Dreaming Spirals

I have been busy over the last few weeks finishing some postcards for a postcard swap with Art2Mail.  There are 27 here (I think!).  Here is a tantalizing taster for the recipients:

I have also been installing a router for our wireless network - we have had a very temperamental, ancient system until now and I got fed up of getting cut off and having to go and tweak various adaptors.  The only problem is that now one of the computers the kids use, which still runs Windows 98, can’t connect.  So we are getting lots of complaints about being bored over this half term week…

On another note, the garden has still got some colour, despite it being nearly November.   Things don’t usually just grow for me, and when they do the slugs beat me to it, but I just stuck a few nasturtium seeds in last spring, and one of them is ENORMOUS!   It has grown and climbed from the patio across most of the width of the lawn and is still flowering.  I like to eat the nasturtium flowers.  I visited the restaurant at Garden Organic (which used to be called HDRA) a few years ago and they served various flowers in the salad and it gave me confidence to try some of them at home.  Nasturtium flowers have a nice peppery flavour.  Trouble is, I can’t manage to bring myself to pick many of these….

While I was pegging out washing the other day I moved the trampoline cover and underneath were these eggs - I assume insect or reptile eggs.  Anyone know what they are?   There were also a lot of slugs hoping to overwinter snugly under there as well!

[Read more →]

I learned about the PIF exchange on Shirley’s blog dyeing2design. I
thought it sounded like a great idea and decided to join.
This is how it works:

“I will send a handmade gift to the first 3 people who leave a comment on my
blog requesting to join this PIF exchange. I don’t know what that gift will
be yet and you may not receive it tomorrow or next week, but you will
receive it within 365 days, that is my promise! The only thing you have to
do in return is pay it forward by making the same promise on your blog.”

So, join the PIF exchange and leave a comment! 

[Read more →]

I have got as far as the collage backgrounds with the tissue paper… I tore up various tissue paper colours and glued them with gel medium on to art boards.  Now I am going to watch the DVD again and add stuff (textured paper and found objects or whatever feels right to me) to the top once I have had a good look at them to determine where I want to go with them.  What Carrie Burns Brown calls ‘happenings’.

Here is another Picasa collage of the collages. 

[Read more →]

A new feature on the sidebar is a link to Ravelry! Ravelry is a fairly new - and definitely new to me - site where you can upload all your knitting projects, stash, etc, and find yarn and patterns and stuff like that. So if you’ve got some yarn and you don’t know what to do with it, you can search for what other people have made with it. Entry is by invitation only at the moment so if you fancy it, add your name to the waiting list! My invite came this week so I’ve been starting to explore it and add my stuff. I am looking forward to delving deeper into it because I’ve got a few yarns which I’d like ideas on what to make. I’m not very good at working out how to change yarns from what a pattern says to what I have in my stash! If you’re a member of Ravelry already, you can see my project pages here.

[Read more →]

Today is Blog Action Day. The aim of this is for all bloggers to draw attention to the plight of the environment.

For a few weeks now, I have been reading the blog of No Impact Man, whose family have been living in as environmentally friendly way as possible in New York. This is what he says in the introduction:

For one year, my wife, my 2-year-old daughter, my dog and I, while living in the middle of New York City, are attempting to live without making any net impact on the environment. In other words, no trash, no carbon emissions, no toxins in the water, no elevators, no subway, no products in packaging, no plastics, no air conditioning, no TV, no toilets…

It makes interesting reading.

[Read more →]

Here is a collage of some of the tissue paper I have been painting.   (I did this in Picasa, not in cutting and pasting real paper!    Not yet, anyway.)

This is a photo of some corrogated card which I painted.  It looks like a Picasa collage on its own!

And, a bit late, here is the best rusted piece from the baking tray which was up in the loft catching the drips.  It is ironic, really, because it is a practice piece on which I was trying to transfer a picture printed on Lasertran (not very successfully).. but I think it looks like one of those old medieval maps.  Pity I could never repeat it if I tried! 

[Read more →]

I read today in the local newspaper about an artist in Newcastle who had decided to make an artwork from all her junkmail. She has a spike outside her front door on which she piles it all! Apparently she started it on January 1st and it is now more than 5 feet high! Although I think if I took all my family’s junk mail, plus the catalogues I get sent from every company I have ever ordered anything - I especially hate the one which sends me stuff every month or so when I ordered something ONCE for my mum a few years ago - it would be quite a bit higher than that. I wonder if she is going to present it to the Post Office when she has finished?!

I bought a DVD by Carrie Burns Brown last week on Watermedia collage and have so far watched it about 3 times. And have been painting lots of tissue paper and other textured paper to make some collages…. I took loads of photos this afternoon so I will put some of them on the blog as soon as I have uploaded them to my computer. I think I have come to the conclusion that painting and glueing gets me creating much faster than sewing does. At least this year. And dyeing and surface design…. I have also been reading my copy of Jane Dunnewold’s book, Improvisational Screen Printing, and I want to try her interfacing stencils so hopefully lots of photos of that will be forthcoming! Children and other activities permitting….

I haven’t been getting many comments recently so I think I will go back to my old system of emailing commentators directly rather than on the blog. But I will leave the subscription plugin so you still have the option of getting further comments on a particular post.

[Read more →]

I love this gladioli.  It came up suddenly last year after we had lived in this house for 9 years. 

We had a blustery day and it got blown over and the stem broke so I had to bring it in and put it in a vase.  Oh well…. silver linings and all that!

[Read more →]