Anny – Page 16 – Dreaming In Stitches

Slow Stitching & Fast Nature

Slow progress on the canvas, but lots happening in the garden.

I don’t seem to have made much progress on the canvas this week, but I’ve been distracted. Mother Nature is performing her seasonal miracles in the garden and you’d have to be hard-hearted not to want to watch.

On March 1st, I took some pictures.

I’m no gardener, so everything that comes up in my little patch has well and truly got here on it’s own merits, but I’m always fascinated by the way that life springs up from the cold and dark winter soil.

Snowdrops appear every year. I’ve never planted any.

Ivy winds itself around the trees and over the fences. It’s welcome in my garden, the flowing leaves take off the sharp edges of the fences. A touch of ‘The Secret Garden’.

Today, daffodils have flowered.

Sunshine is pouring through the window and energy is seeping back.

Here are the stitches.

I’ve resorted to a frame for the time-being – just too soft to keep tight for stitching, but once it gains its own strength, I’ll take it off again.

Not using my normal vivid palette on this piece – yet. It might call out for colour as it develops, but at the moment, it’s pale.

Hope you’re having a productive week.

Trying Out The Hessian

slow stitching

The girls are back at school this week, so at last, there’s an opportunity to start work on the new hessian.

The first piece I’ve used, is the 7.5oz hessian. This has a very large hole and irregular weave. After I’d painted in some design guides, I ended up hemming the edges because it was already starting to fray.

Then I tried stitching it for a couple of hours.

I soon found that tent stitch didn’t work at all well. I think the size and unevenness of the weave made it pull up in a rather unpleasing way.

I unpicked it and instead, I started using some random running stitches to try and give it a bit more structure. That works reasonably well on the background, and I then tried randomly tent stitching into the vertical running stitch lines, which also felt quite effective.

I’m not sure yet though how to approach the tree itself. It needs more thought and probably some experimentation. The canvas is very light-weight, but will need a lot of stitching over – it seems to cry out for texture. I might even go into town and see if the knitting shop has any wool that might lend itself.

On the plus side, working with such big holes makes fast progress, so although it’s a big piece, if I can decide how to work it, it shouldn’t take too long.

But…

This morning, I had the uncontrollable urge to tent stitch something – well it’s been a week!

So, I took out the 10oz hessian, and had a go at putting a design together.

I decided to hem it straight away, before I got into the sewing; this stuff really frays badly and as I can’t easily put it in a frame, I thought I’d give it a sporting chance and roll up the edges.

So, this is what I came up with.

I had a look in the box of colours and chose an assortment of paler colours to try out with this.

IMAG0999 — The colour palette - possibly.

I might change my mind when I get into the sewing, but I’m a bit tired of blues and purples at the moment.

I’ve got quite a few things to do today, (must buy more eggs for pancakes) – but hopefully I’ll get on with it this evening

On A Roll…

slow stitching

Typical isn’t it – can’t finish a piece of tapestry for months, then complete two in two weeks.

Well, alright, a bit of a cheat really, as the Dunstanburgh Castle piece was much smaller and I was trying to see how long an A4 sized tapestry could take.

Here it is…

It’s a mix of tapestry wool, crewel wool, space-dyed rayon and pure silk (courtesy of the sale of Debbie Bliss silk, at my local shop).

Although I painted the canvas before working it, I found the white squares very off-putting while I was sewing. I had to take regular breaks because I was developing a nasty fuzzy sight effect – presumably from constantly looking at all those squares.

I really am going to have to make the effort to find a more sympathetic canvas.

It used to be fairly easy to get different types of canvas, but lately, it’s become much more difficult. The local wool shop used to carry a reasonable stock, but now, they’ve almost given up on canvas completely. You can buy a small range of kits and they still have Anchor or DMS wools, but that’s pretty much it.

I’m going to have to do some research to find suppliers – preferably in real shops – I just need to feel the canvas and see the yarns, which is very hard to do from websites – although websites seem to be the only places I can get most of my materials now. Are we such a dying breed, that it’s not worth stocking yarns and canvasses?

It’s Finished…

slow stitching

I’ve been a bit quiet for the last few days – nothing new there – but this time, it’s for a reason…I have finished the big piece!

Finally, the fingers were functioning well enough, and in fact, there was surprisingly little still to do.

Here it is.

Most of the time that I’ve been working on it, I’ve called it ‘the big piece’ (it’s about 50cm x 80cm, if you were wondering), but as I came to the end, I kept thinking of the word firmament, so that’s what I’m going to call it.

