Now for something completely different.

In this building in Toxteth, Liverpool ,


there is a huge wallpainting, signed and dated 1903


It was in a pretty poor state just over two months ago...



when my husband was called in to look at it.



Slowly, steadily with tiny swabs of the correct chemicals,


he worked away at it.


Carefully cleaning, gradually, inch by inch,


day by day, he revealed the beauty



of the original work.

Isn't he clever? And so very patient.
I just thought you might be interested.

You know what pride goes before?

All that boasting in the last posts has set me up for a fall and I've just had it.
My Beach towel lookalike has been rejected from the exhibition I submitted it for, and ITS MY OWN FAULT.
I had a perfectly good idea, and a perfectly good piece and I altered it to something else just because I lost confidence in the original.
Woe is me.

But I think I would have been very embarrassed to see it hanging up .
I'm going to cut it up right now and restore it to its former state that I was very happy with.

No matter how many successes you have its always the one failure that makes you feel like ...well ...you know what.

Pictures I should have added in the last post

Just rooting through my photographs on my laptop and what a nightmare mess they are in. ( Does anyone else find that they have hundreds of 'unsorted' pictures just waiting to be copied/backed up/re organised?)

Anyway I came across the fish purses I mentioned in my previous post.

I have no pictures of the driftwood with the rusty nails though.


I think that warmed us in the winter.

Two nice things have happened since my moany post.
One is, that after I had one of my brooches on the Etsy front page, a man called Anthony from New Orleans has ordered some felt pieces, not brooches, to use in his 'High end Purses'.
I have no idea what he's going to do with them but he promises to acknowledge my input, and as he's primarilly a jeweller, and is selling these things at events to help in the regeneration of business in the city of New Orleans, I can only let my imagination have full reign.
Mardi Gras?

Secondly I have been interviewed very politely, for a post on this German blog and its very encouraging.

There was a third but I find it baffling even with the help of Babel Fish.
Look here and here and a few other similar sites. Same pictures?
How does that work?


PS I have to supply a 10 word sentence to describe my work in a submission for a craft fair.
Any ideas?

One man's meat...

Nothing much to report(but has that ever stopped me before?) except that I have had one of my Marrakech felt pieces accepted for The West Lancs Open Exhibition at The Chapel Gallery in Ormskirk. (This is for JP. I can't reply to you any other way. Its on Now. I went on Friday to the preview..mine is in the bit leading to the toilets!!! Some kind of judgement I suppose)

I have also done my annual accounts and sorted through the pile of slithery books pamphlets cards and papers on my sewing room table, so I feel a load off

It made me think of another open exhibition I submitted for about 12 years ago.
Do you want to hear about it?
Are you sitting comfortably?

Then I'll begin.

I was new from City and Guilds and had had a year or two doing my own things.
I had two pieces I wanted to submit to an open exhibition. A Celtic panel and Three little purses based on Tropical fish.(They look a bit like This, I don't know why I didn't submit these instead)
Yes, three purses, so I had to find a way to combine them to make them into one piece.

I looked into having a perspex box made but it was fiendishly expensive .
Then I had a brainwave...they were based on fish, so if I had a piece of driftwood it would enhance the sea connection.
Now, the seaside near me is not the kind of place you would be likely to find driftwood.
Blackpool, Southport, no pebbles or driftwood so we went a bit further afield and drove to Sunderland Point,(Do click that link, there's a lovely set of photos there) near Lancaster, where you have to cross a causeway at low tide, and there's a wild pebbly beach full of all sorts of junk.

We strolled along looking for the perfect piece of driftwood, collecting a LOT to choose from.
My husband even picked up the back end of a boat and was going to use it to make a sign for his studio. Not exactly appropriate in a moorland mill village.
As we got back to the car a local resident looked at our bundle and said 'We'll have to start buying coal if you keep coming '

Once home I selected the perfect piece..a block with three rusty bent nails, around which I entangled the purse cords so that they looked like flotsam (or jetsam?) and duly submitted my purses and my Celtic panel for the exhibition.

