My Halo has been burnished

I have been very hard working today and at 1630 am thinking of stopping off till tomorrow.

1) I defrosted the freezer with all that that means in the way of wrapping up everything in newspaper and washing all the drawers and the freezer inside when it was defrosted. The kitchen was hopeless while this was in progress
2) I have hemmed the Birds weaving ready for Exotica, using bias binding and weighted the lower hem with curtain weights.
3) I bought a cotton dress (circa 1960s) which was a little too small. I have let out the seams where needed and it looks/feels fine now. Michael is highly amused. 'You used to have dresses just like that' Why does he think I bought it?
4) Dorothy brought us a fine textile picture as a present recently. In order to hang it, I had to take down two others (Ravilious book plates) and re-hang all three. Step-ladders, pliers, screwdrivers et cetera.
5) I have cleaned up the garage and cleared the bench top for pasting paper to fabric for book covers. Six pieces of board in the cellars and suitable for this operation were put in the garage. I have mixed the paste needed for this and put it in the fridge. I have chosen six pieces of fabric trimmed them to be about 1 inch all round smaller than A2 because I am going to use A2 bank paper. All the fabric has been pressed and laid aside carefully.

I could do something about the loom bags but I don't feel I have to.

Hay on Wye

Every second Friday, Michael goes to St Richards Hospice (McMillans) where he has a great time painting, drinking (I kid you not, they get wine/whisky/etc before lunch), eating and generally chatting to a group of people in the same situation. It's a beautiful place with an enormous well-laid-out garden which is immaculately kept and contains a very large duck pond. The flowers are all planted in high beds made of old railway sleepers so that folks in wheelchairs can enjoy them. 

Well that's him. What about me? I could stay at home and do some textiley things but that seems a pity when it is so difficult for me to go anywhere more than 20 minutes drive away without organising someone to look after Michael. So yesterday I went to Hay-on-Wye which is a drive of 75 minutes. I went intending to buy some distressed books for rebinding but found nothing that I liked. Instead I bought a raft of art books. A book on Sargent's watercolours for Michael, a book on Bawden in North Africa for me, a book on David Gentleman's designs, a Rex Stout we haven't got. I was surprised at the last. I thought we had everything. I found a crafts shop which had mice made of twisted wire and good glass but only bought three sheets of wrapping paper (for bookbinding).

To get to Hay from Malvern, you need to go through Hereford and there are two ways to get to Hereford from Malvern, one of which is rumoured to be having problems with roadworks. So I went via Ledbury. On the way home I thought I shall be driving past Mr Waller's. So I stopped and bought beef for the weekend. Ledbury is a small town with a bustling main street and five high class butchers and the highest class is Mr Waller's. I have been in a posh restaurant (coq au vin etc etc) and the first main course listed was 'Dave Waller's sausages with onions and wine gravy'. So I bought some of them (the Bosbury Bangers to be precise), some drycure bacon and one of his award-winning pies (pork and garlic) which I started on when I got home because I had missed out on lunch. 

Later on I stitched and cut up the Megado output (see yesterday's blog). There are half-finished projects all over the place and, since we have no visitors this weekend, I am hoping to finish a lot of them.

I am enjoying reading various blogs about CW and Convergence, Cally Booker, Daryl Lancaster, Sandra Rude, Alice Schlein. I wish - - - -

Birds and Caladium Leaves and - - -

I have sewn in all the ends and zigzag stitched in the spacer weaving between pieces and cut them up. Above is Fancies II which is going to the EXOTICA Exhibition at Birmingham Botanic Gardens - see poster. Do come along.

 And this is Caladium Leaves II. Mind you I think I might like Caladium Leaves III better which has only a dark green weft, (see below) but II has been entered for EXOTICA so that's that.

 Here is a photo of both sides of the networking drafting done with pale yellow weft and below is with a dark blue weft. An interesting colour point is that, in the yellow weave, the dark maroon warp looks a nice chocolate brown.

I rather like this one. It would make a good upholstery cloth.