This has been the largest single piece of needlepoint that I’ve ever made. I feels like a long time now, since the car boot sale, when I picked up the offcuts of upholstery canvas and a bag of tapestry wools, last spring. It’s been incredibly good value for money, as it’s kept me out of trouble for months. (OK, I might be turning the proverbial blind-eye to the cost of additional wools and silks, but I don’t worry about little things like that…)

So, there it is. Soon to be consigned to the pile of other pieces I’ve made over the last few years. I can’t bear to make any more cushions with them, so they’ll have to sit on the shelf until I find the inspiration to do something with them.

Working on loose weave upholstery canvas has been the biggest eye-opener for me on this project. It has a life all its own and behaves quite differently to the usual canvas, with its regimented lines of perfect squares. As soon as the weather picks up, I’m going to be out there in car boot land, looking for some more supplies – unless that is, anyone can point me in the direction of a supplier which doesn’t involve trudging round muddy fields?

Onwards then. Nature abhors a vacuum, apparently – so I’m already well on the way with Dunstanburgh Castle. I decided to make this roughly A4 sized, to see how long it would take to sew it and also to give it a marginally useful life after sewing – I’m looking for ways to put the tapestry out into the real world, other than in cushions.

Happy sewing etc.

Sore Hands.

hearth and home

Feeling a bit sorry for myself today. We’ve been having the usual pre-Christmas changes to schedule – Christmas concerts, husband away with work, sick children – you probably know the score. These I’m coping with (sort of), but the thing that is getting me down today, is my sore hands.

I’ve had eczema since forever, and I think on the whole I’ve learned to live with it or at least manage it pretty well. But just occasionally, it gets out of control. it’s as if a balance tips and instead of being able to ‘get on with it’, it becomes too uncomfortable to manage.

These days, it’s really only my hands with which I have a problem. Years back, it was all over – including my face, which I can tell you, is incredibly hard to handle – but sometime in my mid-forties, the eczema on the face and body cleared away.

But hands are tricky things, especially when you have to wash them frequently – and for the last three weeks, the skin on my hands has been suffering. I do my best to keep them moisturised, but have you ever noticed how often you wash your hands during a day? I now have seven out of ten fingers/thumbs which hurt like hell and are in a bad way.

It will clear up eventually, I’ve been in this situation lots of times before, but right now, it’s a giant pain in the proverbial. There’s a lot I want to get done, but you’d be amazed how restricting it is when your hands are covered in greasy stuff so they don’t crack. I’ve even had to wipe a bit of the stuff off so I can type without transferring goo to the keyboard. The poor mouse is already slimy.

I can’t write the Christmas cards because I’ll get greasy marks on everything. I can’t make sausage rolls because the extra hand washing is devastating, but worst of all – I can’t sew – it just hurts and little wounds keep opening up and then bleeding – definitely not what you want on your wools and silks. I bled on one of the bell ropes at the weekend – very unsavoury indeed.

So, for the moment, I’m stuck here, feeling miserable. Yuck.

Advent-ures in Christmas Shopping…

hearth and home

Number one priority this Christmas – staying sane.

So you can imagine how much I was looking forward to taking number one daughter to late night shopping in Milton Keynes on Friday. But, she was desperate to see a friend who couldn’t make it at any other time over the weekend and I gracefully agreed (actually I think I was quite nice about it).

Well, what do you think happened? First shock, the free parking places behind John Lewis have been replaced by ‘premium parking spaces’ at the festive rate of £1.20 per hour. No wonder the car park was relatively empty at 6.15pm. Then, as I went to feed the meter, muttering mild expletives, guess what I read on the machine? – Charges apply 7.00am to 6.00pm, Monday to Saturday – yippee!

Children duly met up and so it was off to browse the gift section in John Lewis (too far to go home and back). What a surprise; loads of excellent ideas for the hoards of nieces and nephews. I couldn’t quite bring myself to buy anything, but I made notes about everything I saw and the price, so I could double check with himself and daughters that my choices were suitable.

So, Friday evening went off well.

Saturday; managed to stay sane despite taking number two daughter to her school’s Christmas Fayre. (Oh how I hate those things). I managed to ‘do my bit’, then leave her there for a few minutes while I went into town and shopped.

I thought that this year I would make my Christmas cards, but having scoured the high street for blank cards, I couldn’t find any for less than the price of charity cards from the British Heart Foundation charity shop. So I decided to save myself the effort and support a good cause instead and stocked up with a nice selection.

Went home and made some sausage rolls – essential Christmas food in our house.

Sunday: Get this – managed somehow to persuade husband to drop me off outside John Lewis, while I went in and bought all the items I’d ear-marked on Friday night. So glad we did – it was far busier, but think supermarket sweep and you’ll have a good impression of me grabbing all the pieces we’d decided to buy. I was in and out in less than half an hour with around ninety percent of the gifts for the hoards.

I love John Lewis.

