Painting Poo...

I'm between commissions at the moment, which gives me a few days to get on with a painting that has been in my head for weeks.  This will be a pair of gannets on a cliff face, based on a fabulous photograph taken by a friend of mine while in Scotland.  I've started by painting the background, because I felt that had to go in first as the birds are so white that I need to be able to see what they are against when they are painted.  This is in watercolour. 

I started with some mixed washes and sprinkles of salt for texture, but I think most of the texture achieved has been lost after painting in the shadows and deeper colours.  Not too bothered about that, if it shows, it shows.  The further the painting progresses, the more I realise just how much guano there is to be painted!  A lot of that is being added with white acrylic on a stick and smeared with fingers.  I love painting...

Been struggling over this - had a real mental blockage, but I think I'm on the right track now.  Can you guess what it is yet?

We visited a shop called The Range yesterday - not been there before, and probably just as well as I came out much lighter in the wallet.  They have a huge selection of art materials, and as well as all the framing essentials I was after for an upcoming exhibition, I found this nifty little tool kit - hole punchers, tweezers, needle nosed pliers, big needles and a dinky little hammer. Because a girl can never have enough tools. 

Meanwhile, the garden is going great guns - discovered our potted Torbay palm has flowers for the first time ever.  Very excited to see how they turn out.

Plus the tomato plants are flowering like mad - praying the weather stays reasonably warm so that we actually get some early tomatoes.  Have to admit, with all the goings on while nursing Clovis over the past few months, I cheated and bought small tomato plants from the garden centre - not much time or enthusiasm for planting seeds this year.  Just as well I think as we appear to have a bumper crop of slugs and snails who are making short work of any seedlings I do manage to grow.

On the needles...nothing, it's all sewing this week!

A Leopard & The Best Named Yarn Ever...

I'm still in the big cat zone after the tiger last week.  I searched out a cd full of reference photos that a friend of mine gave me after her trip to Namibia, and chose this leopard resting in the undergrowth.  This is in watercolour and still in the very early stages - you can see where I have marked out grass stems & whiskers in masking fluid, and the only complete part of the whole painting is the eyes.  I'm hoping to put in a good few hours on this over the next few days as I have no paid work on at the moment....not sure if that is a good thing or not!

I bought this yarn at Unravel in February this year, firstly because of the deep vibrant colours (which don't really show in the photo) and then I was completely won over when I found out it was called Toxic Bog!  I've been looking at it for months, waiting for an opportunity to start using it.  I found a pattern that I really liked for a lacy cowl, but after three failed starts, I decided the pattern and the yarn were just not compatible.  So I began again with a different shawl pattern called Dragonfly Wings, which hopefully will compliment the yarn perfectly.  At the moment it looks like nothing much, but give it time!

For the first year in quite a while, the garden is producing nicely.  Yesterday I gathered this lot, as well as some rhubarb later on.  We may look like runner beans come the end of the summer, but they are delicious.  The tomatoes are doing well (hooray!) and I am picking quite a few cucumbers, as well as courgettes.  The apple tree survived falling into the pond and is still laden with fruit, and the grapevine is yet again full of grapes even after being pruned very severely during the winter.  It's wonderful to be able to get out there and work it all without being disturbed by builders as in previous years.

There's a bit of sewing going on - more later.

Rounding Up The Week...

I've been after navy & white self-striping sock yarn for a while - it doesn't appear to exist other than on Etsy, and there it is too expensive to buy just to play with.  I did find some yarn in a wider stripe but found when it arrived that it was quite chunky & definitely not suitable for socks.  So I knitted a triangular scarf with it, working out that if I turned the bottom corner when one ball finished, the next ball should take it nicely to the end....no such luck!  I was left with about five inches left to knit when the yarn ran out.  Luckily I found some alpaca in navy that just about matches - you can see the join if you look closely but it should pass muster.  Consequently, this one stays with me and just needs some pretty dolphin beads sewn to the three corners once the scarf is completely dry.

I found some lovely fuzzy yarn called Eskimo Kisses that is ideal for shaggy dogs - so I started knitting a little lurcher with it.  Looks good so far!

