasing to her.  

I tore up lengths of sari material, as well as some semi-sheer material I had lying about, and have a little stack of it now waiting to be used.  After all, it makes more sense to use up what craft supplies we have than endlessly purchase yet more stuff from online suppliers, no matter how tempting their websites are.  

Right, I'm going to read a little more of 'The Appeal', then watch another obscure Olympic event.  Archery, skateboarding, who knows what it'll be!  Bye for now.