Time passed
My letter arrived...one piece accepted, one rejected.
'Oh well ' I thought, 'that Celtic piece was perhaps a bit traditional.....but I knew they'd like those bags.'
I went to collect the rejected piece.

Shock Horror!
They rejected the purses but wanted the Celtic panel.
I expressed my surprise at the choice.
She asked what it was I'd had rejected.
I said 'Three little purses like fish.'
'OH!' she said, 'We loved those bags........







......we just didn't like that driftwood they were attached to'.

Again?????

Etsy Front Page 7/21/09 vart, originally uploaded by Etsy Front Pagers.

I have just been alerted to the fact that I was on the front page for a second time yesterday.
I am blogging this because I'm an obnoxious little show off I want to share with you ETSY sellers the fact that there is a flickr site full of Etsy front page shots so if you miss yours you can find it here.
x

Brief encounter

Only half an hour ago I was sitting at my computer wondering how to improve my ETSY sales.
Should I shut my shop?
Should I completely empty it, make new things one a time and re stock one piece at a time until each one is sold?
Should I just give up the whole idea of selling online?
When the little blue envelope in the right hand corner of my screen chirrupped and it was a message fro karen telling me I had made it to the ETSY FRONT PAGE!
Here's the screen shot.I'd have missed it if Karen hadn't told me. She's a star
Click to view it larger.


Anyway it seems to have brought a lot more traffic to my little shop so I'll leave it for the moment.
I feel as if I've had a brief encounter with fame.
39 hearts and 757 views for my little brooch in about an hour.
Exciting.

By the way, if you have an etsy shop do you know about Heartomatic?
Just enter your shop name and it will show you how many Hearts your shop as well as single items have.

Sunday.

I know this is supposed to be a sewing blog so I'll start with a bit of sewing related news. One of my Marrakech felt pieces has been accepted for an open exhibition. More in a later post.

I have been to the teabag paper mines and am now in possession of a sore back and enough plain teabag paper to last me, you, and probably all out neighbours for the rest of our lives.
Its available in both my Folksy and Etsy shops. If you look and its gone, I will relist over and over again..
Its very versatile and is now in packs of 10 x 60 inch long, foot wide strips, so even more versatile.
Free P&P to UK buyers.
Lovely stuff.

Now I must tell you about my Birthday.
On Friday and Saturday I worked hard to get a clean tidy house, and all ironing DONE!

Lovely presents from friends and family, surprises in the post, but my boys have heard neither of the Royal Mail nor the early morning, so I am supposed to be getting a visit today.

We planned to go on an Ullswater Steamer, but steam was what appeared to be over the moors when I looked out of the bedroom window yesterday morning..and torrential rain.
Besides that I was convinced I had swine flu...runny nose...sneezing..feeling a bit poorly, but with hindsight I can put that down to dusting as an extreme sport the previous day, and a 'night off' from the diet on Saturday night.
After mulling it over we decided to go out anyway and set off at the crack of 1.30pm ..and where do you think we were?
Look at these trees and that sky...


It looks positively tropical,
but there were clues here to other weather conditions; look closely at the blackboard...

I think those ponchoes are plastic.....rain forest?


Is this a monkey? No ..its a Herdwick lamb.



This isn't the rain forest, nor even Ullswater..its Keswick,


Beautiful Derwentwater,

Don't those clouds remind you of the Fellpainter?

Here's the view from Friars Crag


If we'd known the weather was going to be as good as this we would have set out earlier and done the steamer thing.


But instead we had a very late lunch here, in the two chairs on the right of the picture, and (I'm so sorry and so guilty in the presence of vegetarians ) the most exquisite lamb I have ever tasted




with a view to make you gasp.


But it seemed a bit insensitive..eating with the bleating.


Please forgive me dear lambs.
We drove home via Ullswater, Glenriddings and over the spectacular Kirkstone Pass, had a late evening snack at The Queens head, Troutbeck and arrived home about 10.30 pm.

I've had another lovely birthday, but so totally different from last years.

By the way what do you think of the blog makeover?