Playing with paper and stitch

These may go together, they may be finished but I need to add more to it all. The central one is paper casting over stamps, painted and gilded and sewn onto gesso'd fabric, then down the side watercolourpaper punched out and put together over a ribbon sewn to more watercolour paper and below some tiny tags punched out and a bead glued on and put onto the paper with brads. Fun to do, these came from Beryl Taylors book.
I am practicing for the week end when I have to demo some of these things for the Grumpy womens week end.
We will be making a page for a demo book when it has all finished.

Two more Kantha style embroideries

I have been asked to put up another couple in my series of Kantha style embroideries, these represent my life as a skier and the fish represent my time as a diver, funnily we gave up diving when you had to have a certificate to do it but I still enjoy snorkelling when I can.
I spent most of the day at our Welsh Foal show and froze, it was very wet and cold in the Adelaide hills but we were in an indoor arena. My Section B filly was the Supreme Welsh exhibit and our little Section A colt was runner up, so we did well, better than we expected to.
I hope we may have a good photo of them.

TAST Challenge running stitch

These are a part of a series of Kantha type embroideries I am doing depicting parts of my life, in these two, motherhood and my shell collecting. I saw a class run my Dorothy Caldwell at Horsham a few years ago and was taken by this style of embroidery. It is an on going series as I think of a new phase im my life!
We have had over 2 inches of rain and everything is wet, muddy glistening and wonderful. Now for a few follow up rains.
The friend I had staying has left, we hadnt really seen each other for ages and had a great few days catching up, talking ponies, looking at ponies and wandering around looking at the sights, I took her to see the Murray Mouth as she lives up the other end of the Murray. A lovely few days, but busy! Our Welsh foal show is tomorrow so that will be pretty busy too.

Seeding before the rain

I took this photo last night as they were seeding the flat near the house. The amount of dust that was being put up was amazing.
Now we have had rain, 5mm before 9 am and it has been steady and not too heavy ever since.
Just what is needed.
I have a friend coming to stay until saturday morning so I dont know how much I will get done on my blogs, always difficult to know.
She will want to see the ponies so it could be interesting as the tracks will be sticky and slippery.
We have our big foal show on Sunday and I am required for that as well. I seem to take longer to do things than I used to.
John came home from fishing yesterday with a wonderful catch of sweep and some red mullet for the cat, but also with a badly swollen knuckle, part of his gout problem probably made worse by a rocking boat and the pneumovax from last week (attacking all the weak spots!)

Playing with paper

My house is clean, the floors are washed, I must be feeling better.
To celebrate this, and my new working area I made this card. I dont do a lot with paper preferring cloth but I had fun doing this, the flowers were an experiment with some of Beryl taylors stuff, the blue was left over under paper from something I was painting and the torn paper was out of an old german version of an Agatha Christie novel I have had for ages which I sprayed with Moonshadow mist. I have had this stuff for ages and have finally got around to using it, magic stuff.
ANZAC day today and John has gone fishing, it has been interesting to hear all the reports on the marches but some how I dont think that wars will ever go away. A depressing thought.

Metal pot

I drew this metal pot in the coffee shop at Bordertown and thought it would come in handy for something (this post). It was huge and metal and I have no idea what it would have been used for.
I am cleaning the house, moving things around, throwing out magazines and as John says, you cant see where it has gone!
I am setting up one of the spare bedrooms as an area to work with paper and make boxes, of course it has to be fairly simple as I will have to take it down when people come. Then again as the worlds worst horder will that happen?
hte skies are begining to look a bit hopeful, maybe the promised rain will come, we are ready for it, the gutters are now clean of leaves (until the next wind) and all is waiting just to hear the patter of rain and rain that keeps going, but we hope not too heavy, the ground is so vulnerable at the moment it may all wash away.

TAST 16

This is my take a stitch tuesday for this week, I have now caught up, Palestrina stitch, or knot. I made a few mistakes in it but I have left them to show that I finally did get it right. Made rather a wavy mess of the curve but thoroughly enjoyed the one done in overlapping wool.I spent a lot of yesterday asleep, not feeling well again, nothing very specific but I think it may be to do with the pneumovax shot I had on Thursday as my arm is still red and hot and a bit swollen, I just hope all those bugs are working satisfactorially.
Just really annoying as I have so much to do.
Doing this last night while watching my footy team annihilate the opposition. Very satisfying on both counts.

TAST Oyster Stitch and Bonnet stitch.