I quite often get asked for free knitting patterns.  Now, while I am always more than happy to pass on a reference to a pattern book I have used or to give advice, I am not quite so happy to just give away something I have worked hard on.  Let's put it in perspective here - if you spent several days making a fancy cake, mixing, baking, decorating, and then someone you don't know came along and said 'That's nice, I like that - can I have it?'  What would your reply be?  I think that's all I need to say on that!  Also, a lot of the time there is no pattern - with the dogs I make, there is a start-up pattern I use as a basis, but then I go into free-styling, extending legs, changing ears, sculpting with sewing after the body has been stuffed, embroidering faces, brushing yarn to get a hairy effect, the list of alterations goes on, so each little pooch is individual.  I hate to say no, but sometimes I just have to.  Plus, I'm trying to make a living here!

I had another brilliant lesson with one of my students yesterday - the boy has really got the hang of watercolours and is so happy to paint little still lifes each week.  This week it was a simple tomato & courgette from the garden - not that simple when you come down to painting them though!  This is my quick painting - I had to keep one step ahead of him in order to be able to advise which colours & techniques to use.  I really enjoy these lessons, they keep me on my toes!

I had a bit of a whinge at Waitrose about their 'My Picks' scheme the other day - long story but I missed out on a discount due to them not having the item I was after.  They kindly sent me a voucher by recompense so I spent it on this little greenhouse, which was half price as well, so I got it for a measly £2.50.  Who doesn't love a bargain!

Tiger! All Done...

Sometimes a painting just whizzes by with no serious problems and this was one of them. Perhaps because it is a familiar subject or perhaps because I have missed painting so much the past few weeks, who knows!

Watercolour with a bit of acrylic ink for the whiskers - up for sale in my Etsy shop shortly.

In the winter I re-potted a baby spider plant using some compost from our heap in the garden and put the little pot in my work room.  After a while, what looked like a tomato plant sprung up next to the spider plant, and grew and grew. So I put it in a pot of it's own and left it on the sill, whereupon it grew to reach the top of the window and produced fruit - I picked this ripe tomato yesterday and will be putting it in a salad today!

Weekend Round-Up

Yes, this is finished - I went over it carefully yesterday and could find nothing left to do.  So I signed it, trimmed it down, varnished it and now it is ready to go.  Now I have to find something else to paint, preferably in splashy watercolours.

I've been knitting a couple of these - each flower is no more than a centimetre across.  They are for the animation, so of course have to be in proportion with everything else.

Also knitted this tiny little chap - using 3 ply baby yarn this time.  I like how he has turned out, fits in the palm of my hand.  Have a look and see the difference between him and the last one I made:

Same pattern, just a radical change of yarn. 

We've been having some differences of opinion with the local magpies lately.  They seem to think we need to be woken up at 5 a.m. with some ear-piercing screeching outside out bedroom window, we beg to differ.  So we initially joked that we needed a stuffed bird of prey out there to scare them off - turns out, you can buy model hawks all over the place for that very purpose.  Now we just have to figure out how to attach it to the porch roof.

If it had been in place yesterday, we wouldn't have had the little drama played out at 7a.m. in what used to be a car park.  We heard the most awful noise, every bird in the neighbourhood was squawking at the top of it's voice, magpies, crows, you name it, it was perched out there shouting.  We went to see what the commotion was about and discovered a magpie had managed to get itself wedged in the builders' wire fencing - he could have slipped through the gap, but one leg was twisted around the wires and he was gripping it for dear life.  So after failed attempts at untangling him and getting pecked badly (I was bleeding!) we got the wire cutters and a tea-towel, and cut him out.  Off he flew, unscathed, nary a thank you.  However, it was quiet out there at dawn today....

Having lost the tomato race, there isn't such a sense of urgency - but I do have one lone tomato coming. The others are flowering or getting ready to flower - we'll get there eventually!

I Don't Know Either....

It's been a funny old week.  I've been knitting this - it was a bit worrying initially when I had what was basically a badly made grey sock, but with some folding and stitching, it did take the shape I was after. I quite like him, he has an air of resignation about him...