Now I have several pieces of cloth. What am I to do with them? The Kennet Valley Guild  has a thing called 'Rosie's Challenge' which happens every three months. A topic is set and everyone who who can enters their response - knitters, spinners, felt makers, lace makers, braiders and weavers. We have had Kandinsky, Fire (June 2010), anything recycled, Teatime. That produced cake stands full of knitted Battenberg cake and knitted salmon sandwiches decorated with knitted hardboiled egg. Anyway the next challenge is a bag for the September meeting. For some time, I have thought that a bag looped over each end of the Megado's stool would be a good idea for parking loaded shuttles in. I have dug out a book (100 bags and purses) and found a pattern for a bucket bag so this fabric is about to be made up into something useful. Need to hunt for a lining but I am sure I have something upstairs.

Painted Sheep (otherwise SheepScape)

Today was a great day - a new chapter. I rented a van from Malvern Community Action which is fitted out to take a wheelchair and I took Michael to Nature in Art. just north of Gloucester. They are having a Sheepscape. A lot of fibre glass sheep have been made and lots of different groups have decorated them. They are all over the garden. Here are a few. Me, I like the wings and pale pink tutu.

We looked round the galleries and the garden with the sheep and then visited the Artist In Residence, Sylvia Sutton, who is a botanical illustrator. Lots of lovely things on show including a number of vegetable drawings called the Allotment series. You don't think of

kohl-rabi and carrots or rhubarb as being worthy of an artist's attention but they are with Sylvia Sutton!!

Then tea and buns and a drive home. When I asked Michael if he wanted to do a similar expedition next week, he said yes immediately. But he did fall asleep as soon as he was back in bed!!

I have removed the weaving from the Megado and tidied up the loom and its surroundings. I need to finish the fabric and look at it carefully. I will scan in the different designs as I am finding the camera is not showing the colours well.

The next thing on the Megado is a long length of Tencel to make curtains from two sorts of spaced dyed yarn from Just Our Yarns and some pink self-coloured Tencel dyed by me. But it is all in skein form. I need it on cardboard bobbins. And I have none. I had a huge clear up in order to get back some shuttle bobbins. I will swear I have bought 30 such bobbins in the last few years. Why is it that when I want 5 or 6 I never have any? Because I can't bear to discard the remnants of yarn on these bobbins after finishing a piece. Okay then, I faced up to it and wound lots of shuttle bobbins off on to cardboard tubes - leaving me with lots of empty shuttle bobbins and one cardboard one. So I rang up Texere and asked if they had any spares for sale. 20 will arrive shortly and I can wind off all the Tencel.

I went to Abigail's Crafts in Stonehouse this afternoon . This is a quilter's heaven. Lots of fabrics, many quite unlike anything I have seen elsewhere. I had to buy these printed cottons. From the left above. How could a bookbinder not buy a fabric with a grammar printed on it? In the centre, an Indian chintz (sort of). On the right, the Sky at Night. The reason why I went was that my sister Dorothy spotted an exhibition on there in August and, as I was nearby, I cased the joint. Verdict - approval. Dorothy will be here in August and we will take a trip there.

I was in the neighbourhood because I was examining cars with access for wheelchairs at a garage south of Gloucester. I learnt a lot but it was clear I really needed to take Michael there and see what he thought. So that will be done next week.

In between all this activity, I wove up the rest of the Megado warp. I need to cut it off and tidy up but that might not happen until Saturday.

Caladium Leaves (5)

This is not the current warp threading on the Megado. I started weaving this afternoon with a pale yellow weft and the results were much nicer than I expected. 

I then realised that, if I reversed every second pattern in the warp, I would get this nice pattern - which I am quite taken with. The diamond is about four inches high using 2/10 cotton. Can I be bothered to rethread the warp for the small amount that is left? I think not. I want to do a practice with a dark weft as well.

But definitely a draft to keep.

Caladium Leaves (4)

I have woven off as much in the way of birds as I want and went back to caladium leaves and have woven a lot more - to use as book covers. But I still have a lot of warp left.

So I have played with advancing twills in the weft only. I may have a lot of warp left but am not enthusiastic enough about it to  rethread and resley.

Two of the results are shown here, each with firstly a black weft and secondly a white weft. This is just to give an idea of what happens with a very dark and a very light weft.

I am not sure I like any of these because of the warp stripes.

A much better effective is obtained by changing face - see last photo. I have enough warp left to try several of these options.