To Cut or Not To Cut & A Father's Guilty Secret

Magazines... I'm addicted to them... Stitch, Embroidery, Quilting Arts, Cloth Paper Scissors, Inspirations, magazines on beading, machine embroidery, photography, caravans (don't ask - the subscription was a present!), inherited magazines on gardening and food. It wouldn't be so bad if I could bear to get rid of them after I've read them, but once they've made their way into the house, there they stay and multiply faster than rabbits. Well, you never know when you're going to need a photo of a rockery do you???

So, I have made a decision (I think...) One of the ladies at Embroiderer's Guild cuts her stitching magazines up and files them according to technique or whatever else is relevant, which seems to me to be a much more useful way to store and use them - if I can just bring myself to make that first cut. I'd never be able to make an altered book!! I've bought some binders and the plan is to get things sorted over the Christmas holidays.

My Mum & Dad came to stay for a couple of days, which was when my Dad confessed his dark and guilty secret..... he has a full sixty years worth of National Geographic magazines stashed in the loft of their house - yep, count them - SIXTY YEARS! AND he says he's already got rid of some of them! I'd seen the odd one or two pulled out following some discussion or other, and I have to confess that I bought him a subscription one year for Christmas, never realising that his addiction went back that far. Good grief, with genes like that, what hope have I got of ever being normal???

Christmassy photos are beginning to appear on blogs all over the world now, and I've not managed to get a single decoration up yet - although I did manage to make some Christmas cards for those people I think will appreciate the effort. I'll post photos when they've all been sent.



I bought these a couple of weeks ago at a craft fair - they're made of straw and quite delicate. Just need to dig the tree out so I've got somewhere to hang them!

Jack Frost

It was really frosty here all day today - freezing cold, but with beautiful blue skies and sunshine, so the dog and I headed out for a walk in the park by the river. This is my favourite time of year when the day trippers and caravanners have all gone home, and the place is deserted and peaceful. But look what they're all missing...


These frost crystals were growing on a park bench... just as well there was no-one else around - even the dog wondered what I was doing!

Catch Up Part 1

Well, it’s taken a while… I had so many plans for summer, but it flashed past it doesn’t feel like I’ve achieved much at all. Things I’ve missed blogging about this year…

The apple blossom and wild garlic in May.

An unexpected evening visitor.

My baby sister’s 40^th Birthday. She used to be really talented at card making and paper crafts, so I thought that to encourage her to start again, and start off a scrapbook for her birthday… OK, I thought I’d DO a scrapbook for her, and then left it too late to be able to finish it off, but got hooked in the process – we’re now going to go once a month together and do one each. That’s the plan anyway. And that’s me in the second photo with my finger up my nose. I started setting a good example early!

Recycled Cars a.k.a. Lotus Owners Sunday Outing. A fun day out with friends to the Revack Estate in Grantown in Spey for lunch.

Embroiderer's Guild Summer School in Stirling. My friend and I took a course on canvaswork by Jill Carter. This is our worktable on the first evening.

We sprayed the background canvas with black car spray paint, attached some decorative papers, and then started stitching. Needless to say, mine isn't finished yet, but I'm hoping to get going with it again soon.

And finally, for now, snow in October - it was way too early for all that nonsense, but beautiful all the same.

To be continued..

Trick or Treat!

Happy Halloween everyone! Ooooh, the indignity of it all..... had to bribe him with treats just to keep the horns on....

Back soon with a proper textile related catch up!

Cyber Fiber Postcard

I can't believe it's been a whole month since I last posted - the year is flying past and I've not got nearly as much done as I had planned!

My sister-in-law and her family are off to Perth, Australia tomorrow for three years. A huge adventure for them, and we'll miss them - but brings the possibility of a long-haul holiday that bit closer. We'll have to start planning soon before they're completely booked up with other "lodgers"! We're having a big family get-together later on today to see them off, and I know there are going to be tears, but I suppose with the internet - blogs, skype and such, nowhere is too far away these days.

I finally managed to sit down and finish my Cyber Fiber postcard. It was something I started on the Kate's Kloths class I took earlier in the year which was just the right size for making into a postcard.



The base fabric is calico (muslin?) blow painted with children's blow pens. Small snippets of fabric, threads and fibre were then placed on top and held down bonding powder. The whole thing was then overlaid with chiffon and hand stitching added on top to represent the flowers in a wildflower garden.

