Icy morning, and the world is transformed

Embroidery-centric

Well, the good news is that the sewing machine still works. The slightly less good news is that the foot pedal gets alarmingly hot while it's working, which has a positive side in that my feet (or at least one foot) gets tisty-tosty warm for free, but probably means that if I run it for long periods, I'm risking some kind of electrical meltdown.

What I should do, of course, is take the foot pedal apart, but I can glimpse a rusty spring in there, and I'm just not brave enough yet. Anyway, I don't care. I'm so pleased to have found a machine that works for me, that I just keep shouting out 'This is What I Do! This is What I DO!', rather like the Bishop of Southwark, but more embarrassing to my children.

The pictures are the result of my experiments. The red thing I'm going to add more patchworky texture to, and either turn into a wearable art purse, or experiment with collograph printing using it. The blue tree thing is how 'behind the radiator' piece is coming along. I'm pleased with the effect from scraffito, which cut and frayed the blue silk, and scraped into the watercolour beneath it quite nicely.

Other news is that I've finally bought my own domain and webspace, so I'm going to be putting up a proper website sometime soon - both as a gallery and, hopefully, as a space to sell work, since I'm not selling much through Etsy, and I want to also be able to put more interesting things up - a really eclectic mixture rather than pictures/ craft work. I'm experimenting with a wordpress blog, too, because there's more options for positioning pictures over there. But for the moment, until I'm sure, I'll be sticking around hereabouts.

Seamstress Deluxe

Welcome to my lovely new-old sewing machine. This, as you can see, is a rather sleek 1950's number, and although lacking bells and whistles and built in stitchery-pokery, does what I want it to, beautifully. It lets me freehand embroider, without the thread breaking every two minutes.

Only had time to draw a doodle on it, and I can't wait to find some more time to do more. Because lets face it, this is the first machine I've had since leaving London that's letting me embroider, and I have been very lucky to find her (note the way I can just lower the feed dogs with one swift movement! No little tacky plastic overlay plates here!

Cake Bag and Scarf Set

Well, I've been fairly busy the last few days, despite sneezy children and sneezy self. Hot Lemon and Honey helped, as it always does.

Some of the pictures show Rosie's Cake Bag. That's her own home-made Christmas present, and inside it will be a little baking set, with a rolling pin, board and assorted shaped biscuit cutters. So, it, hopefully, really will be a Cake Bag, or at least a Biscuit Bag (but biscuits aren't as pretty as cakes, so we're just going for the path of least resistance here).

Also shown is a sample of some of the long stripey crotcheted scarves I make (and last year, sold). I've had a couple of commissions on these, and so made up a sample, which I may or may not put up on Etsy (prolly won't, because Etsy is slow moving for me, and also I've a focus on prints there, rather than textiles, although I specialised initially in textiles, silk-painting, and mixed media.

The blue tree thing (aargle to more Blue Trees) is a multi-media picture (collage, silk, machine embroidery) that I started work on aaages ago, and then, in a fit of grumpy pique, stuffed behind a radiator (how grown-up of me) and forgot about it. Well, didn't actually totally forget about it, but forgot completely where it was. Well. Here it is, re-surfaced, and I'd love to do some more work on it, and might well be able to because I have found a really good secondhand sewing machine that I think might be up to the not inconsiderable job of machine embroidering through several layers of paper, silk and paint. The current machine I have is a nice basic modern Brother, but it's just not strong enough to happily embroider, although it's fine for basic sewing. The one I go to collect tomorrow is a 1950's sleek green mean machine, and doesn't do any fancy stitchery, but is more suitable for my nefarious sewing purposes. So wish me, and it, luck, please. It's also rather beautiful, and I shall call it 'Mavis' or 'Deirdree'. Shan't decide until I get it home.

I am thinking of building myself a proper website again, rather than relying on Etsy, because I haven't done too well on Etsy, and if I'm going to have an online shop, I might as well pay commission on the payments software as on Etsy. And I can then put up applique commissions (frou-frou, but I loooooved making that bag) and fabric commissions, as well as print commissions and portraits, for sale, like the bag and the scarf above, because, to be fair, I tend to sell more through commission than from straight prints anyway. Ho hum. Not sure what to do, but I think I'd like to move forward in some way. Will prolly end up hopping around sideways, though.

Snow and more Blue

Blue soap this time. Again, Christmas Pressies, and made by the melt and pour method, otherwise known as cheating, otherwise known as Thinking that Lye is a Not a Good Thing to Boil in a house with two smallish children.

What you do is buy the soap base and melt it, and as you melt it you add interesting things, in my case some blue (and pink) dye and some essential oils (peppermint) and, if you're 'doing' creamy rather than transparent soap, you usually add some botanicals (dried flower/herb matter) and/or some extra niceness such as cocoa butter or almond oil. It is a little like making lemon curd, only less eggy and lemony.

But these are for my children and their friends for Christmas, and so I added extra cosmetic glitter, just because.

What else? Well, I'm getting very excited about the idea of making some collographs and monoprints when I have a couple of days spare. I've been thinking for a while about how to printmake from home, and these two techniques will both be worth trying.

Oh, and we went to a rather lovely bookshop at the weekend. Which bookshop was situated in an old barn in a farmyard, a stones throw from some very healthy looking hairy cattle. My eldest daughter refused the option of being bought her very own Primary School Thesaurus, saying she preferred to use mine, something I am a little keen to avoid, since her carefully looked up use of 'pissing it down' as an interesting 'rain related' verb for literacy homework last week.

Blue trees and rhubarb pie.

Well, yesterday I made that blue picture, because I wanted to do some painting without ink lines, and felt a bit like painting trees at dusk. I'm in two minds about it. Sometimes I like it, sometimes I think it looks like a bad Christmas card. Although that's inevitable, what with it being Tree and Snow. Dhurr.

Today I made an exciting peg bag for my Mother, because she wanted one. Lovely and delightful as it is (it has rabbits on it), I shall probably not be photographing it for here. Instead I will tell you about Vasnetsov Samolet, because I was looking up pictures of flying carpets, and I really like this one.

Why am I looking up pictures of flying carpets? Because I want to photoshop my oldest daughter much as I did my youngest (that'll be badly, then), for Christmas, and for practise. I thought she might like being on a flying carpet. But things could change. There's that bed in bedknobs and broomsticks, or I could paint up a big patchwork balloon. Or a pedal-power flying machine, or, and, or, and.

On Carpets:

I love them. They're beautiful, and interesting, and properly functional.
They have stories in them, which makes them even more glorious.
They have traditions attatched to them all over.
They are metaphoric treasure.
They are real-life treasure.
I read a fantasy book ages ago about a carpet. But I can't remember who wrote it.

At the moment we're all Narnia crazy, because Daddy very, very kindly lent our household his BBC Tales of Narnia (the oldish one - very teatime drama). But I spoilt the mood by serving Rhubarb Pie and Custard for tea.

The Mead has Stopped Fermenting and is Clearing in the Cold Room. The Apricot wine is ready, but tastes mainly of Old Sock.

Walking this morning.

Today was the first really frosty morning, so I went for an early walk up on the fields, and took some photographs. I'm not the world's greatest photographer, but I did enjoy it, and I'll use them later.

Then I came home to my warm cottage and finished making two rag dolls for Christmas. Then some work, and then some more work. On Thursday I'm going to make the soap (transparent, with leetle embedded pretties), and I'm going to get crocheting some nice warm scarves, since there's been calls for them this year. Bit late for the Christmas markets, but never mind.