Where Have I Been?

Many thanks for all the lovely comments on my last post about Iona.  I have to admit that I scheduled the post for while we were away so I apologise if I havn't answered your comments directly but I do value them all.

So, where have we been?  If you follow my DH's blog you will know that we have been on a cruise around the Baltic countries.  We visited Bruges in Belgium and Copenhagen in Denmark on the way and then went on to Helsinki in Finland, St Petersburg, Tallinn in Estonia, which was a delight, Stockholm and Oslo.   I took over 500 photos and really don't know where to start but I'll bore you with a few.  Maybe we'll start with some interesting textures and patterns.

Text on an old tombstone in Bruges. (I took several photos of this type of text.  It makes a lovely abstract image and I may work on it in Photoshop).

Very unusual sculpture alongside a Bruges canal.

Interesting marks on the quayside.

A lightgrid on the pathway in Copenhagen.

Interesting lines on a tall ship in Copenhagen.

One of the many crumbly walls in beautiful Tallinn.

This fabulous noticeboard was in Stockholm.  Imagine this in stitch!

Unusual orangey sediment in the water out at sea.  Maybe fish eggs?  Who knows.

This is just part of some beautiful gates in Oslo.  Definite design and stitch potential.  More of Oslo later in a separate post.

While we were away I celebrated a rather special birthday with an '0' in it.  My Mum wanted to treat us to a night at the ballet in St Petersburg and the whole experience was wonderful.  When I was small I dreamt of being a ballet dancer and would have loved to have gone to a professional performance.  In St Petersburg we saw a performance of Swan Lake by Tschaikovsy and we were transported to a magical place.  Sadly no photography was allowed but I can show you the programme:

The stage came out in an arc so that the audience were ranged round it so everyone had a great view.  The sets were beautifully painted and the dancers were superb.  While I suspect this was primarily a performance for tourists no effort was spared in the excellence of the dancing or the music supplied by the mostly young musicians.  A memory for life!

To start my birthday day off my DH had ordered breakfast in our cabin,

It was a lovely thought but he enjoyed more of it than me as I couldn't eat most of the fruit and meats provided because of my dietary issues.  It felt very decadent to be drinking Bucks Fizz for breakfast and the pastry was delicious!  The rest of the day was spent quietly at sea and the waiters sang Happy Birthday to me at dinner.  Bless!

While we were away we missed the Opening Ceremony of the Olympic Games but I've caught up since we got back.  Wasn't it amazing?!  I was awestruck when all those chimneys came out of the ground.  Such a powerful image.  I don't always follow the Olympics but DH and I both came back from the cruise with chest infections and as I've also torn a muscle with coughing I'm not up to much, so there's been plenty of time to watch the action.  What role models for today's young people!  Our athletes and sportsmen and women are doing the country proud and how wonderful that Andy Murray won a Gold! 

I'll show you more soon.

Take it Further November & Cyber Fyber

In the best traditions of killing two birds with one stone I have decided that my fabric for the fabric swap just about fulfills the criterion for the November Take it Further Challenge. The theme for November was to use text as an inspiration. I have been interested for a long time in including text, or the suggestion of text, as a layer in my work and intend to come back to this theme/idea in the new year.
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Last year, around the time I started blogging, I had text in mind when making the fabric page above. The letters and numbers were printed from pre-cut shapes with acrylic paint. I include it here only to remind myself and give me food for thought.

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The fabric for the swap obviously has text in the background and I'm really pleased with the stamp that I bought at the K & S Show. This is the piece I am keeping for myself where I tried a couple of ideas out. I have used similar stitching on the other pieces which will be parcelled up for the other girls involved in the swap. I'm looking forward to receiving the swapped pieces, although this may not happen till after Christmas as the girls are busy.

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CyberFyber

It's not long now until Susan Lenz's wonderful CyberFyber Exhibition opens in Columbia, South Carolina. As part of the Exhibition there is chance to take part in an International ATC swap. You can find the details here and there is still time to join in. I am hoping to make 3 ATCs for this swap myself as a memento of this event. They will be swapped out on 17 January and you will get back an ATC for each that you send. I just have to get cracking!

A Little Craftiness

Do you remember this?

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I can't remember whether I've mentioned it before but, a few weeks ago, the four of us who have been doing the dyeing workshops agreed to take a section of our printed cloth, add to it and then cut it into 4 and swap. So that it's not too huge a task we have decided on a piece of fabric the size of a fat quarter (18 x 22 ins). I've been putting off starting a bit but I have been giving it quite a lot of thought. I do like the layered paint effects that Committed to Cloth and Ruth Issett use so I thought I would work along these lines as we have agreed not to overdye the cloth.

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The photograph above shows the cloth after two treatments. First, I did some shibori stitching and gathering and then applied bleach with a toothbrush. I left the bleach on for only a few minutes and then rinsed it well in cold water. Then, I used a text stamp I had bought at the K & S Show with Lumiere paint to print onto the surface. (The text stamp came from Dimension Fourth Ltd)

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I love feathers and have used a gull feather to print across the fabric, using the same Lumiere paint.

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These lovely marks are the negative images left where I had used the paper to smooth over the feather to obtain the print. They are almost more lovely than the positive images. (Excuse my shadow, I had to photograph this indoors).

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That's as far as I've gone today but I do intend to continue tomorrow. I am planning to continue printing but will introduce some complimentary colour, probably with some leaf shapes. I am so enjoying the printing that it is very tempting to keep going so I hope I don't wreck it by adding too much.