Wednesday 9 September 2009

Tortoise

Mr Wonderfuls and I spent Bank Holiday Monday at Earlswood Lakes, where I bought some gorgeous thick wool felt squares - red and black, which I am going to sew into a rabbit, and green and brown. I saw those two colours and knew that they would be a perfect tortoise.

Meet John:
John Tortoise (5)

He's hand sewed, the shell is circles and semi circles stitched into hexagons, and his legs and head were my first attempt at 3D limbs - I am rather proud of them.

John Tortoise (3)

I named him after my Grandad.

Tuesday 8 September 2009

Pear

I've had a long standing fear of drawing. Until module 4 of my course, I'd not done any drawing for the sake of it since I was about 14, so 14 years! I did bits for that module, but fell out of it. Today I got my sketchbook out, and drew the pear on my desk:

08/09/2009

I am happy with it, and I want to keep on drawing things!

Monday 7 September 2009

Biscornu and other happiness

A while ago, I was having a bit of a crafting hiatus, struggling to find something to knit. Inspired by this Craftster post, I set about looking out the instructions I'd found a couple of years ago for biscornu. These quirky pincushions had always appealed, but I'd never quite got round to making them.

In a fit of madness one morning, with minutes before I needed to leave the house, I grabbed a skein of Caron watercolours thread and a piece of aida that had an unfinished piece for a long forgotten Christmas card on the other end, and started stitching the Indian Biscornu pattern. While Mr Wonderfuls and I were in Chester, I finished the Indian one, and a heart one, and started on the provincial pattern on the way back. Last weekend, I began the Happiness one on the way to spend the day with David in Liverpool. They are fabulous fun, simple patterns, but challenging enough to keep me alert, very portable and just what I needed to get me out of the crafting rut.

You might have noticed a lot of beginnings above. Well, I've now finished two of them:
Biscornu Mosaic

I love them. The shape is gorgeous, and now my mind is full of thoughts of both more biscornu and other embroidery.

A big source of happiness at the moment is this little poppet:

joshua 019

My new nephew Joshua, who arrived yesterday. I can't wait till Friday when I will (hopefully, traffic permitting!) get to meet him.

I am also loving Mr Wonderfuls, for he replaced the router! The other source of consternation at the beginning of last month was that I could not upload any photos. Well, we got a very nice new router, and I uploaded 250 in one day, without having to compromise on image size. Thank you, wonderful man!

Another love for today is Florence + The Machine, check her out, the music is simply superb. I am trying to resist the urge to go and buy tickets for the gig this Sunday, as we'll have spent the weekend visiting family, so I suspect I will be very tired!

Expect more posts soon, a lot has been going on!