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I woke to a foggy morning.  Cold enough to have frozen over the water in the bird bath.  It didn't last long though.  By the time I'd walked into town to buy groceries, the fog had lifted and the sky was a flawless bright blue.  Back home I didn't have the energy to mooch down to the allotment, so instead I did more of my crewel embroidery.   I'm trying to make every square slightly different, despite my limited range of stitches.  The crewel wool is so thin and delicate.  I'm using a single strand of it on the needle and you get a lovely soft effect but oh, it is fragile.  Tug too hard on a stitch and the wool breaks.  I suppose it might not help that I'm using mainly vintage wool.  Age might've weakened the fibres. This is the latest page of my  Ann Wood inspired stitchbook.  It's a piece of gell printed cotton, and has been stenciled and stamped.   Apart from that stitchiness, I've been catching up on my readi...

  I've ruined yet another laptop.  Honestly, I can't be trusted anywhere near them.  My previous laptop was killed by me spilling a cup of tea all over the keyboard, and this one died a death when I dropped it.  The screen looks like an abstract artwork.  It will probably be futile but I'll enquire about getting it repaired.  In the meantime I'll have to look at the small print on my contents insurance to see if it's covered by accidental damage.  It's not like I even dropped it from a great height, but it's massively annoying.  Anyway, enough of my whingeing.  What's done is done.   The weather was mild and dry enough for me to venture down to the allotment for the first time yesterday.  I pruned back brambles and a wild rose, and have the scratches on my arms to prove it.  There were a few purple crocuses flowering, and thankfully the weeds haven't got too much out of hand over winter.   Back home I finished re...

Ellen Harding Baker isn't a name that's widely known, but she was clearly a remarkable woman.  An American who lived in Iowa, she was born in June 1847 and grew up to be an astronomer, a teacher, a wife and mother of seven children.  Ellen died in March 1886 of T.B.  So, why is her name remembered?  It's because of a quilt that she spent seven years making, which became a visual teaching aid and one that probably helped numerous students understand more of the world around them.   The quilt's approximately 89 x 106 inches, and is a mix of woollen cloth and wool/silk embroidery.  It's thought that Ellen based her representation of the solar system both on illustrations in astronomy textbooks and on her own observations of the night sky.   If you'd like to read more about Ellen's quilt, further info can be found via this link .  

  Well, apart from my front room looking like a bomb site, there's nothing much happening in my quiet corner of the world.  February seems muted, rather a dull grey like the sky.  I reckon we're all waiting impatiently for Spring, and days that aren't constantly punctuated by the whooshing of the combi boiler as it lumbers into life and sends out another blast of central heating.  I've made a tentative start with the Spring Cleaning.  A bag or two of stuff's gone to the charity shop, and I've begun listing things on eBay.  There's only so much vintage china you can hang on to before you're knee deep in dainty tea cups and dessert bowls.  I'll keep some of them, and use the ones I really like, but the rest can be sent on their way to new homes.   I've also been finding things I'd completely forgotten about, like these pretty pink glass dishes.  Should I keep these?  Or should they be eBayed too?  I'm undecided.  Meanwhile ....

  It's late on Sunday afternoon and it's been the greyest of days since the colour grey was invented.  Honestly, not a speck of blue sky to be seen, and now it's getting dark.  So it's lights on and curtains closed.  I'm in need of some vivid colour, and this painting 'A Japanese Girl' by Jacob Kramer fits the bill nicely.  The zingy yellow and orange are stunning, aren't they?  I only saw this for the first time mid-week, when I tootled along to Leeds Art Gallery for the first StitchArt session of 2025.  We were looking at portraits this time, and were given a piece of cotton stretched over a hoop, a needle with a big fat eye and a box of embroidery thread to rifle through.  The idea was that we sew a portrait, of ourselves or someone else, and incorporate images that reflect the person's likes and interests.  The theme came about because of a new exhibition at the gallery, all dedicated to portraits.   First of all, my portrait of...

  Okay, I know this looks weird, but the creative urge can take you in all kinds of strange directions, can't it?  The prompt for day four of Abstractuary was 'Totem'.  I googled it and the meaning I went with is ' a person or thing regarded as being symbolic or representative of a particular quality or concept '.  That got me thinking about a wall hanging I made a while ago - and previously blogged about on here - based on textile art by Ulva Ugerup.  (Look her up if you've not heard of her.  She's fab.)  Ulva made a wonderful textile work called 'Angels of Wrath', and I used that as a basis for my own stitched piece.  So, for Abstractuary I thought I'd make a kind of stylized doll similar to my stitched angel of wrath.   She's got a black felt body, the front with red material appliqued on it, a felt oval for a face, and is stuffed with fabric scraps.  I used thin copper wire to make the crazy hair, and threaded beads and broken j...

If, like me, you're not familiar with the work of artist Rex Ray then here's a brief intro via the wonders of YouTube.   Why am I showing you this?  Because, if you stopped by yesterday's post you'll have seen info about Abstractuary.  The arty prompt for 2nd February was Rex Ray, and I took inspiration from his collages and tried making my own.   Hmmm ... me and collages don't get along.  I tried cutting out painted papers and glueing 'em down, then switched to colouring pencils and tried that.  But I always end up with stuff that looks like a primary school kid made it.  So instead I took up needle and thread.   It's not finished yet, but it's a fabric postcard-sized bit of stitching, and is meant to represent one of his paper collages.  I think I'll eventually make a fabric book based on this Abstractuary challenge, and this will form one of the pages.   Today's prompt is 'print' and as I haven't hauled out the gel...

  Goodbye January, the month that feels like it's stretched out to be extra-long, the month we have to plough through to get to February and real signs of Spring.  You may know, if you've wandered by this blog before, that I'm beavering away at Ann Wood's 100 day stitchbook challenge.   That's still going strong.  Three pages done and I've started page four.  But I've also stumbled across another monthly challenge, and this one originated with Tori Chatfield, a.k.a. Kool Kooky Kreatures.  You can find her on YouTube and Facebook, and she runs something called Abstractuary.  Tori's produced a list of prompts for each day in February, and the idea is that you produce something arty or crafty based on those prompts.  You can stitch or paint or collage or use whatever kind of materials you want. I won't commit to following these prompts every single day of Feb, but I'm certainly going to use several of them.  Tori's also produced a Pinterest...