rubykittyruby

I had a go at eco printing, though I didn't use a mordant - like alum - so the leaves I included in my dye pot didn't transfer on to the white cotton as I'd hoped they would.  I'll know for next time.  (It would've helped if I'd bothered to educate myself on the process before I started, but that would've been too sensible, wouldn't it?)  However, I still got some interesting results with red and brown onion skins, tea leaves, blackberries, bits of rusty metal and string!   I've a slow stitching project in mind for some of these pieces, and I'll definitely have another go at natural dyeing.  I'm hoping to go to the Harrogate Knitting & Stitching show and I know there'll be plenty of other craft stalls there, so maybe one will be selling dyes, mordants etc.   In other 'news', I gave up on 'The Lost Apothecary' as it wasn't well written enough to maintain my interest and life's too short to soldier on with a medi

  I'll start with this gal because - be honest - if you were a kid and given this doll it'd give you nightmares, wouldn't it?  She's a scary-mary and no mistake.  I spent a few hours yesterday in Leeds city centre, and nipped into the museum where she's housed.  To be honest, it wasn't that appealing to me.  The museum I mean, not the doll.   It's one of those places that're aimed firmly at the younger demographic.  Which isn't a bad thing as kids need somewhere free to go and they have to be entertained when they're there.  But all the ' open this drawer and what can you find?', 'try on this wig!', 'oooh! look over here! ' stuff isn't for me.   I mooched around for a while, but my heart wasn't in it.   So I wandered over to the art gallery instead, and found some lovely stuff.   'Mount's Bay with St. Michael's Mount' by Alfred Wallis (1855 to 1942).  This was a man born in the Victorian age, when t