Michael painted this with gouache on mountboard. South of France? Frontage at Nice?

And here is the mount board cut up into 70 mm squares ready for insertion in a practice piece of weaving. This is beginning to turn out like I imagined. Recently I have been very pleased to find that my pieces of weaving are coming out like I imagined. This was particularly true of the silk for Convergence and 'Reflections'.

The weaving for the enamels will be completed this week and I shall probably warp up the dyed Tencel on the Megado immedaitely. I need to warp up the Voyager with 2/12 cotton for Margaret Roach Wheeler's course and I need to warp up the Kombo with the fan reed as I have promised myself to make a video of its operation and also I need more samples for a lecture in June to the London Guild. The silk I am going to use is lurid colours of silk dyed by me. I am going to include a few threads of a dark coloured silk at the wiggliest part of the weaving to outline the shapes. I have no idea what I am going to do with the fabric. The scale is too large to make clothing from. You are stuck with cushions and curtains. Possibly it would work with a gilet. Even a waistcoat would not do because it would have darts in it. A floor length skirt?

I have bought some unbound books from Volcano Arts in the States (courtesy of Alice Schlein. One is Alice in Wonderland and I 'persuaded' Michael that he needs to paint me something suitable to put on the cover.  There have been lengthy discussions on what technique to use. And what to include. He is thinking Japanese style. I pointed out that he could use whatever technique he wanted and we could scan it and print it. The reason being that handling (say) a cover with pastel on it, even if sprayed, would give it a very long life. But he has discovered some kind of spray on varnish so he might use that.

Yesterday was the last day of the 2010 weaving course. Everyone is getting on well. One or two talking about buying a loom for themselves. The Guild has table looms it loans out to beginners. We are going to have a recap day at a Guild meeting in May where everyone brings in their weaving and we discuss any problems.