Dreaming Spirals

I have just put a Gocco B5 for sale on my Gocco sales page. This is the older version of the PG Arts, which gives a double size print size in comparison with the B6 and others. I also still have some yellow B6 machines for sale.

Gocco B5 for sale

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I didn’t make last week’s journal in Sue’s journal making course because it was a wire bound one and I have a Bind it All machine which I thought would do the job adequately.  But I did make this accordian fold one the week before, with envelopes as signatures.   I decided to make it from the remaining house fabric.

I had previous gocco printed some brown envelopes which I bought in Machynllech on holiday.  Some of them I got upside down but because they were put in vertically in this journal it didn’t matter!

The gocco prints are of buildings too, so they fitted in nicely with the theme.  I didn’t have quite enough so I also put this white envelope with a lovely bee stamp which someone sent me a while ago.  I kept it because it looked so nice and I’m glad I did because I’ve finally found a use for it.

We made little journals to go inside the envelopes and, being short of time, I decided to use some of the scraps from the previous house journal to make triangular ones, instead of the larger rectangular ones in Sue’s instructions.

Here they are sitting in their little pockets:

I even got an ATC sized piece out of the scraps and I think it looks great with this altered leaf on top of it!

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As you may remember, I am in a Street Team on Etsy called Ecoetsy.  This week they are having an auction in aid of the Nature Conservancy, of a basket of Eco-minded goodies donated by members of the team.  You can read all about it on the Auction page of the Ecoetsy Website.  Unfortunately, you can only take part if you are in the US to prevent any legal issues as well as prevent shipping issues that may arise due to regulations that other countries have.   The auction ends on the 30 October. 

I donated a collaged piece of artwork incorporating a felted sweater in an Incan design and various wires from odd sources… you can see it below.

Follow the links on the website to photos of the donated goodies.  The Ecoetsy blog is also featuring the contents with descriptions of each of the donations.

While I’m on the subject of Etsy, I have a few new listings on there.  A couple of Moleskine journals:

And one of my Rainy Streets series of postcards:

I’ve also reduced my prices on a lot of things to reflect the fact that the pound is worth less against the dollar, so it’s a good time to buy Christmas pressies!!

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Just a quick post before bedtime.  This is our cat, Cobweb, who is getting very old now (about 18).  He has taken to sitting on this old turtle sandpit of the kids’ which they have long outgrown.   I suppose it’s warmer than the concrete patio but I think he looks so funny here.

Don’t look too closely at the overgrown garden in the background.  I call it wildlife friendly.  Well, when Cobweb is safely inside the house, that is….

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While we were on holiday in Normandy in August, we visited some of the D Day beaches, and saw the floating harbours brought across by the Allies to land heavy tanks and suchlike.  Now the remains lie undisturbed apart from sightseers and beachcombers.  And the occasional textile artist taking photos of unusual angles for her inspiration!  I love the textures and colours in this:

The local flora and fauna play a big part in camouflaging the remains:

Some of the girders on Arromanches beach:

And here is a bridge which was used on D Day beaches, then subsequently called into action to replace another bridge in Meuse that had been destroyed.  It returned to Arromanches in 2004 as a reminder of what happened there in 1944.

The festive carousel and flags of Arromanches belie its military past…

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UPDATE: finally succeeded! Don’t know what I did but it worked!! The only thing I changed was to click on ‘update style’ under Edit Weblog Settings. Whether this established some sort of connection with my blog which enabled me to publish, I don’t know, but it worked! So let’s hope it continues to allow me to publish….

Trying to post a blog post via Live Writer and it keeps giving me error messages… bear with me….

Can anyone help? I keep getting the message ‘504 gateway timeout’ and a box pops up asking me for my Wordpress username and password, both of which it already has. And when I click ‘okay’ I still get the 504 gateway error.

I did upgrade to this version recently, although I’m sure I’ve posted via Livewriter since then. The only difference I have noticed is that whenever I go to the Wordpress dashboard now, it asks me for my password which it didn’t before, even if I tick ‘remember me’. So maybe something there is the problem… Or not. Sigh.

Normal service will be resumed asap…..

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