Product

Well they didn't make it to a big piece.
Thanks for all your suggestions.
I tried but I must say that I really do like them as individual little gems.
This one has been added to a duck egg cuff and is now in my ETSY shop.


The one below which goes quite well with the cuff is now a brooch and is also listed.

See, they look nice together I think.
Ooh must go back and edit the listing. I forgot to mention the fragments of silk fibres on the mustard.


This little oddment will be joining them but I am just having a break from listing..its a bind.

I had a deviation from the blue green and will be listing this ....


Now, the larger pieces would not go together without arguing so I gave them each their very own naughty step.*

I still call them one piece though.



I think the green growing out of the black is reminiscent of the Season.
New shoots and all that?

And there's even a bit of white for the snow blanket that covered them and kept them warm

I just need a title.
'Unfurling trio' ?
'Three bursts of Growth'?
'Spring thoughts'

Or sometimes I think they are like all the little things that came out of Pandoras box, but they were bad things weren't they?
Oh!
Someone on TV has just said 'Hope'.
Thats the last thing that came out of the box and thats what I'll call them.
'Hope'
I must find a better way of phrasing that to include a reference to the three.

EDIT: They just won first in the Coats Anchor Award at the NW regional day.

These are easy..


'Brooches'.


Handwriting post on Wednesday?
will you?

I really have a strange story about this.
Arlee did hers last week and when I read it I discovered that Cynjon, a blogger I had never seen, had suggested it a few weeks ago.
I hadn't seen it.
Isn't it strange?




*Not really steps..they are little 6x4 inch box canvases.

Dithering...

Today I have mostly been making...


more of the same.

Except....

....that they are not the same.

Please ignore the holey pre used canvas.

Instead apply your thinking cap...

My original plan was to place a whole lot of these shapes on a background, but these, being longer and thinner and altogether more elegant, do not look right with the others.

Now I'm wondering if I should make the previous, rounder, and more leaf -like shapes into brooches.

But what then should I do with these?
I have a whole other set sitting on canvases in my ETSY shop doing nothing.
And now I have piles of these.

Piles of them.

Mmmmmmm!

and Mmmmm?

Don't forget to tell everyone about the Handwriting next week.
Click the link at the top to find out more.

Ideas.

After our trip to Manchester last week I was quite excited by an idea I had to use the new modern buildings such as this one to stitch shapes into felt.
By the time I'd added different colours to the backgrounds it was all a bit lumpy for stitching which is a shame becasue I love the 'Jetsons' look of some of them. If you know Manchester you might understand.
So I went back to my other project. Did I say I've decided to make lots of these and join them somehow into a bigger piece.
It will be predominantly greeny -blue.
I photographed this late afternoon ..isn't it wonderful to have a bit of slanting sunlight?


This bit below is not for the main piece. I think I might make it into a brooch.
I'm footling about on these and really I should be making more of my other brooches for shops.


So anyway...while I was stitching I had what I initially thought was a bright idea for a little blog game about ......


I even made an extra page on my blog for it.
This is what I was thinking about...we make our blog posts and spell check and get rid of untidiness and then click publish.
We only see each others' beautifully edited font of choice but wouldn't it be nice to use our own handwriting?

I thought it might be fun to have one day next week where everyone who wants to will do a complete post about handwriting, in handwriting.


Of course you'd have to upload it as a picture either scanned or macro shot and make sure its big enough to read.
I thought if you want to take part, you could leave a comment here with a link to your blog and I would make a new page on my blog with a complete list of links.
But then I wondered if it might be viewed with caution ..maybe scope for someone to forge your writing..of course you won't add your signature, that would be foolish.

Crossings out and spelling mistakes would be allowed.
Let me know what you think.
If we get more than 20 willing we'll do it.

Back to the drawing board.

These are pictures of some of the 'drawing' I have been doing with my sewing machine on the pre-felts I made in the post before last.



I started with an illuminated 'a', its about the size of the palm of my hand.

Then I went on to do three more blue-green oval/leaf/almost fishy shapes.

When I put them together they make me think I'd like to do a full hanging composed of these.

But I can't stick to those colours forever, and had a go at at a couple of the pastel felt shapes I prepared.
There's a fishy one..

and there's not-a-fishy one

but when I put them next to each other they both looked a bit 'marine'.

In other areas I have failed again quite miserably. Remember this?
Well I've done it again.
The other night as I was nodding off to sleep I had a vague recollection that someone had given me some bulbs at Christmas; that, yes I had planted them and put them in a cold dark place, but rather like the squirrel who lost his nuts..I couldn't remember where, or who.
I searched the surrounding areas of possibility and finally remembered the coal shed.
Too late.

