rubykittyruby

  Yesterday was my monthly StitchArt session at the local art gallery, and very enjoyable it was too.  We trooped upstairs to a room I'd not been in before.  (Honestly, the building is like a maze!)  We were concentrating on one particular abstract painting, but there were plenty of others to provide us with inspiration.  The session was all about colour and about applying paint to fabric.   Firstly, there were some stunning pictures in the gallery.  I particularly liked this 'Off the Irish Coast' by Jack B Yeats.  The colours were much more vivid than can be seen in this photo, with brilliant blues and green in the seawater and soft pinks and pale purples in the sky.  (Apologies for the wonky-ness of my photos.  I was trying to take them without getting in anyone else's way.) Here's another beauty.  'Silver Estuary' by C R W Nevinson, showing a scene near Rye in East Sussex.   However, the painting we concentrated on...

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 was going to do some cleaning.  No, really!  I was.  But the vacuum cleaner's decided to give up on life.  I've tried resuscitation.  Switching it off and on again.  Also swearing at it.  But it won't work, and I've yet to buy a replacement.  I'm debating whether to buy a cheap 'n' cheerful model for about £60 or so, or splurge on a Henry at a more substantial £140.  The Henry looks like it'll last longer and be robust, so I suppose I'll end up getting that.  Anyway, being cleaner-less gave me an excuse to spend time on craftiness.  First up was this bag.  I'd decided that it needed an inside pocket.   So I dug out this denim pocket harvested from an old pair of jeans.  A simple task to sew it to the bag's lining.  A nifty bit of upcycling, I hope you'll agree.   Also completed is another zokin.  I went off-piste with the sashiko stitching and for some reason added circles. ...

Saturday's rolled around again, and I've done my stint on the allotment.  The hollyhocks are well and truly blooming.  Not a single bee on them though, and I've seen a few tweets and postings on Facebook about how few bees people are seeing this year.  Is it simply the weather we've been having?  Or the effects of climate change and environmental pollution on our pollinators and insects in general?   All I can do is avoid using chemicals on my plot and provide as much food for bees as possible, like this marjoram, now flowering profusely.   The ragwort's flowered too, waiting for the caterpillars of the Cinnabar moth to turn up and munch on it.   The tall, elegant verbena bonariensis (if that's how it's spelt) is lovely too.  Though it's a manic self-seeder, and I'm forever pulling out seedlings from places where it's not needed, like smack bang in the middle of a path.  Back from the allotment, I needed to crack on with someth...

Do you ever those days when you spend ages looking for something?  You look in the place where it was meant to be.  Then places nearby, and odd shelves and cupboards and drawers.  Then you go back to the original place you looked ...  but all the time it's staring you in the face.  Honestly, I spend ages wondering where on earth I'd left rolls of washi tape and - oh yeah, I'd used them in this box of embroidery threads to keep the spools from falling over.  Doh!  Someone needs to invent a device where you can type in whatever you're looking for and it tells you 'it's over there!' and sighs dramatically, as if you're the biggest idiot in the world.   Anyway, enough of this nonsense.   I've just finished reading this, Rory Stewart's memoir of political life.  I'm neither a natural Tory or a frequent reader of politician's memoirs, but it's a cracking read.  It made me simultaneously feel sorry for MPs.  The good ones wh...