Busy Doing Lots of Things

I've been rather busy of late - busy marking student teachers' assignments (a task made less tedious by finishing off the Christmas chocolate biscuits!), busy creating printable teaching resources to go with our story animations on The Treasure Tree and busy creating an embroidered seascape.
To start with I embellished (with the embellishing machine) various merino wool tops, silk bricks, ribbons and yarns onto a washed babywipe.  This is it at that stage:

The waves at the top are the microwaved dyed wensleydale fleece from here.  Then I hand embroidered more yarns and silks on (mainly using lazy daisys, fly stitches and french knots) before adding beads to all represent the fish and seaweed.  (I think I may be addicted to french knots!).  This is it finished:

It "grew" quite alot during the embellishing and is about 50cm x 20cm.  Below are some close-ups of some of the detail (if you click on any of the images they'll enlarge - the occasional cat hairs are added extras not visible except through the camera lens!)

It's been many years since I've done any embroidery so I did quite alot of unpicking along the way, but I enjoyed doing it and am quite pleased with how it's turned out especially as I had no real plan when I started - I think planning is something I need to work on!

Now I'd like spring to come so I can get busy in the garden.

Developing Skills for Working From Home

Most weeks I work from home for some of the time, but this week it's been every day.  I really enjoy being able to do this but this week it's been challenging at times as Florence and Dylan have been using the time to perfect some of their "she's working from home" skills.

Dylan has been practising his "occupy the chair she's just vacated" skill -

Florence has been practising her "make it as awkward as possible for her to type" skill -

 As well as her "make the stairs really difficult for her to negotiate" skill - 

Dylan's also been perfecting his "find strange places to sit where she won't find me" skill - 

 

They're also both perfecting the skill of removing the other one from the current best sleeping place, often the back of the sofa but this week it's been the bag the embellisher machine should live in.  This generally results in much hissing and growling (and spitting from Florence who isn't very ladylike!), but at times they've both managed to keep possession.

 I'm working from home for much of next week too - I wonder what skills they'll develop then?

Inspired by Ice

Back in October Fran and I went to the Knitting and Stitching Show at the Alexandra Palace and, amongst other things, I bought some Lutradur.  For those of you who don't know, Lutradur is a non woven material that is slightly see through and can be dyed, stitched and distressed with a heat gun.  Up until Christmas it had stayed in its bag as I wasn't really sure what to do with it, but having some free time over the holidays I decided to have a play with it.  My first attempts weren't very successful as I didn't appreciate how much the painted colour would change when I blasted it with a heat gun.  But I soldiered on and eventually created this piece, which I think must have been inspired by all the ice we've had recently.

Ice - 18cm x 13cm

It's quite hard to photograph accurately but I think you can see the gist of it (especially if you click on it to make it bigger).  It's actually 2 layers of lutradur (the smaller blue central panel and the larger white one), fused to a background of pelmet vilene with painted bondaweb.  Then there's some distressed polyester organza, some silver mesh and stitching, as well as the silver braid and beads. 

I'm sure I'll look at it in a few months time and want to hide it, but just for now I'm quite pleased with it.

A Splash of Colour - January

I guess this post could also be subtitled 'Some of My Favourite Things'.  It's been rather grey here for days now, and although the cloud is lifting it's still grey, so here are some of my favourite things to add a splash of colour to the greyness.

There's chocolate biscuits (yes there's colour in chocolate!), bobbins wound and waiting, dyed curly wensleydale fleece, alluring beads, a bag of ribbons and lace, a shelf of picture books, the beckoning colours of silk bricks, my Grandma's buttons (rather muted by today's standards) and cherry liqueur chocolates that need to be finished before the diet can begin.

A Splash of Colour is hosted by Silverpebble and there are many more pictures on the Flickr group too.

PS - There is one of my favourite things missing from this mosaic as I'd drunk it before I remembered to photograph it!

I Won!

During December I followed the Garden Bloggers' Advent Calendar and was amazed that I actually managed to work the answer out from the anagram of letters that I had accumulated over the 24 days.  I was even more amazed when I won!  And yesterday my prize arrived in the post - this wonderful book, which was the answer to the anagram.  

It is a perfect book for winter nights as it is full of lots of little sections with all different snippets of information in.  I started it last night and know I'm going to really enjoy reading it, so thank you Sally for creating the puzzle and for my lovely prize.

I hope you all have a good end to the year and I wish you all a very happy, peaceful and prosperous 2011, it's been lovely getting to know you.

Nearly Ready for Christmas

We finally got real, proper snow here last weekend.  This is what my garden looked like at the beginning of the week.
 

I couldn't get into the greenhouse for several days, but fortunately the little paraffin heater kept going without requiring a top-up and everything in there seems to have survived fine without me.

Every year I end up racing around for Christmas at the last minute, and this year is no exception.  The snow hasn't helped that, but I think that finally I am nearly done.  The house is cleaned, the food is bought, the tree is up and the presents are nearly all bought. Of course I haven't wrapped anything yet and I still need to make the mince pies but there's still about 36 hours left isn't there!   Before I get wrapping though I think I should sample the chocolate biscuits, after all it would be wrong to offer them to guests without testing the quality first wouldn't it?!

I hope you all have wonderful Christmases and wish you all lots of happiness and peace in 2011.

Not Quite A Hat ..................

My granny taught me to crochet when I was about 9 and every so often I get an urge to crochet something. Usually what happens is that I buy the wool, start off ok, then it all goes wrong and I lose the desire so the wool gets put away and that's the end of that project!  Last weekend I decided to crochet myself a hat and found a pattern on the internet. I tried for ages to make a hat that fitted my head, but my lack of forward planning let me down, as the wool that I'd bought was a different thickness to the one in the pattern and the crochet hooks I had were different sizes too.  After many hours of crocheting and unravelling I gave up.  But then I had another idea - I'd make myself some arm warmers  as I get cold hands when I'm working on the computer but can't work in fingerless gloves.   This time I didn't have a pattern but just worked the size out as I went along.  They're not perfect (I'm not even quite sure they're the same size as each other!), but they are unique.  Initially I could only wear them when I was sitting down as they fell off when I walked, but thanks to some shearing elastic I can now walk in them too!

I don't think they'll start a new fashion trend, and I won't be making anymore, but they're bright and cheerful and will keep my arms and hands warm when I'm working.  (I couldn't photograph them both, logistics of a camera and not enough hands, but there is a pair really!).