I have finally finished my last two stitches in Sharon b's Take a stitch tuesday challenge. One more to do and I will be up to date. I am not sure if I have done the oyster stitch correctly but it more or less looks the way it should. I enjoyed the bonnet stitch once I got the hang of it. I have never even heard of these stitches.
A tiring day yesterday in Adelaide, took my mother out for a coffee which she was pathetically grateful. It is so depressing I come home feeling miserable every time.

Beach people

I suppose I could have added some colour but this is taken from my sketchbook while we were in Queensland.
A busy day and an early morning, Adelaide to see my mother and I am still tired so will be taking things a bit slowly.

Pages from my notebook

These are some of my notes on how to make a box and various other bits of information iIgot while I was in class at Horsham.
I am still tidying up things and getting stuff away from the Queensland trip!
weather is getting a little cooler and there are lots of clouds that look hopeful but so far still no rain.
It wasnt so bad while I was away but now I am home the full enormity of the disaster is hitting home, trees and shrubs dying precious things not doing anything. Oh well when it is over I supose I will have a smaller and hopefully easier garden to manage, not the 2 acres it is now.
I just wish I would stop feeling tired.

tropical foliage and a fence

these are some of the sketches i did while I was in Queensland. A corner of Jill's garden and some of the foliage of the plants. I suppose this could qualify for a fence for the EDM challenge.
This morning I was up early and had a walk before going in for a blood test, finally got home to eat at about 8.45.
Nothing much of excitement happened for the rest of the day, just tidying up and trying to water a dying garden.

Home from Horsham

I am home after a simply fabulous week in Horsham. Unfortunatly my camera has been playing up so some of my photos are not brillant. I walked every morning really early and these spectacular sun rises were fairly normal. The other photos are of my box that I made, a fold over lid, 2 drawers at the top with compartments in them and some compartments down the bottom with a drawer in one, I used a lot of Japanese memoribilia. The tiny box was to reinforce the way they were made and I gave that one to Evie (granddaughter) when we met them on the way home and the bigger square one was our first box, the class box so we all knew how to make a box.
Glen Skien our teacher was terrific and I think we all learnt a lot. I certainly did.
A fun week which for me started very slowly as I was so tired after the wretched bug that I had and was being very careful about what I ate and going to bed really early.
Lots of old friends to catch up with. I sold a good amount of stuff on the Wednesday night, enough to get half way to Horsham next year which is a huge help.
Lots of other ideas too from other classes that I went to see what they were doing.
Tired tonight as John had had Simon and the children, and Marguerite for some of the time while I was away so there was stuff to clean up and I still havent finished getting my clothes away, but the washing is now done!
Still no rain, hot and watering to be done.

Rather wonky candle

I went down with a violent tummy wog on Wednesday night and spent all of yesterday in bed or on the loo. This is the best I could do. I hope I feel better tomorrow.

last day in Queensland

These photos were taken of Surfers Paradise at Kira Beach just before we went to the airport and home, it is a lovely beach, lots of sand and incredible blue sea and the towers of Surfers in the back ground. Gives a bit of an idea of what the area looks like.
I have been to Adelaide and seen my mother, had a very long and tiring day. I hope tomorrow is better.

Catching up with TAST

We arrived home late this afternoon, the washing is on, dogs and cat fed, we are fed, mail sort of gone through, and the bread is on, so I cant go to bed until after 9.00!
I did these while I was away, so the first is my couching, and the second was going overboard with no cloth and doing the knotted Cretan which I had a lot of fun with after I got the hang of it.
these are part of my take a stitch tuesday with Sharon b.tomorrow we have to go to Adelaide, see my mother etc, so nothing will really get done until Thurdsay and then it is Easter and I am off again on Sunday for Horsham and the Fibre Forum.
We did have a walk on the beach this morning but I didnt surf as it looked like a washing machine and I stupidly didnt spray myself with Rid so I am covered in midge bites from when I went down through the garden and had my swim this morning.

Coloured sands

I took these photos yesterday they are of the cliffs and "rainbow sands" of Rainbow beach and the edge of the Cooloola sand mass. Quite lovely, although the trees are growing back over the sands. Some one had carved a Bhudda like figure on one of the sand rock falls which looks quite incredible. I find this whole area fascinating and the way the harder rocks show up and the softer stuff eventually disintergrates
We travelled back to the Gold Coast today, left about 8 am and after a coffee at the ginger factory at Yandina we were home in time for lunch. We leave for home tomorrow after lunch so I will be home by early evening.
Our daughter Tabitha rang from near Alice Springs while we were on the way home to report the big earth quake in the Solomon islands and that a tsunami alert was out for the east coast of Australia, it doesnt seem to have happened but interestingly she had heard about it and we hadnt.
I am off to fall into the pool, a pleasant 25 degrees, out for dnner tonight so it is still all go go.