It'll be winging its way to Susan Lenz tomorrow.

Once Upon A Time....

Theme for the June ATC group swap was "Once Upon A Time...". The top three shown in the photo are the ones I kept for myself. Another charity shop find - this time a table cloth with the Willow pattern embroidered on all four corners. There was just enough to cut down to make 9 ATC's - three each of three parts of the story.


I printed some text on ExtravOrganza and stitched on top. All have "Once Upon a Time", the first shows the house of the chinese maiden's father and says "gather thy blossom ere it be stolen" - her message to her lover. The second shows the little wooden house where they took refuge and which was set on fire and says "... and so the lovers perished..." The third shows their spirits in the form of two doves flying off to the realms of eternal happiness and says "from the ashes rose their spirits".

It has to be said that my partner can't see the point of doing these, but they're small, don't take long to do, and I'm enjoying doing them "just because"!

Picnics and small achievements

It's been glorious weather here for the last few days - so making the most of it while it lasts! However, haven't really been taking any photos - keep forgetting my camera while we're out and about, so thought I'd post a couple of photos I took a few weeks back on our first picnic of the year at Leith Hall, a property now owned by the National Trust for Scotland.

These are the views from our picnic spot...

To the left, on top of the hill you can just see Dunnydeer, which the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland describes as "... a weather-beaten rectangular tower, partly built from the remains of the prehistoric vitrified fort in which it stands. Possibly the earliest tower-house on the Scottish mainland".

Looking towards the right, the hill to the left of the tree with the flattened-off top is Tap o' Noth, an Iron Age hill fort.

Roughly straight ahead is Ardmore whisky distillery.

On the stitching front, I've not been making much progress at all, but even a little is better than nothing at all I suppose. This has been finished for ages, but finally got around to putting it into it's frame yesterday - a mini Sumptuous Surface, started at the Kate's Kloths class a few weeks back. It's tiny - the stitching is only a couple of inches across, and the frame is Ash, hand made by Kate's dad.

May ATCs

May ATC group seems a long way off already, especially now we're into June, but the theme was "Favourite Colour". As I don't really have a favourite as such (depends on the time of year I think!), and I knew that everyone else would choose bright colours, I opted for white....


The ATC's are basically just an old embroiderered traycloth found in a charity shop that's been cut down to size and put to an alternative use! I added some text printed in green on Extravorganza, but I didn't make it large enough or bold enough to show properly. It says "White is the colour of daisies, apple blossom and summer clouds".

These are all the colours I received back.

Back again after a bit of an enforced absence…. We had a thunder storm about a month back and lightning hit the transformer in the field at the side of the house. By all accounts it was a bit of a spectacular firework display, but I was out at the time and missed it all! Anyway the outcome was that we had no phone, TV or computer. The phone was fixed within the week, but the computer and TV have needed a bit more work (and expense). For computer (so far) new router, graphics card, network card and network cable. For TV (so far) distribution amplifier, mast head amplifier and power supply for mast head amplifier. I don’t have much of an idea what any of these things are, or what they do, but what I do know is that things aren’t yet working the way they should! I’ve not missed TV at all, but I did have a serious sense of humour breakdown after about a week without the internet - how did we all survive without it!

And now, where to start with what’s been happening? Do I start here and work backwards, or back then and work up to now? Probably best to do it all in order.

Back at the end of April we had a few days away on a sailing trip. A couple of our friends have a beautiful 44ft Isles of Scilly Pilot Cutter replica named Ezra that they operate as a charter business from Ardfern on the West Coast of Scotland. I've been away with them a couple of times before and although the experience has always been fantastic, the weather hasn't really been the best, but this time it was almost perfect... almost, as the sun shone the whole time we were away, but there wasn't enought wind!!

We sailed from Ardfern, down Loch Craignish to our first overnight anchorage. Early next morning we sailed through the Gulf of Corryvreckan, and out to the Garvellachs were we rowed ashore to explore for a bit on Eileach an Naoimh, an uninhabited island which is home to an early Christian monastery - a truly special place.

