Textile snippets

I have only put up bits of these, the first is a work in progress to I hope go into the textile tantrums, only a tiny bit as I cant show the whole, and any way it isnt finished yet.
The second is a part of a small triangular box that was in Stitch magazine, only I am using silk and the cut out bits are what I have been doing as samples in my on line Holey Moley class with Dale Rollerson of The Thread Studio. This was snippets of organza with a grid on top and then burnt back with a heat tool and a few bits of gilt rubbed over the top.
I hope when I finish the box it will look quite nice, but again I have still to finish this!

My morning

The first photo is of what I do early, have a piece of toast and a mug of tea and write up my diary, then go to the computer and read e mails and blogs.
Next I get up, shower and make the bed, so here is the bed, complete with Oscar on it. He arrived with my mug of tea and has to be shooed off.
As you can see, a cast iron double bed in original condition! Bedside tables covered in books and walls covered in photos and paintings. The Modigliani print was one of the first we ever bought, possibly because John thought she looked a bit like me, and certainly in those days I was a skinny little thing and the children when small were all convinced that that was Mummy.
Incidentally the wall paper is original, when this wing of the house was built in the late 1960's it was all the rage and much as I keep asking for the room to be painted, the wallpaper has survived and I quite like it again now.
What you cant see are the piles of books on the floor beside each side of the bed as well.
Is this all a bit too intimate? I am not sure.
Do you have as many books and paintings as we do? I am sure you do.
As you have no doubt realised, I am running out of things to put up, it was a day of ironing and tidying as we will be in Adelaide for the next two days.

Walking the cliffs

I have finally managed to do a walk along the cliffs today, this is an easy walk, not too many steps and rocks although a bit of a pull up from the final beach.
this goes from Petrel Cove along to Kings Beach but we didnt do the full walk.
I have these photos badly out of order, the one which says the beach is unsafe is Petrel Cove, where aged about 16 I nearly drowned, a bad little cove with rips that suddenly take you.
From there the walk goes past one other small beach on top of the cliffs and then onto another beach that you walk along before continuing on to the Kings Beach car park.
It was quite windy and latish in the afternoon but I managed to do it and get back without my knee being too uncomfortable.
Stunning views of the sea and surf and not a soul in sight.
I have been working on my textile things again today and am making a bit of progress, quite cool and windy which has been nice.
The girls have just rung to say our Cob stallion Pen-nant Prime Time had gone Supreme led of show and Champion ridden at a big all breeds show at Murray Bridge. They are very late coming home having left at about 5 am this morning but are really pleased with themselves and the way the big boy went.
Oh and the last photo Stephen of the golden fish was talking about what he saw when he blogged, well this is not quite what I see now, but it is what I can see in the morning when I check out the e mails and blogs from my bed on the little notebook which John very sweetly brings in with my morning tea. A small corner of the bedroom.
I hope every one had a lovely Valentines day, we dont really observe it but we had a lovely day none the less, it was too windy to fish so John was home for the day.

Sea urchin, clouds and a Birthday

On the walk the other day I found this bright little sea urchin with red spines.
It was pretty cloudy and Thursday we had 13 mm of rain which was good, made everything so much fresher.
Last night we gathered in one of the pubs to celebrate Gaby's 18th Birthday, here is a photo of her son Mason who was eating everything that passed him by, he and Millie had a lovely time roaring around, luckily there were not too many people for them to annoy.
The birthday girl herself with little sister Millie, I had made a cake, but forgot all about the camera when the time came to blow out the candles and cut it!
Today John went cockling so they have plenty to take over to Coffin Bay in May and I went to the market and came home and spent 2 fruitless hours looking for something, I did finally find it and in the mean time I did manage to get some tidying up done but it is so frustrating as I cant see things with this wretched eye that are virtually staring me in the face.
I have been burning some organza with my soldering iron but it is not finished yet so no pictures this is part of my Holey Moley on line class and it has made me do something I have been wanting to do for ages but some how couldnt quite bring myself to do it.

Rain and cooler weather

This afternoon the promised rain came, and with it much cooler temperatures.
Of course now all we want to do is sleep as we havent been sleeping terribly well with the heat.
I have been playing around with some rusted fabrics, last time I rusted some papers I threw in some various fabrics to see what they would do and one was a flour bag from my bulk bread flour, I think there was one bit of poly cotton and I am not sure what else, any way I rinsed them out and I have these fabrics, they may not last terribly well but this week for something to do I cut them up and frayed them and stitched them. Of course when i looked closely they are not quite straight but I am ignoring that, will put on it by nearly blind artist when it is finished!
While in Victor on the terribly hot morning there I was scrabbling around on the ground in the car park looking for rusted bottle tops and I had found the two washers before. I have got this far and am a bit inclined to put it on a black background on a slant, still thinking about that.
I some how put the photos up in the wrong order again, because the next ones are of the wet and rainy looking plants just by the bedroom door and then a sort of thundercloud from yesterday afternoon when they were forecasting thunderstorms, which we didnt get, and the last one was what I thought looked like a very dry sliver of a moon on its back yesterday morning in a pink sky, how wrong I was.
We had a day in Adelaide yesterday, lots to do and a combined birthday lunch and going a way lunch for some of the Grumpy Goddesses, a lovely time had by all. Presents, hugs, laughter, chat and good food.

Todays clouds

A very hot day

It has been pretty awful today and the thunderclouds have come and gone but no thunderstorms, we got to at least 38 degrees C today.
The second photo on this page is done using a water soluble film called Romeo and it is several layers of organza stitched and then the film washed away, trying to sew this in reasonably high humidity was interesting but I managed it. Now I have to do more to it cut some away with a soldering iron but I will wait until it gets a bit cooler.
The other is the cover of the other African Art books I ordered from Amazon and it arrived today. It is not the latest version or I dont think it is but this was 2nd hand and very reasonable and is a fascinating read as well.
So I have been hunkered down doing not very much apart from the textile piece and reading this book.
It is Robyn over on Artpropelled who has got me interested in African Art because she quite obviously uses many of these sculptures from different parts of Africa as inspiration in her wonderful carvings. No she doesnt copy, hers are unique and so is her style but the influence has to be there if you live on the African Continent and are interested in art.
The other book I am reading at the moment is The girl with the dragon tattoo by Stieg Larsson, which I am afraid may be one of those I dont want to put down.
Adelaide tomorrow and that looks hot too but we are having a farewell lunch for a friend who is moving interstate and I must see my mother so that cant be put off.
Those dogs and cats are telling me they need feeding, I had hoped to put it off until it was a bit cooler but they have a routine!