TAST 19 and this mornings walk

TAST 19 is Up and down Feather stitch. I wasnt exactly taken with this stitch but I think I finally worked out how to do it with a few mistakes on the way.
This is for Sharonb's pintangle (on my side bar) challenge.
So far I am keeping up, just.
It was a lovely morning this morning, sun and little wind so we went for a walk along the base of the Bluff and found three seals playing in and around the rocks. Lovely to watch.
Click on the photos to enlarge them.
At this time of the year some of the succulents come into their own, flowering and brightening up a winters day, the aloes on the sky line were in full flower as was this other succulent down by the road.
I saw my mother yesterday, all seems well, she is just bored and tired.
I had a meeting I would rather forget, so sad when something you helped start starts to go in a different direction. I dont know that I will go to any more.
We had a lovely night last night, a sudden and impromptu dinner at friends place, the six of us are old friends but we just dont manage to see each other much any more.

On a cold wet winters day

We have had gales, we have had branches down, and a nice cup of tea has gone down well.
What to do while watching football, doodle.
It has been an absolute beast of a day and I nearly got blown away while feeding the chooks.
I have tidied up a few things I should have done and hate doing, like turning up the hems of some pants, both mine and Johns.
Tomorrow we have to go to Adelaide to a meeting and I hope to see my mother.

Wet and gales, so indoors

We had a power failure in the early hours of the morning, very windy and gusts of wind and rain hitting the windows of the bedroom.
Not quite as windy now but cold and damp as you can see by the first photo, then a little ray of sunshine, as John said the Cootamundra wattle always seems to flower in weather like this, a glow of gold down the track.
I have been playing with some fabric pages to commemorate the trip to Broken Hill incorporating photos, things we were given and a few things I made, not finished yet but here are two pages.
The first on some rusted fabric and the second on fabric we dyed while we were up there.
I am not quite sure where I am going from here but I still have plenty of stuff to play around with.
Now off to put up the hem on Johns pants, and a pair I bought yesterday. I hate turning up hems but it has to be done.
We did manage to move the Japanese bantams out of their wet cage and into a dry one before the rain yesterday and they seem very happy to be where they are.
I just hope no marauding foxes have any ideas.

A bit of playing

Another flower, now finished and my new bit of Gilding the Lily came today and this is adhering gilding flakes to a stamped glued image. I like this better than trying to work with stencils, I dont ever seem to get a good image when I stencil.
I cant settle today but think I had better go and clean up my 'other' work room, the first which was clean and tidy now isnt but there is no one here to see it all.
I am not going outside at the moment but do think, hope I feel better.

Flower

This was part of our Holey Moley and it is an interesting way to use fusible film and my cuttlebug.
I have been to the doctor, she is terribly young but very sweet, and I am now about to start a few days of antibiotics.
I hope they make me feel better.

stitched metal and in the garden

I have as you know been playing with metal and this morning I managed to get this put together.
My zygocactus have just about finished but this one is still looking lovely by the side door.
I know it is the middle of winter but the peacocks have started calling, by my reckoning a month early and outside our bedroom window is this little nest that I thought was abandoned by the new holland honey eaters but low and behold there is a tail sticking out of the nest and the female is obviously sitting. I had to take the last one out of the bedroom window, which was a bit dirty as everytime I get near the nest outside she flies off.
My debutant camellia is always the first to flower and although it is an old bush and the first I ever grew here, not thinking I could she always manages to give me a lovely lot of flowers, even though where she is gets pretty dry in summer.
The cold is progressing and not at the moment for the better, so I will not be seeing my mother this week either which is a worry but I just cant manage to drive to Adelaide and home again.

A slow day and some playing.

My cold seem to have gone down to my chest and is a bit uncomfortable. I seem to have been coughing a lot, not terribly happy but although it is freezing cold outside it is warm inside so I have been doing a few things that dont require a lot of physical exercise.
First the wave filling for my TAST stitch with Sharon B ( see my side bar), this was interesting simple and I made a mess of it!
I do now know how to do it and not what to do.
In my on line class gilding the lily I have been a bit slow in catching up and decided as I had my cuttlebug out to do some embossing on metal. I used the alcopops tins as my family seem to have a lot, not John and I but the next generation down.
Somewhere I was told they were easier to use than coke cans. Any way they go through the cuttlebug with ease and then I painted them with various paints, the top four were pinata and adironack alcohol inks with a bit of rubbing alcohol on a couple.
The blue one was using glass paint and then embossing powder over the top.
The next was sprayed with starburst and moonshadow mist sprays and heated to set with my heat gun and the third was alcohol inks with a bit of rubbing alcohol.
I rather like using the cuttlebug with metal but must get a few more patterns to use when I have some money.
The next exercise will be to sew some of these on to backgrounds but I havent had time to make the backgrounds yet.
Hope I feel better tomorrow, this is getting ridiculous.