The text on one of the information signs, not shown here, says:
"The remains on Eileach an Naoimh form one of the most complete surviving groups of early Christian ecclesiastical buildings in Scotland. They probably belong to a small monastery or communal hermitage, similar to others established by Irish monks on remote islands and headlands in the 6th to 8th centuries. This has been tentatively identified as Hinba, a daugher-house of St Columba's monastery on Iona, but seems more likely to be Ailech, where St Brendan of Confert, who died in 577, is said to have established a church. None of the remains presently visible can be accorded so early a date, however, and identification remains unproven."

It's also said to the the burial place of St Columba's mother, Eithne.

I'd like to think that's true, she has such a beautiful view.

Time to leave too soon and from there we sailed up to Loch Spelve on Mull where we anchored overnight. Hoped to see one of the famous Sea Eagles but no luck this time, although there were plenty of other birds and a few seals to be spotted.

Next day we sailed down to Scarba, where we anchored for lunch in the sun, then towards Crinan in time to row ashore for a drink at the hotel before rowing back for dinner on the boat, and a spectacular sunset (well, for Scotland anyway!) The perfect end to a stunning trip...

The following weekend I headed off to Edinburgh with a friend for Embroiderer's Guild Regional Day. I'm always disappointed by how much of the architecture on Princes Street has been spoiled by modern shop frontages, but as my friend pointed out, there are still some gems to be seen if you look upwards...

To be continued....

I'm about a week behind with posts at the moment - last Wednesday and Thursday I took a couple of days off the paid job to do an Embroiderer's Guild workshop on Creative Embroidery aka "A Clarty (messy) Workshop with Kathryn Slaughter" of Kate's Kloths. She no longer has the shop shown on her website (which I think is also to disappear quite soon), but will still sell her beautiful hand dyed threads and fabric online - maybe on Ebay.

It was a bit of a family affair as she brought along her mum, mum-in-law and aunt-in-law for a girly break, and we all had a lovely couple of days stitching. I had been hoping to be able to show what I'd done, but it's not finished yet, so I'll save it for another day.

This is the group, engrossed in their projects...


And some of Kate's work - she kindly gave permission for me to show these here.


The instructions for a picture similar to this one of delphiniums and daisies, appeared in Stitch magazine, Issue 41.


A small wallhanging...


and a much larger one, about 4ft long...


Some of the detail...


This was the sales table!


Hands up who would have been able to resist all the pretty colours...


Nope? Me neither!

Stitchfest

This is the long overdue second instalment of my catch-up!

Saturday 12th and Sunday 13th April was the Stitchfest Exhibition in Aberdeen and a weekend full of textiles, friends and laughter - just what I needed...

It's not a huge exhibition compared to the national ones (and probably tiny compared with those in the US), but still a tremendous undertaking for the people involved. The majority of the work on display was patchwork and quilting. This is some of the work of City & Guilds students...

... And this is a wallhanging of the four seasons by local school children aged 5-12.

And a bit more detail... The photo is a but blurry, but the colours were fantastic.

These are a few of the textile pictures from the Children's Competition.

It was pretty hard to choose one to vote for, and the one I chose isn't shown here, but it was by a little boy who had formed the mountains using trapunto - very clever!

Here's my Tower alongside some of the other Betty's Challenge pieces. It eventually raised £50 for Macmillan Cancer Support, so I was pretty pleased.

More Betty's Challenge - it was amazing how many different items there were and how many different colour schemes from one basic fabric. More details about the challenge already posted here.

It was also ATC group, so I popped out for a couple of hours to go to that - April swaps are below. Still one space to fill but I'm hoping LL will help me out with that! Theme for May is "Favourite Colour" which gives plenty of scope except that I don't really have one!

Helen Cowans was also up in Aberdeen at the weekend, teaching a workshop on her Towers of Flowers. I couldn't go, but went along on Sunday to see what the ladies had been up to. Lots more Towers created, each different from the rest. I think the black one on the end will be stunning when it's finished, as well as HUGE! I'd love to make an attempt on one that tall, but at the moment, I think if I made a start it would be forever destined to be a UFO!

Helen also brought along her new Gothic mini towers - which again are beautiful. She did let me take photos, and gave me permission to show them here. My photo doesn't do them justice at all - I've not managed to show how the light catches them, but you can see more information about them on Helen's blog here.


I've spent the last couple of days on a Creative Emboidery workshop with Kathryn Slaughter of Kate's Kloths. Need to do a bit more stitching before I can show what we did...