Still life class with my students, part one.

These are the paintings of rusty objects that students in my watercolour classes have been undertaking. We have made little concertina sketchbooks out of them as well as collaging the paper before painting. Hence you can see little bits of newspaper and sheet music underneath the work. You start a class thinking that all anybody will want to do is paint pretty landscapes and flowers and it turns out that everybody loves rusty clamps, nuts, bolts and spanners.

I'm posting this as a distraction from the Oreo cookie brownies that are cooling in the kitchen. It's either dither on the internet for half an hour or tuck in to the still warm tray with a spoon and a tub of ice cream. I've spent two months exercising and eating in moderation (cereal and muller rice) and was beginning to wonder why I felt so joyless.

Back again so soon?

There are days when I do nothing but answer the phone.
There are days when I spend hours riffling through enrolment forms, chasing up students who just don't want to fill in any more paperwork.
Then there are days when we have a new printing press delivered and I get to play all day!
This is my first attempt at a drypoint print.

Participation's what you need

Ironically, I had a word for 2011 and that word was participate. Ha.
I have been away and now I am back. For how long I don’t know. Truth be told, I am not very good at this blogging lark. This is because I am quite antisocial , quite shy and prone to extended periods of introspection and inactivity. Which is what I have been doing for the last 2 months; being maudlin and lazy and watching period dramas. I would love to say that I’ve been terribly busy, juggling creative projects, gadding about, being single and fabulous but no. That would not be true. There has been chocolate and Drinking Alone. Which is never good. So I haven’t blogged because I didn’t want to drag my sorry, miserable arse over to this space and complain and not offer up anything creative as some small compensation.

However, here you are. Some paintings and scribbles. Just for you.

Deep and crisp and even...

 An astonishing amount of snow has fallen here in the last 24 hours. It started yesterday morning at about 9am and stopped at 7ish yesterday evening. I have never seen so much snow in my whole life. Not even as a child when I  used to go sledging down the hill behind my house. I have been up there this morning to see the children enjoying themselves but they are only sledging down the south bank and have left the steeper, north side untouched. Wimps.
Yesterday, everything was quiet and everybody stayed tucked up in their homes, today the whole street is alive with the sound of shovels scraping the pavement and excited chatter.
I plan to spend this afternoon finishing another Christmas present, the embroidered fabric below is going to be another wintery cushion cover. The last one turned out quite well and now I have the stitching bug. It's funny how I always prefer to stitch in winter and paint in summer. I think it's because I find stitching a quiet, repetitive process whereas painting requires (I think) a bit more active participation which I don't seem to have so much energy for in the fallow months.

This will probably be my last post until after Christmas so I wish you all a merry and restful Yuletide and I'll be back soon with my resolutions and new year crafty plans.

Stocking fillers

This is something I have been working on for the past week. It will eventually become a cushion cover. There is plenty more to do still, I plan to do quite a bit more hand stitching around the felt tree (the same tree from this post and this post, when will I ever be free of this tree?) and I also want to stitch some seed beads on to the back ground. This will end up in some one's stocking, though I have not decided who is getting it yet!

A wintery weekend

It has been truly bitter here for the last couple of days. Last night and this morning saw the sharpest frost I have possibly ever seen. It was thick like snow. The air was filled with tiny ice crystals that looked like glitter floating. It was really quite magical.

I have been busy trying to make at least some handmade Christmas presents, I try to do this every year and usually end up frustrated, in a temper and out of time, but this year I vow to make at least three. I will post some pictures tomorrow of a little hand stitching project I have underway.

In other news I have been trying to make the flat look a bit more seasonal, I am aiming to have my own handmade twiggy tree rather than a bought one but it's really been a bit too cold to go out collecting twigs. In the mean time I have settled for some ivy on the mantle piece. It all looked lovely until I accidentally set fire to it with one of my lit candles.

Of remnants and doilies

Perhaps, still being fairly youngish (32 this weekend) I should be spending my Saturday nights out with my friends, pretending to have fun in crowded bars and checking my watch to see whether it's decently late enough to make my excuses and go home. Instead, I find myself watching Strictly..., three glasses in to a bottle of prosecco and making new cushion covers. And, by golly, am I proud of these.

Most of the fabric came from the Katherine House Hospice charity shop in Banbury market place. They have two things that put them a cut above many of the charity shops around here: a fabric remnants bin and a Random Crochet Doily Bin. Random Crochet Doily Bin is my favourite place to go rummaging and most of the bits I bought have been hand dyed and stitched to these cushions. I honestly didn't think they would turn out any good so I am really surprised. Now my bed is a lovely picturesque and comfy space to lay and read my books and listen to the thumping bass coming from the flat above, grumbling like the crotchety old spinster I am surely becoming.