I've been putting in as much work as I can on this - I expect to the uninitiated there doesn't look to be much difference from the last picture I posted, but I have been painting - outer edges mainly, sleeves, horse's neck and a bit of the mane.

I've already lost the tomato race with Soggibottom blog - I can't compete with Devon climate!  My poor home-sown tomatoes have had to put up with torrential rain, chilly nights and a catastrophic hailstorm, so the fact they are still standing is a miracle.

My shop-bought plants have flowers on them at least!

We had a visit from Midge of Soggibottom this week, just a quick one.  By way of compensation she gave my daughter a birdbox her husband had kindly made.  Stacie could not wait to start painting it!  I do think any bird planning to nest in it had better have a pair of sunglasses handy though.

I have paintings on show at the Fleet Art Society exhibition being held at the Church on the Heath, Elevetham Heath, Fleet for the nexy couple of days.  It's a new location for the society and hopefully will bring in more visitors as i is right next to a large Morrisons and has a free car park.  We shall see - come along if you are in the area!

Give Me Just A Little More Time......

It is very hard trying to combine running a house and family, a part-time job, painting, and knitting work.  Usually it is the painting that suffers from being left until another day, which is so frustrating as painting is my favourite thing to do in the world.  Despite trying very hard, I still end up only spending and hour or two per day (and not every day either!) on this - there is always someone needing something from me!  But I have to make a concerted effort to finish this picture by the end of the week as next week is half term (no day job!) and really want to spend as much time as I can on a commission. 

I also need to finish this - not due to any time constraints but because it is driving me crazy! I could not believe that after nearly three hours last night I had sewn so many tiny triangles together and still did not have enough.  This is why I do not do patchwork, it would send me barking mad.  Hopefully, there is light at the end of the tunnel, and the next batch of triangles will be the last.

This is for the animation - next on the needles, a plane!?

Some of my problems are self-inflicted - last week I put ny name down to have a stall at the annual local dog show in July....then thought I had better actually have something to sell while I am there.  So amongst everything else, I am trying to make as many little dog sets as I can - I found some wonderful Rowan fine boucle yarn on sale at Black Sheep wools, ideal for small furries.

And then of course there is the garden, which calls me like a siren when the sun shines.  Sunday was spent potting out tomatoes and clearing out the greenhouse - another time consuming pastime.  I love this time of year, when everything in the garden is full of potential and there is the excitement of finding out what made it through the winter - plenty this year, survivors include geraniums, agapanthus, canna lily, and Vietnamese coriander.

Of course, I must also learn not to get distracted by things like this - a leopard with three babies on webcam. I have been watching them grow for a couple of weeks now - absolutely fascinating!

Paint, Knit, Garden....

The leopard is taking shape - I am trying to hurry it and I really shouldn't as it won't be hurried.  I was going to make it purely pencil, but I just couldn't get the whiteness for the whiskers and around the eyes, so have started to use white acrylic ink.  It seems softer-looking than acrylic paint and easier to keep accurate.  I also had a bit of a problem with the tonal values against the background colour in places which was easily rectified by some gentle shading in a soft green which actually adds some depth which I rather like.

I've had a bit of fun this week knitting these chunky bracelets from a pattern in a past Molly Makes magazine.  They look plaited but are in fact a triple cable.

I've been wearing this one ever since I made it, it's so cool!  A tricky knit in thick aran yarn on quite thin needles but  that way it keeps its shape.

This stained glass window is a fiddly knit too - each little piece is made separately and sewn together.  I could have made it in one piece, but that would mean the yarn being carried behind the work and as this will be back-lit, I wanted there to be nothing showing through that might spoil the look of it. Lots more little pieces to knit and sew and then the black outlines to be embroidered over the top.  It's on hold at the moment as I have a rush job, kitting out one of the puppets.  Spent last night figuring out how to knit very small tools.....