And I've just burnt the felt group cake for tomorrow.
'Sigh' I wish I was a bit more like the Delicious Miss Dahl.
But I'd have to say 'fyeed' and cyikking' and really...I.. can't.


Can't make another cake because we are having a meal for my youngest son's 25th Birthday.
I can't believe it.

..and now for something COMPLETELY different.

On a cold and wet Easter Saturday we set off over the moors to the little industrial town of Bacup, where, on the main road out the other side of town, nowhere in particular, we found what we were looking for.
A small band of rather unathletic looking men in strange costumes, in two rows along the road, bending forward with their hands cupped behond their ears.
A doleful queue of musicians walked between them playing their silver instruments , a repetitive uncomplicated tune and the dancing began.

We, with a handful of other followers walked behind them . Cars continued to fly up and down the road and the serious dancers polka-ed along the road clicking the wooden discs on their waists, wrists and knees in a ritual that happens only every Easter Saturday, and only in this town.
After a carefully choreographed few miles, where the first lots of dancers overtook the band, then the band overtook them and the second team followed up, we came to a house with a bit of spare land in front. The big black bag with the garlands was passed round and the second dance, to a different and slightly jollier tune, began.
By this time there were a couple of dozen followers and now a film camera crew or two, and the safety stewards had their work cut out keeping everyone tucked in off the road.

The strange procession moved on , stopping here and there to do the full dance.
Down cobbled streets of terraced houses and through a modern housing estate.
All the time, the band kept to their slow and steady striding pace and the 'Nutters' Danced on.
By the time we got to the fire station there was a large crowd of followers.
They danced right into the centre of town and in the pub, in the square, in the Social club and on.
The Britannia Coconut Dancers.
Locally known as the Bacup Nutters.
I first came to watch this in 1975. It was snowing then, but apart from that..it was exactly the same . (Oh I was thin then so not quite)

We came again around 1990 when our boys were young.
And if you look at you tube you will see the videos from all the other years are exactly the same as the one I was trying to upload but failed.
This is the one that tells the whole repetitive, solemn, mesmerising story of the day.








These are not Morris Men, nor are they 'Folkies' but men who have done it for years. (I overheard there was one in his 35th year)
There are no explanations. Even they don't know why they do it but they do it and everyone in Bacup knows they do it and is proud of it.
The black faces have no racial connotations but are a crude and readily available disguise.
This is tradition!
Makes me proud to be British!
(I think)

Changing my spots.

If you've been here before you will know that I am very fond of blue and green perhaps with a bit of orange, and in the last post I was trying to capture the colours of lichen and stone so murky greys were on the cards.

My second feltmaking session was to prepare patterns as 'randomly' as I could for future embroideries so I started with my favourite colours. Prefelts cut up and refelted onto a backgound.

Can you see the letter 'a' there on one of them? Perhaps this will become an 'illuminated' initial.


Then I got distracted.

My 'For the Girls' Cornishware mugs bore a striking resemblance to the colours in my big bag of new wool tops.
So a major production of plain felts in these colours just had to be made for my new brooches. Of course it all began with blues and greens again
and then I moved onto the pinks and lilacs .
I was saying in my last post how difficult it is to plan what you are going to want in your felt palette. It has to be made before you need it so its as well to have lotsof shades of felt and pre felts. So I now have my selection of new spring colours.
These little old plates that belonged to my Mother in Law and the freesias and tulips I bought for myself make up my 'Mood Board'.
I cut up some of the prefelts and re assembled and re felted them


so I've got some pastel patterns to stitch into later.

Although I love these sherbert-dolly mixture-jelly bean- blancmange clear colours, I'm kicking myself for not making some textured pieces with other fibres added, because I can't help but see them as shop bought 'craft' felt, which has its place, but to me is as bland as white wonderloaf.
I prefer my felt to be the 'rustic wholemeal'
Its drying and my legs are aching from standing up all day.

I can't wait to get stitching .


But I had to clean the house today.
You wouldn't recognise it.
We are having a visitor or three.
Shopping tomorrow, and decorating the Church after the Good Friday service so I can go to Bacup on Saturday Morning to see something very bizarre. It only happens on Easter Saturday. Its a few years since I was there.

Then back for the Saturday evening Easter Vigil, and cooking a big family lunch on Sunday.

Have a Happy and Peaceful Easter.