Was so happy (not something I’d have thought I’d see myself saying about Christmas shopping), that I went home and cooked a proper Sunday Roast – and guess what else – the Yorkshire Puddings didn’t stick to the pan.

So, according to my Advent Calendar, there are 20 days to go – so far, so good.

Sanity Score: 8/10.

Chin Up, It’s Advent.

hearth and home

Am I the only one who goes into a Christmas meltdown?

I’ve been reading blogs for the last couple of weeks, full of delightful Christmas spirit, loaded with ideas for creating your own gifts, some truly gorgeous imagery, lovely thoughts about what Christmas is all about, bringing love and light into the cold (sorry, you southern hemisphere readers, bear with me) world, etc, etc – you know what I’m talking about.

So, I just wondered, is there anyone out there, whose reaction to the start of Advent, isn’t ‘yippee, it’s nearly Christmas!’, but more like ‘Oh hell, how on earth am I going to get through the next three or four weeks without a) excessive recourse to the gin bottle, b) attempting to murder someone, or c) doing a fairly credible impression of Alice’s White Rabbit.

I used to really love Christmas, and especially the run up to it, but looking back, I think that was probably made easier because I wasn’t the person putting all the important little pieces in place to make it happen. Now that I seem to have been dealt the entire production, I have to be honest and say that I’m overwhelmed.

The pressure to create the perfect family Christmas; styling the house so that it wouldn’t disgrace an over-the-top Dickensian extravaganza, shopping for, preparing and being ready to cook and serve around five days worth of non-standard, celebration feasting, sourcing, paying for and wrapping ‘the perfect gift’ for roughly twenty (at the last count) assorted nieces, nephews, babysitters, Godchildren, and violin teachers, before we get down to the task of finding ‘the perfect gift’ for my own two children, who, despite being sweeties and understanding a lot about ‘making ends meet’, still need a few odds and ends to open ‘on the day’ – is really getting to me – BIG TIME!

And yet, here I am, carrying on as normal (I wish).

Not for the first time, have I been tempted to forget the whole thing and refuse to do any preparations unless I get some help, but I know I can’t. I actually want to make it a special family time – it’s just that at the moment, I feel like the proverbial bunny, caught in the headlights and waiting to be mown down by the enormous weight of Christmas on the roll.

Anyway, this morning, I read a blog that mentioned doing a daily Advent post. And although the blogger I was reading, I think had in mind snippets of festive good cheer and progress reports, I was suddenly seized with the idea that I might attempt an Advent Blog series myself, with the intention of having a place to let off steam, write out my worries and hopefully thereby avoid repeating the unedifying spectacle (witnessed by a very few) of last year’s New Year’s Eve breakdown. (Think pressure cooker lid blowing off, with contents, probably involving carrots and a lot of tomatoes, liberally spraying themselves across every surface in a three mile radius).

(Incidentally, John Sentamu, my all-time favourite Anglican Archbishop, is doing a proper online Advent Calendar, click here if you’re interested).

And so, you have been warned. This space may not be the best place to hang out for a few weeks if you’re of a nervous disposition. I can’t promise that I’ll post every day, and I can’t be held responsible if I inadvertently take the shine off your own festive spirit.

But if I make it to January without having to call in industrial cleaners to mop up the carnage, I’ll have done well enough for me.

Hey ho, only 23 more days to go.

Still Making Progress

slow stitching

Still making progress on the tapestry. Are you offended if I call it a tapestry? I know that technically it’s a piece of needlepoint, but I was brought up calling it tapestry and it’s a hard habit to kick. Plus, tapestry is easy to say, whereas needlepoint sounds more like a verb than a noun to me, whatever the dictionary says.

Anyway, this is what it’s looking like today. Please forgive the light – it’s November and I live in a north facing house.

IMAG0788 — November 2011 – the end is in sight

There are still some juicy bits to do, but most of the large sections are in place now. The canvas is warping as you can see, but this is no problem, I’m sure I can stretch it when it’s finished, and considering the canvas is upholstery canvas, I’m very pleased with the way it’s held up.

I started this piece without too much attachment, but I’ve really fallen in love with it. I think the fact that it’s soft to handle, and the way it’s acquired a texture as I’ve worked it, have produced a tactile quality I haven’t felt before from standard needlepoint canvas.

It’s also far too big and thick now to fit into any frame that I have, so I’ve been stitching it in my hands, and draped across my legs most of the time, which I suppose helps you get close to the feeling of the piece.

Anyway, this was the last of the upholstery canvas I bought from the local car boot sale. I had a cursory look on the internet to see if I could source any more, but no luck. Does anyone know where I could get offcuts? I’ve become rather attached to this stuff and would like to explore it further.

