The pleasure of a rusty box

Great find yesterday, a wonderful place to keep all the "tools' I use for painting fabric with rust.

Yes, I'm easily pleased ...

Somewhere to store all the small things  - screws, bolts, old secateurs, etc. etc.  to make patterns that ask the question what does stitch add?

That question is key for me. But its not sufficient on its own. There is also the necessity of how to make a form of some sort, a piece, so to speak.

Today's task is to consider that for the rusted fabric in my stash ... perhaps in a bigger piece than I  have previously.

Nuff said.  I'm off to lay out the rusted fabric so that each time I walk by it there's a chance an idea will come to mind.

Have a good day

Worms and experimental fish eyes

 Some days are memorable, on others I experiment with how best to sew fish eyes and fish (!) for worms in the richness of what they make from our kitchen waste.   Ordinary tasks ...

I love that this 'can of worms' is about 20 years old, is very well travelled and always, of course, stays out in the elements.

Yet, it is intact, does its magic work today as it always has done. Magic that means we fill it with kitchen waste and a few worms, and it gives us beautiful compost.


OK, the egg shells don't quite get fully broken down and I did find a piece of string, a plastic label from, probably, an apple. The only thing that stays the same as when it goes in is an avocado stone. What is it about these? Clearly, the worms cannot munch through that tough outer skin.

As for fish eyes, I've been playing with different ways to give my quilted fish a face. I have a large, well, very large, collection of buttons but I didn't like the way they looked. I also discarded painted eyes  ... not really my style.

 Had a go at a hand sewn eye ...  really hard to get a neat enough shape.

The winner so far is a programmed stitch on the Bernina machine ... looks good, will be the same for all 24 fish, and I can add a french knot in the centre. Now to find the right colour thread that will show on all the different colour fish ... back soon, Please leave a comment.

These are definitely not resolutions

Happy New Year ou Bonne Annee (sans accent!!). I'm in France enjoying unseasonably warm and often sunny weather.

Its that time of the year, people start something new, commit, make promise to themselves. I've done it, although not for many years and this is not what I am doing this year.

That said I've joined a group thats all about walking 1000 miles in 2018 - check it out on FB. And I've devised a way of keeping track of my miles via my Fitbit. Its a bit galling when you find out that what you think of as your long morning walk with the dog is only 1.7 miles so I'm tracking my weekly goal of 20 miles and I'm counting all the walking I do for the rest of my day. So far so good. As I walk I'm listening to Hilary Rodham Clinton reading her book What Happened via the Audible app.  I enjoy this sort of book as a listener much more than as a page reader. See more at www.audible.co.uk

Here's my page reading at the moment ...

Short stories -very readable with a focus on Vietnamese family life 

Just started this ... so far its all about the death of Chatterton & Dylan Thomas .. not as boring as i though it might be 

Edgy, unusal and brave poems in here by a wonderful poet 

What's not to like ... I can read about yoga and practice my french in one place 

A book to pick up and peruse  ... early days for me reading this   ... lots to inspire and help with so far

and now I'm saying this very very quietly but I've also joined a project called 10 minutes drawing ... its all the fault of the wonderful women who run the Design for Stitch course I'm on this year and two of the equally wonderful students I'm learning with. 

Enough said, here's my first two efforts, already on Instagram where we are all sharing our efforts at what I call mark making. Thus avoiding, whenever possible, the dreaded D word!!!

This morning's mark making was done with an iPencil ... so the project is a bonus as its encouraging me to learn how to use this and to mark make in Adobe Sketch. There may be a quilty thing from all this in a few years but maybe not. 

Finally, I've finished another almost lacey scarf in sock weight yarn and have started to add quilting to what I call my 'brick' quilt.   I love the effect of quilting with a double needle. Shame that I managed to break two of these just doing a few rows of stitching ... all down to some less than easy fabric and the rusty effect  -you live and you learn especially that the Bernina sewing 'computer' is a tad sensitive to stuff like that. 

Photos below and thank you for reading.