I'm Published Again!

Those kind folks at Ink Pantry Publishing have chosen more of my writing to be featured on their web-site this week. 
Three small pieces taken fom work I did for my OU courses, A215 and A174.  They fit together quite well as they have a through-line, or common theme.
In this case a beach.   I grew up near a beach and always enjoyed it best on wild and windy days.
Take a quick look if you have a minute or two to spare.
If you missed my first story, published on their site last month, you'll find it here. 

Doll Time

Today being Palm Sunday, I thought I'd show you my palm dolls - so called because they fit neatly into the palm of your hand.  They are very small!
Both are made from calico.  For the sitting one I stamped the calico with a script stamp before cutting out the pieces.  For the standing one I lightly spray painted the calico after sewing up the pieces but before stuffing.
The sitting doll has a skirt and scarf made from scraps of fabric left over after cutting out the stamped calico.
The standing doll has a hat and bag which I knitted on 2mm needles.  They are worked in bramble stitch.  Her bag holds a few tiny balls of wool and cocktail stick knitting needles.

Is it Spring at Last?

We're past the Ides, the equinox is just around the corner and finally there are signs of Spring.  Magnolia buds turning from grey to green, one or two flowers opening on the forsythia and bright green leaf buds on the quince.  We've had groups of snowdrops, including my lovely Wendy's Gold, a whole mass of crocuses opening to greet any fleeting rays of sun, hellebores, early daffs and mini irises.  But it hasn't felt like Spring till now.
Walking through the garden this morning I spied a few violets adding their colour to cyclamen and aconites, and the great delight of fat, pointy buds on my clumps of those glorious Rip Van Winkle daffs.  Topolino and Tete-a-Tete are already out and, of course, they are lovely and most welcome, but they can't compete in the joyousness stakes with the unique, multi-petalled, golden heads of Rip Van Winkle.

More Notebooks

As promised a couple of weeks ago, some more of my books.  They are all made from scratch with paper and card as before, but I've used different techniques for each of the covers.
The largest one is hand embroidered on silk paper.  The one with the bookmark is painted on cotton, using a wax resist and the third one is made with scraps of fabric from other projects machined on to scrunched up brown paper.
One has been made traditionally with a spine, as before.  The other two have softer covers.

Early Irises

I was going to post some more of my books today, but the sun is shining and this little beauty caught my eye.
Iris 'Katherine Hodgkin' is the result of a 1960's cross by an amateur gardener who named her after the wife of a fellow plant enthusiast.
My other early iris, the winter flowering 'Mary Barnard' was collected by the lady herself near Algiers in 1937.

A Need for Notes

Notebooks are a lot of fun to make.  I mean the ones you make from scratch, with paper and card.  Once you've sewn paper pages together and cut your bits of heavy card for the base of your cover it's just a case of choosing which technique you want to play with for the top of the cover.  I made these two by bondaweb-ing fibres from mulberry bark and small pieces of torn scrim onto calico, adding some machine stitching and painting over the whole lot with metallic acrylic paints.  The finishing touches are a few hand stitches and some beading.

Why do I need more notebooks?  Because the dreaded Poetry section of A215 is finally ended and its TMA submitted so now I can move on to the Life Writing section, which should be a lot more fun and will undoubtedly call for the use of shiny new notebooks!

More Snow.

It seems that winter hasn't quite finished with us yet.  For the second time this week snow is falling outside my window.  So I've put my spring embroidery on hold for a while and given in to the fun of making a pure white bowl from silk fibres and embroidered with heavily textured threads.  It will join my other 'balloon' bowls. Here's my embroidered calico one from an earlier post