Blueberry & Blackberry on Cloth

Blueberries


On cloth, fresh out of the Blackberry juice dye bath, mordanted with alum


Squished


Back into the blackberry juice


2 days later




This one was in Blueberry juice




A few shades of blue and eau de nil

Natural dying is SO exciting!

Visitors

Little grey friend all fluffy and cute,

Scampers about in his little grey suit,

Gathering nuts and other tasty stuff,

hiding it away ready for when there's not enough.


Hanging upside down and doing all sorts of tricks,

Getting into feeders the birds' food he nicks,

Running amuck all over the place,

Such a loveable rogue, such a loveable face.


Some say he's a pest and should be got rid,

But not our friendly Squirrel heaven forbid,

He lives his own life and is entitled to that,

He just needs to watch out for the big neighbours cat.



We love to see him and all his grey mates,

They visit us daily and empty the plates,

We don't even mind if he scoffs the lot,

There's plenty more in the bird food pot.


How would it be if he stopped coming to feed,

We won't even mind that he has a little greed,

He's always welcome on our feeding tree,

There'll always be food for the birds and for he.


You keep on coming our fluffy little friend,

We'll make sure you don't meet with a nasty end,

And come the Spring when your family grows,

Bring them as well and we'll be glad it's us you chose.

- Author Unknown

Isn't he a darling? This is actually one of the babe's, one of three, who visit our bird table each day. They are young enough to be less shy than their mama. Our bird table sits right in front of our dining room window, so we have breakfast together, the squirrels and my family of 6, and dinner, and at weekends, lunch too!

Happy Weekending to you :)

Ah sweet colour...

I am working on project for a large cloth, more about that later... in the meantime, I need to find larger pieces of fabric. I am used to making small things, so I don't often buy anything larger than a fat quarter, my scrappy stash just isn't cutting it, and seems to be made up of novelty prints (I am such a sucker for a print). I need big cloth and solid colours.

I am hoping to dye a couple of old sheets, but I am also very tempted by the shot cottons by Oakshott Fabrics, so I ordered a sample pack of all 83 colours, 83! It is SO hard to choose just a couple.





Whilst the sample pack is £12.50, you receive a £10 gift voucher to use on your next order, AND the samples are a very generous 2.5" x 5" in size, that's quite a lot of fabric! I couldn't resist snipping off a few wee pieces and stitching them down to one of my scrapplique cloths, to see how they stitch and fray.



The needle just glides through, and the fray is so pretty, I love shot cottons. Now I just need to choose, I am liking the blues and violets most of all. I think I will keep stitching with them a while, see which one's sing to me.

Oh, and I just found this. Glorious colour, good enough to eat, it made me drool on to my keyboard. Chawne is like a rainbow goddess, for sure.

Moo Beginnings

I've never really cared much for cows... that's to say, of all the livestock I would love to have (some day), cows never really featured much on my agenda.

Our garden backs on to open fields, being bang smack in the middle of a working farm means there are many cows, it's nice to see them from the windows, to hear their gentle moo's as I pass by, they seem nice, and gentle, but did not inspire much of a reaction from me, until...

Our landlord took down several large trees from the rear of our garden, I wouldn't normally condone such senseless tree slaying, but they were fast growing leylandi, ugly, and they blocked out sunlight and views, so they came down, and behold, the cows, can now lean right into our garden.





Something quite unexpected happenned.
The children like the cows a lot, this isn't so surprising. However, there is one cow, she looks different from the others, the same sweet Jersey eyes, but somehow different. They don't care much for treats, they don't like to be touched, but this cow, she is different.

She hangs around long after her friends had moved to the other side of the field, she bows her head low so I can tickle her ears, I like this, she has a little heart shaped tuft atop her head, it makes me smile....



I arrive home from work, and there she is, waiting....



Now, I can call her over, a quick whistle or deep moo, and she turns slowly, watches me for a while, then ambles over, slow, calm, patient...



She doesn't have a name, just a number... I toyed with the idea of naming her, but she isn't mine to name. I toyed with the idea of making her mine...
but what does a family do with 20 litres of milk a day? One can only drink so much milk, or eat so much cheese and cream, and she might get lonely. I even bought a book about keeping cows. The timing is all wrong, but it has opened up a new vista, one with cows in it, some day...

but for now, she's still here, I will miss her when she is gone.

Peepo!

It has been a little while, a nice break, a much needed rest, recharging batteries, trying to see the world with fresh eyes.

Having reviewed my blog archives, I notice I have never been a very consistent blogger, and I spent a long while wondering about why. I concluded I have been a little lost since we left France, the purpose of this blog became somewhat skewed, and too, people change, I have changed, and I guess I am not really sure what I want to say anymore, or what is the aim of this here blog.

When I was younger, and studying art, I was expect to record my design process via sketchbooks. I never did like that much, I had it in my head that sketchbooks needed to look a certain way, that one would open them up and ooh and ahh over the contents, I felt that my sketchbooks should impress upon the viewer my skill as an artist. The result of this was that I wasn't so good at maintaining sketchbooks, I would tear pages out because they didn't look right.

I realise now (seeing how many hundreds of posts I have never posted), that I have done a similar thing here, but I realise something else, much more liberating - I realise that the whole purpose of sketchbook is just to record, document, remember, it doesn't have to be perfect, and I guess this blog is the same.

I don't have to spend hours planning posts, editing photos, worrying about how it will be perceived or what not. I don't have to do much more than just be here, to record, document and remember.... and above else, to be true to ones self.

I was fortunate enough to receive a bursary (scholarship) to study design and embroidery, so I will be sharing my course progress here, amongst many things, whatever things, just stuff, just keep going... that's what I intend to do. Keep swimming...

The Olympic Yarn Bomber

Just popping back to share this....



Isn't it amazing? You can read more about this super talented and amazing ANONYMOUS yarnbomber here. It's like the Banksy of the knitting world, love it!

A cheery hello to you all :)

A Little Break

Things are a little hectic right now in the hoola household, we have had some crazy ass weather, illnesses, too much work and of course, the constant hustle and bustle of life with 4 kids - including one very mischevious toddler.



We also lost our sweet old friend Nala, at 15 she was ready to head over the rainbow bridge, and we are all a little lost without her. Nala was around long before any of my children, my loyal friend and first class food vaccuum, AKA pig dog - I have no idea how I would have weaned 4 kids AND kept my sanity without her, Pip is too much of a fussy eater to take her place, and it is somewhat disconcerting to find myself sweeping up rice and various other spilled foods from under our dining table at meal times. Oh Nala, you will be missed, and not just for your expert food clearing abilities.



On that note, I am taking a wee blog break, just for a short while. I am still around and sneak peaking at your lovely blogs, and will comments when I can of course.
Take care sweet friends and see you again very soon :)