Dreaming Spirals

A few months ago I found out that Penguin Classics were sending out free books to people prepared to review them on their blog.  I duly applied, was successful and was sent Voyages and Discoveries by Richard Hakluyt.  Here is my review - I wrote it and posted it to the Penguin website today and it will appear at some point on the site.

 

Voyages and Discoveries is a selected collection of documents from Richard Hakluyt’s much larger work. They date mostly from the 16th century.  They are writings and correspondence by lots of different people about their travels. 

This book is one to dip into rather than to read from end to end.   It provides a fascinating, if sometimes obscure, view into the world of the 1500s.  From descriptions of a particular journey, to rules and regulations on board ship, it is a glimpse into another century, another world.  First-hand accounts of impressions of very different lands to their own.  Descriptions of merchandise and treasures.  

On one page you will find a 15th century Bill Bryson, on the next a shipping agent’s report to his boss. 

It was interesting to me to read direct accounts rather than a historian’s indirect report of them.  Random phrases about textiles popped out at me:

“they gave him for a present a garment of cloth of velvet and another of scarlet”

“one hundred pieces of kersey, seven broadcloths, two barrels of cochineal…”

Lots about raw silk, and even more about food….

I seem to have done well recently with acquiring free books for review.  I recently joined the Librarything Early Reviewers and yesterday my first book arrived!  Boy A by Jonathan Trigell.  I am well into that already. 

Hope they send me an arty book next!!

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Thank you, everyone, for your comments.  I am overwhelmed by the help given!   I think I have written to everyone personally (and many of you have offered even more advice which is wonderful).

The definite conclusion was that photo 3 was the best image for Thermofax screens.  Rayna and Karen even played with it to make it better - thank you, both of you!

Here is one of Rayna’s:

and here is Karen’s.

I haven’t done any more playing with Paint Shop Pro this week but I know now to have a go with the posturizing effects and playing with contrast and brightness.  I am going to print all the comments out and have another good go soon. 

To summarize your comments,  the black in the image is what will print.    Grey will not work well so it is best to take as much out as possible.  It is best not to have too much black all together or there will be too much of a ‘blob’ of colour when it is printed.

Mary suggested that I try and find a Print Gocco machine because the screens used for those (for fabric) are the same as those used in the thermofax process, so I have been keeping my eye out for one all week (that is probably why I haven’t been playing with the PSP!!).    Strange how time disappears when you’re searching on Ebay and on the web….

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I am in the process of playing with some photos in Paint Shop Pro to make them into good images to send away to make into Thermofax screens.  It isn’t easy to find thermofax machines in the UK and I’m so jealous of you in the US!!  I’ve been meaning to do this for ages, but over the last day or so I’ve sat down and made a folder full of images on my computer from my photos.

As I have been doing this, several questions have arisen in my mind.

• Which image is printed when you screenprint with the resulting screen, the black bits or the white bits?
• What happens to the grey bits?  Is it okay to have grey or should the photos be black and white?

For instance, which of the following two images would be best, and do you think they would make a good image?  I’m using a photo of some mud formations in the local river because that is the theme which I’ve been working through and has been running through my mind for a while now.

This is the original photo:

I cropped it,  clicked ‘adjust brightness and contrast’ and ‘effects - photo effects - black and white film’ and got this:

Then I altered the above photo and changed it to ‘image - decrease color depth - 2 colour palette’ and got the following:

My question is, really, (as well as the above two questions!) which photo will print best, or do I need to do something totally different which would work better? 

I would love any feedback from people who are experienced Thermofax screen printers!! Thank you!!  And any other hints and tips would be greatly appreciated too… I want to get it right first time because I can only afford a limited number of screens and there isn’t any room to experiment.  And the number of photos in my Thermofax folder is already 35 which  I have got to whittle down to about 5….

UPDATE:

Anne asked in the comments about PhotoEZ screens. Has anyone used these and do you know the difference between these and the Thermofax process? And do you know if they are available in the UK?

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Remember the nasturtium I planted this summer?

Last week it suddenly went cold.  I went into the garden and took quite a few more photos than I meant to.

It’s all droopy…

I love the way the frost accentuates the veins - it reminds me of a spider’s web.

This looks like a fairy umbrella.

The frost re-enchants everything.

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I did it - I blocked it!   Problem is, when I had blocked it, I saw all the mistakes I had made…. and also there was a hole in it, whether made by moths or rough treatment I’m not sure.  I think I can mend it - I’m certainly not going to unpick it after all this time, that’s for sure!!

Having said all that, I was ASTOUNDED at the difference it made to the shawl.  I am definitely going to block all lace stuff in the future.

Here is a corner of it pinned out on the floor - it was difficult to see the whole thing because of the colour of the sheet underneath which doesn’t provide enough contrast.

Here it is now it is dry:

Please ignore the state of my studio in the background - perfectly normal, I assure you!

I loved it when the light shone through it:

I found the pattern and a small ball of the yarn so I will be able to mend it with the same stuff.  It was a kit purchased from the Women’s Realm magazine, price £4.47, 71p per hank!  Golly.  6 hanks of Cobweb Shetland Wool from Messrs Jamieson and Smith of Lerwick in Shetland in 1985.  History!

Stupidly I don’t have any ‘before’ photos for you to compare it with….

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Hurray!  Thanks to Cyn, via a Ravelry forum, I have managed to have my posts in tags and categories!  And thank you, Brenda, for directing me to Sharon’s article about the difference between them.  Being an avid book reader, the analogy of categories being like the contents section of a book and tags being like the index made it much clearer.

Still looking into the Blogroll problem … and I also need to upgrade another plugin called Photopress, which I used several months ago to upload and manage photos, because the present one won’t work so lots of posts don’t have their photos.  So if there are any photos not showing up, hopefully I will manage to sort this out soon.

Blogs… don’t you just love them?!!!

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Help!! I’ve just used the Wordpress tag converter to convert my categories into tags so that I can have a nice tag cloud on the sidebar and all my categories disappeared! I have just added them all again but they now have no posts in… so if you want to see posts based on a particular category, please click on the relevant one in the tag cloud. But… does anyone know if I can reverse this particular predicament or get the relevant posts back into their previous categories? Ulp… this is what comes of leaping into something one doesn’t understand;)

Can anyone explain to me in words of one syllable what the difference is between tags and categories and why anyone would want to lose all their categories and put them into tags anyway?!! Please!!

By the way, you may have noticed also that the links to other blogs are coming up in both sidebars for some reason. If anyone can shed any light on that, I would be grateful too. I don’t mind too much - it’s not a major problem like the categories fiasco - except that the main reason for having three columns was to declutter a bit;)

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There we go - just like buses, no blog posts for days and then three at once….

Hope you like the new layout. Please let me know if anything doesn’t work for you - I’m still feeling my way with it. I’ve wanted three columns for ages so that the sidebar links get spread around more, and hopefully more accessible. I like it and I hope you do too.

Liz

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