And here I am again, full of baked sweet potato and veggies. I thought I'd post this before I start on my pudding. (Natural yoghurt & blackberries, possibly chopped apple too. I'm trying to stay away from the really indulgent puds until we get into the full swing of Christmas, to avoid the waistline expanding too much!) I've been carrying on with my Ulva Ugerup inspired stitching today - more of that in a wee while - but first thing after breakfast I was digging around in the recycling for cardboard. I found Amazon packaging, which was perfect. I wanted to make the covers for a fabric book, you see. It's going to be for the stitchy things I make in the class I go to at the Art Gallery. I cut the cardboard to the size I wanted, and used thin polyester wadding to add a padded feel to each cover.
Stretched over the wadding, and stitched & double-sided-taped into place, are a piece of scrappy patchwork and my embroidered 'doodle cloth'. Not sure which will be the front of the fabric book and which will be the back, but I was pleased with how these turned out. Next, I need to cut out my pages either from white cotton or unbleached calico. Might do that tomorrow.
Before we move on to more crafty stuff, I'll do a quick detour and suggest a good book for you to dive into. 'A Small Bomb at Dimperley' by Lissa Evans. I stayed up late last night devouring the final chapters. It's a lovely book, very funny and rather romantic in its own way. It's set just after the end of the second world war, and concerns a rambling, crumbling stately home called Dimperley Manor. Once a grand house occupied by the wealthy Vere-Thissett family and with dozens of servants to cater to their every need, it's still occupied by members of the family, but they're broke and most of the servants are gone. The house is in an awful state after being requisitioned during the war as a home for expectant mothers. Will the new Baronet be able to save Dimperley from demolition? Will his scheming mother manage to find him a rich wife? What happens when a 'small bomb' is found in the grounds? It's an easy, fun read and a welcome antidote to all the doom & gloom in the world around us.
Anyway, from sweetness & light to ... this malevolent looking banshee! She's very much a work-in-progress, but she's my Ulva Ugerup style 'Angel of Wrath'. The face isn't quite right yet. That almost-a-monobrow reminds me too much of the baby in 'The Simpsons', the one Maggie Simpson's always glaring at.
I had a false start with the hair. Firstly, I used some of the grey hand-dyed Wensleydale wool I bought from the Knitting & Stitching show, but it didn't look right. So that was chopped off, and I'm doing crazy zig zag embroidered hair now. I'm even thinking of adding coloured wire to the hair, bending that into zig zags too. The background material is a mix of cotton, corduroy and a beautiful plum velvet, and I want to embroider lots of words into it. Like hag, crone, witch, harpy, old bat, old biddy. Words that get thrown at rebellious women, older women, those who don't fit in. My Angel of Wrath is going to be angry at those words being used, but also impervious to them. She's going to rise above the insults.
Am I going crackers? Yeah, possibly, but why not!
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