Here’s another interlaced stitch for you to try – you might find it handy for Christmas decorations and cards.
The instructions look daunting, and the first few may seem very tricky to work. But once you’ve got the idea, you’ll find the stars quick to stitch. I suggest practising on Aida fabric with a fairly thin thread until you are confident, then you can try working on other evenweave fabric or just using a circle of 8 holes made in thin card. Continue reading
I’ve been busy. I’ve now got nineteen pieces ready for the Art Show for Loncon3 in the Excel Centre – which is all set to be the biggest ever World Science Fiction Convention. (A scary thought, as I don’t enjoy being in large crowds.) There will be far too much going on for me to see everything, I’m spoilt for choice. Somewhere among those nearly 10,000 people will be lot of good friends that I am looking forward to seeing again. And an Art Show.
For my fractal artwork, I have splashed out on good, ready-cut mount boards. The framer around the corner from me here in Shrewsbury retired a couple of years ago, and I miss his selection of ready-cut frames. So I tried Cotswold Mounts, online at www.cotswoldmounts.co.uk. I’ve not used Cotswold Mounts before, but I will certainly use them again in future. My order arrived a few days later: securely packed, clean, sturdy and flawless. I added some of their precut backing boards and cello-bags to my order, too, which made mounting the pictures a brief pleasure rather than the usual long, slow chore that I dread. Most importantly, the black-cored mount board gives the fractals a lot of added ‘oomph’ and brings out the colours. Now I just have to show the finished pieces next weekend and – with luck – sell them.
I’ve not been doing much stitchery. Apart from finishing that art show stuff and the day job, I’ve been engaged in furious housework. The flat has been getting a long overdue tidy up, spring-clean and sort out, ready for my Australian friend Kevon, who is coming over to London for the convention and who will be coming back to stay with me for a week afterwards. I’m just about ready now, so we can relax in civilised surroundings.
My apologies for a long delay since the last post. Life’s been a bit busy.
My father’s health started deteriorating in April. By Easter he seemed to be failing fast. We thought it was something connected with his stroke at the end of January – the stroke he seemed to have survived so well. It wasn’t. While he was in Hereford, the hospital doctor had stopped one of his usual medications. Once his GP restarted the tablets, he started improving mentally and physically. He’s pretty much back to where he was before the stroke now, and keeping busy with various projects. But April and May were a bit of a blur as a result. I also had a few hospital visits of my own, so my spare time has been a bit limited.
No further news of the death watch beetle (no more click-click-clicks in the quiet, as the mating season is over), and no more news of getting the leak in the ceiling by the window fixed. So that side of the living room is decorated with my hi-fi speakers in a tower, topped by a piece of chipboard, topped by a spare plastic washing up bowl. Not an elegant piece of sculpture, but effective. Fortunately, there hasn’t been enough heavy rain to start the leak again recently. I will be very glad when something is done about the roof.
Thank you for your comments on choosing a third flower for my set of silk pictures. I am definitely planning to do daisies now. I haven’t done more than look at daisies very carefully, make a few sketches and do a couple of small samples of petals to see how to go about them. That project is on hold. I’m trying to get work done for the art show at the World Science Fiction Convention, Loncon 3, in August. The deadline for finalising what I will put in the show is fast approaching, so I dare not start any other embroidery projects until I’ve got the show pieces done and mounted. I’ve made a start – you can see a couple of the coloured drawings here.
I’d never found a four-leaf clover before this summer, but I have found a clump of white clover, quite near where I work, which has a tendency to put out the occasional quatrefoil leaf among the usual three-leaflet ones. In fact I’ve found four of them on that group of plants so far. I picked a few of the dead flower heads this week, and I have put them into some soil in my Dad’s garden – in the hope that some of the heads have viable seeds and that some of the seeds carry the four-leaf trait and one or two of them will germinate. You never know, I might be lucky!
Guy Fawkes night already. About time I updated the blog.
I’m currently in a last-minute mad rush to get my art show pieces ready for Novacon – the science fiction convention I go to every year. It starts this Friday. One of the pieces I’m taking is this stitched box called Sugar Rush.
I’m doing my best to get a second stitched box finished in time, but that’s looking unlikely.
I am taking two stitchery pictures – this piece of whitework is called Shadow of the Exterminator:
Alchemical Dragon – a pastel drawing:
And several pieces of digital art, this one is An Entertainment.
Right, I’d better get back to finishing that last stitched box before it is Too Late….
Every year for the past eighteen years, I’ve been to the annual science fiction convention, Novacon, organised by the Birmingham Science Fiction Group. My nineteenth, Novacon 39, is coming up this weekend and I am busy trying to get some of my stuff together for the art show. One of the stitched boxes I want to take to the show is still only half finished, so it is a race against time.
If you see someone stitching furiously on a train to Nottingham on Friday morning, it will probably be me!
Tortoise Loft - the blog 