Monday, June 29, 2009

Double Trouble

This has been an ‘annus horribilis’ for my family and last week was ‘last straw’ week. It helped that I was so busy that it rather took my mind off ‘things’.

I have long wanted to go on a ‘Double Trouble’ workshop and my dreams were realised when my friend Brenda and I travelled to Nottingham to spend two days with Jan Beaney and Jean Littlejohn. We had some excellent tuition and were shown some wonderful techniques, but best of all was being able to get up close to all the samples that Jan and Jean had brought. We were encouraged to look very closely, ask questions – and ‘handle’ the samples. For someone who finds it SOOO frustrating not to be able to touch work in exhibitions - especially when it is as tactile and textured as theirs - this was a joy.

Negotiating the one-way system in Nottingham was a nightmare but fortunately we stayed in a lovely B&B in Southwell, just outside the city, which is a beautiful cathedral town.

We had breakfast in a delightful garden (first picture) and found a scrumptious little restaurant called ’The Piano’. We managed to fit in a quick visit to the Minster,

which had many features of interest to an embroiderer ...


especially the ancient door, which just asked to be translated into ‘smocking’?


A lovely workshop with Carol Naylor on Friday was followed by a visit to Woolfest on Saturday.


I had made two corsages for the IFA stand and was amazed to find that they had both sold! Sorry, I didn’t take piccies because I was so sure that I’d be getting them back … but here’s one I made earlier ...

All I wanted to do today was to lie down in a darkened room!

Tuesday, June 16, 2009

Sailing

I have spent three hours today peacefully sailing on the Leeds-Liverpool canal from Skipton. The weather was beautiful, the scenery magnificent, the company fun and the wild life plentiful. Herons, swans and their cygnets, mother ducklings (I want to say ‘shepherding’ but that doesn’t seem right) carefully guiding their broods through the water. Blue skies and lots of greenery …

All in all, a very colourful day.

As I am, at the moment, being very mindful of colour and its importance in my life, I thought I’d like to post some photographs of some colourful items I made for my dear friends, Mags and Adrienne.

Bags made from dyed silk …


A nuno felted book cover ...


and an appliqued one with it's own little tag ...


... and here we are enjoying an interval break from 'As you like it' ...



which we did - very much! More later ...

(Hey, the photos all came through in order. I haven't forgotten it all!)

Sunday, June 14, 2009

An absence of colour

I have had considerable ‘tellings off’ about not blogging and I know that if I don’t do it now, then I never will. I hope I remember how? I suppose I haven't felt that I have had anything to 'blog' about lately ... but ...

I’ve been to ‘Art and Garden’ today - a beautiful, sunny day, the lush garden, the sound of the river and such colour on display! Lots of paintings and jewellery and some textiles and, of course, Jackie’s stall, so full of colourful brooches, books, pictures, bags and so many other gorgeous things. Now I’ve no money left but I have got three very colourful brooches.

I have had Jackie’s post about ‘paintboxes’ on my mind ever since I read it. It took me straight back to my childhood! I could see the paintbox I had, with all those wonderful names …

Yes, ‘Rose Madder’ and ‘Cobalt Blue’ and ‘Violet’, but what about ‘Vermillion’? That surely is the name that instantly transports me back sixty years. The things I actually painted with this magical box of colours have faded into the distance (I suspect that even then they weren’t ‘originals’, more country cottages and landscapes and ‘fashion plates’ – the ‘New Look’ anyone???) but it’s the colours that stay with me …

How I longed to swim in an ocean of ‘Ultramarine’ …. And wear a dress (long, made of velvet, with a ‘fishtail’?) in ‘Viridian’ (shades of Rita Heyworth?) … and what a wonderful sight a ‘Scarlet Lake’ would be? … and ‘Prussian Blue’ sounded so exotic. I could go on … 

Does anyone out there who is my age remember any of these things? The world at that time seemed such a drab and colourless place that the paintbox seemed truly to be a ‘box of delights’.

My parents had been in India before the war and the stories they told me all seemed to be steeped in colour and I longed to go there and see for myself. It was to be sixty years before this dream came to fruition but the reality was just as I imagined it. My abiding memory is of a dull brown landscape which would suddenly explode into the colours of my paintbox as the women working in the fields came into view. Full circle.

Which is probably why the piece (above) which I – finally – produced for the Embroidery 2000 exhibition at Lytham felt so unsatisfactory to me. It was ‘colourless’. Dictionary definition – not only “not colourful” but “lacking vividness or distinctive character”. I should know that I don’t do ‘subtle’. There isn’t a single piece of beige in my wardrobe - and brown and I just don’t 'get on'. So why would I want to produce a piece with ‘earth colours’? Maybe I’ll just use the same design source with the colours that make me feel alive? Schiaperelli’s zinging pink or the violet of the delphinium that trumpets that summer is here? Or the deep aquamarine of the Greek ocean …

To thine own self be true? Watch this space …