rubykittyruby

  Brrrr!  It's cold enough to want to stay indoors all day and drink endless cups of tea.  Which is more or less what I did, and to fill part of my day I completed a few more pages of Lorna Scobie's book '365 Days of Creativity'.  This page particularly appealed to me.  There were splotches of colour, & you'd to turn those into animals.  After completing this, I decided to make some splotches of my own in watercolour, using an old sketchbook -  - and turned those into weird creatures.  Daft, but fun.   That daftness was followed by me sewing an equally daft reindeer in gingham trousers.  As you do.  You might've seen me mention an Instagram account under the name of Ievate.  She makes quirky fabric animals, and I was very smitten with the reindeers she's made recently.  So I had a go at making one.   I drew a simple outline, and sorted out a red & white gingham, plus a faux suede material for the bod...

  I spent the morning cleaning, then stitching, so a long walk was called for.  A circuit of about an hour's brisk walking around my favourite haunt, the local RSPB reserve.   There were plenty of twitchers about, as well as people just enjoying a stroll, dodging the muddy puddles and the occasional cyclists and horseriders.   Back home I'm getting stuck into a Kate Atkinson novel.  I'm only a few chapters in, but it's already a terrific read and I'm loving the notorious Nellie Coker.  The book's called 'Shrines of Gaiety' and is set in 1926, a world of dancing girls and seemingly glamorous nightclubs, but also of a seedy criminal underworld and people traumatised by the impact of the so-called Great War.   The other thing I've done today is start experimenting with eco-printing.  I've seen various crafty types on YouTube produce lovely looking eco-printed material, so it was about time I tried the technique out.  Not 100% sure...

  It's going to be an indoors kind of day for most of this Sunday.  Grey sky and rain.  Lots of rain.  So I'll start this blog post with a few photos from a couple of walks this week, when it was blue sky and astonishingly mild for mid-October.  There's something very restful about being outside and looking at a view where you can see open fields and a wide slice of sky, with no buildings to block your gaze.  You can escape the hemmed-in feeling that town or city life can give you.  It's the same as being at the seaside.  It's not just the smell of salt air and the sound of the waves and the crunch of shingle underfoot that we love.  It's that uninterrupted view to the horizon.  Thoughts don't seem to crowd in as much when there's distance ahead.   Anyway, on to craftier matters.  I've been taking pictures of the hedgerows in all their autumn colours and various stages of decay in the run-up to winter.  I want to make...

  It's mid-week, and I'm mid-project with so many crafty endeavours.  This is what I'm referring to as my leftovers quilt as it's cobbled together out of orphan patchwork blocks and various odds & ends.  Over the last few days I've tacked the wadding on to the back of the patchwork top, and have been burrowing through my stash trying to find material large enough for the backing fabric.  I've nothing sizeable enough, but there are three pieces I should be able to stitch together.  They need to be approx 65 x 70 inches, so I think this will end up being the largest quilt I've made.  I usually stick to lap sized ones or single bed sized.  Easier to handle, especially with my basic model sewing machine that gets huffy and misbehaves if I ask too much of it.   I also completed another page of the Lorna Scobie book, '365 Days of Creativity'.  It's not very good, and I do get frustrated by how what I want to draw doesn't end up being what ...

It's not even midday, and I've already demolished a bowl of porridge with blackberries & sultanas for breakfast, a brunch of poached eggs & feta cheese on rye crispbread and a white chocolate Bueno bar.  Seriously thinking I might be overdoing it a morsel or two ... oh well, diet begins Monday.  Isn't that how the saying goes?  (Luckily, there are lots of Mondays throughout the year.) Anyway, I've a couple of things to tell you about.  One of 'em is this book, '365 Days of Creativity' by Lorna Scobie.  I received it as a present last Christmas, and finally got around to starting it.  The book has 365 prompts in the form of pages to paint or draw on, collage or write on, all aimed at kickstarting your arty crafty creativity.  Like this starting page.   You're encouraged to fill each bowl with something.  Fruit or pencil or random objects maybe.   I really enjoyed this, cutting up an old Sarah Raven catalogue for pictures...