Tuesday, March 5, 2013

Weekend Away and stitching

We went away for a brain draining weekend, meaning the goal was to think of nothing that required a decision beyond "Wine" or "Scotch"?


Before we left, I did a quick wet blocking of my latest stitching for a new embroidery piece, (as taught by the fabulous Karen Ruane)  I will do a more detailed report on this next Monday.

I also managed to squeeze in my version of dying with plants. I've been watching others who patiently tie or bundle up their cloth and let is soak for ages and ages and ages in murky baths of fallen debris. Everyone is getting lovely earth tones, or rusted bits (thank goodness dead animals aren't part of this decaying process) but, being an impulsive and impatient sort of soul, I did things my way.


First you take a flower, then you tear off the petals, scatter them across your cloth, then fold the cloth in half. Then you take a heavy rolling pin and roll the heck out of the fabric. The top and right hand textiles are with a dark red rose, while the bottom left (your left) is from several geranium petals and some grass. I like this piece the best, the colours are more natural in shape, the green is fun and there is a nice variety of saturation. The red rose had huge petals that disgorged next to nothing unless I snipped them up a lot. They are too angular. The leaves yielded nothing. I think these semi fake roses are just too close to plastic to be worth pursuing although the large petals should have made great blobs. This is going to be my summer dying project, along with two lichens I have stewing, to just roll the hell out of fallen flowers onto cotton and see what I get.


Steve really was intrigued by the rolling of the textiles but he also wanted to get on the road before the snow came in.

I read, spun, played the recorder, and sew upon Mom's birthday quilt.


I am pleased by these first steps, I hope to have the blocks assembled by her birthday, but probably not the borders.  There was a lot of jumping up and down between the ironing board and the sewing machine but there was lots of room to move about. My own home would require stepping over one or two cats, numerous electrical cords and the bills I am ignoring.



Steve played his banjo (a lot) and did his usual fabulous cooking. We walked a little bit, but luckily the weather wasn't really nice enough for long walks, so we could return to assume reading positions.

Now back at home, we are returned to the normalcy of life. I have begun a painting course with Carla Sonheim (more on that also next Monday) and went for my second huge walk for chores since the concussion. I have my first shift at the Out of the Cold Shelter in two months and I'm glad to be getting back to that work. It's a bit drippy outside and that means spring is thinking about returning.



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