Yippee!

slow stitching

Well, thanks to the very nice man who came out and replaced our internet equipment, I now have fully functioning broadband, after a couple of weeks without it.

Not naturally being one of life’s more optimistic people, I thought this was a long time, but having talked to several friends, I now discover that we probably ‘got off lightly’.

Nevertheless, not having constant access to the internet, has had an impact on me. After the first few days, during which time I did quite a lot of unreasonable ranting to the techno-guru husband, I almost became reconciled to the loss.

I think the worst of the pain was eased, when I discovered that I could get a good connection on my smart phone in our local supermarket car park. At least it meant that I could read emails and do urgent stuff.

Then a strange sublime calm came over me, when I realised that as I couldn’t use the internet at home, I was actually free to do other things. And, like some old folk memory, I could even recall the types of things that people used to do, in the old days (pre 1996ish).

The panic did increase a tad, when the daughters wanted help with their homework – you try finding 10 facts about fuels, for tomorrow, without google. But with half-term coming up, we escaped too much difficulty.

And now, everything is working, the girls are back at school, and life can get back to what we call normal.

Art & sewing.

When the girls are at home, I find it very difficult, if not impossible, to draw or paint, not least because it’s downright dangerous to draw while driving – which is what I think I spent most of last week doing.

I did however manage to put quite a lot of time into the current tapestry/needlepoint project. I must have a think back and try to work out how many hours I’ve spent at it so far, but I’m loving it. As ever with me, I fall for the process itself. Just watching those tiny stitches soak into the canvas, has a sort of dreamy effect on me.

It’s good to be back. Have a good Hallowe’en, happy Samhain.

Happy Anniversary Battle Of Hastings

heritage hunting

Today is the anniversary of the Battle of Hastings – you know the one where Harold got the arrow in his eye – or maybe he didn’t. Anyway, he didn’t win, so we got to be ruled by the Normans instead.

I can’t say I’m all that hot on early Norman history, although I do love their castles, but you’ve got to have a tiny bit of respect for a victorious class who celebrate their conquest with an embroidery.

I’ve never seen the real thing, but the Bayeux Tapestry must be up there in the Top 10 of all time needlework greats.

I’d love to know how the commissioning happened. Just imagine William the Conqueror’s half-brother, Bishop Odo thinking, ‘I really should commemorate William’s amazing victory over the Saxons. I wonder what my fierce, warrior brother would like most? Umm, I know, I’ll get him an embroidery’.

Strange to say, but when I’m trying to think of ideas for my next piece of needlework, I don’t very often consider recent battles as suitable subjects. But there you are, maybe I’m missing a trick.

Doing Dunstanburgh.

heritage hunting, slow stitching

On my mission to draw/paint daily – today it’s been Dunstanburgh Castle.

I started off with pastels. It’s so easy to get the basic structure with pastels. But I just couldn’t get the effect I felt I wanted, so after a while, I added some acrylics. It helped, but then I lost some of the texture that I was enjoying, so I was a real devil and added some more pastels – I’m having a bit of a ball combining media.

Anyway, just to be entirely rash, I then painted in the castle in, wait for it…watercolour.

Have you been to Dunstanburgh Castle? It’s a gem. There’s a bit of a walk to get there, along the coast. The castle is there, tempting you forward, with it’s imposing gate towers and slightly wonky angles. I love it.

The Shady Side of Needlepoint

slow stitching

I’m sticking pretty well to my daily creative commitment, although I seem to have spent more time with my needlepoint than with the sketchbook. Never mind, it’s all doing me good.

The thing that’s bothering/interesting/engaging me at the moment, is shading.

The piece that I’m working on is inspired by stained glass windows and what I wanted to achieve, is a feeling of the texture of glass as light moves around it. Now this I feel needs some shading.

IMAG0700 — This is how it’s coming along – should keep me busy for a few months yet.

I have bought quite a lot of Appletons crewel yarns, because you get some gorgeous subtle graduations in shade, and the thickness of the yarn works well on the variable weave of the canvas.

IMAG0697 — Trying the jagged edge approach to shading

But actually doing the shading is teaching me some interesting lessons. I’m trying a variety of techniques – which range from jagged blocks of colour, to something almost approaching pointillism (although I just don’t think I have the patience to keep that up for long).

When I went to Canon’s Ashby earlier in the summer, I had a close look at some tapestry chairs, to see how they’d done shading in the seventeenth century – it seemed more like the graduated jagged blocks.

My biggest issue is with working at night – the time that I prefer to sew. The trouble is that although I can easily distinguish shade variations during the day, at night, under my lamp, I find it very difficult to see the real colours. It makes it quite a surprise in the morning, when I get to see it in daylight.

IMAG0695 — Happier with this bit, four different shades here, can you tell?

Ah well, on we go – it’s all a learning experience.