It's that time of year again when Midge from Soggibottom blog and I enter into fierce competiton in the garden.  Yes, the Tomato Race is back on!  This year I decided it was kill or cure as far as growing seeds was concerned - no mollycoddling in the house, just sown straight out in the plastic greenhouse to weather the elements.  They seem to be doing all right - this is half of them.

Here's the other half.  If they all grow to size, I have no idea where to put them as my 'tomato space' has enough room for about 6 plants.

I've also cheated a little - the seeds I planted were for normal size tomatoes, no cherry tomatoes.  So I have bought a couple of plants today from the garden centre.

Who could resist these stripy beauties?  Let's hope we have a better growing summer than the past couple of years. Fingers crossed!

See Me Run...

Something was strange yesterday afternoon....the builders were definitely there,six feet from our garden, but there was no noise...no axle grinders grinding, no generator buzzing, no saws sawing, and no ribald banter.  Not only that, the neighbours weren't playing their stereos, hammering and banging or shouting at each other...could it be that I would get the opportunity to take my drawing board outside? 

So I got everything together, fresh paper on board, pencil sharpened, kindle playing some suitable tunes,and decamped to the patio table.  Spent a very pleasant hour sketching out the next dog portrait, then decided to get the watercolours and do a few impromptu watercolour sketches of the plants around me.  The one above is my stevia plant.

Some green tomatoes and a few salad leaves.  I was just really getting into this when.....it rained!  What to save first, the kindle, my drawing board or the watercolours?  What a scramble! At least I got some quality time out there.

I've had my phone for a couple of years now but never worked out how to get the photos off it and onto the computer.  Yes, I am indeed a techno-numpty.  However, a penny dropped somewhere yesterday and I finally managed it.  Interesting to look at pictures I had stored on there from past winters. This peacock butterfly is from a walk yesterday.

I took my daughter to feed the fish at a local park - lots of ducks and a very wily heron, who makes it his business to wait on the sidelines, watch carefully until the fish are all there, busy eating bread, then swoops in and grabs his own fish dinner.

Did you know herons swim like ducks?  No, neither did I. I thought their legs would be too gangly, but here is a photo to prove me wrong.

Earlier this year we fed geese at Fleet Pond and one pair had goslings - how cute are they?

I wonder if I will get a peaceful afternoon today too?

Among the Rushes...

The little frog required some scenery, so he now has a lily pad and some bullrushes.  You might also notice that he has managed to catch himself some lunch - that is a 'knitted' fly. It's just a few stitches sewn together with wings cut from a plastic bag, then legs of thread.  It would look convincing if left on your dinner...

I know I lost the tomato race with Soggibottom this year - she has been eating her tomatoes for about a week now, so it was quite close run.  However, my plants have been battling the elements outside whilst hers are mollycoddled in a greeenhouse!  However, this is my first picking, two more tomatoes than I managed throughout the whole of last summer.  Jolly nice they were too!

Cockle Shells & Silver Bells....

No silver bells but plenty of shells in these garden wind chimes.  I've had the shells for a very long time but never got around to using them, so finally a couple of weeks ago (when I retrieved my drill from the porch debacle!) I drilled holes in them, found some wonderful curly pieces of wood in the bargain bucket at our local garden centre, and strung them up.  This one is my favourite, with the wood used vertically.

But this one is nice too!  I made them for sale at the summer fair I attended yesterday - once again sales were very low and I returned with most of my stock intact, which was disheartening.  I considered putting these for sale on Etsy but worry that postage would cost far too much because of the weight.  If you would like one of these and would be willing to pay the postage, do get in touch.  In the meantime, they will adorn my house instead - something I have no problem with whatsoever!

In the garden, I actually have a couple of very small tomatoes.  Despite the fact the tomato plants have been battered by wind, suffered torrential rains, and had to deal with unseasonally cold temperatures, they are now flowering so I am hopeful we might get a better crop this year than the past couple of 'summers'.  Early days yet - last year the weather deteriorated from the end of June onwards, so I could still lose them.  As far as the competition with Soggibottom, I think I have lost that already!

Bizarrely, despite the horrendous weather over the past 10 months, we have a bumper lot of figs on our tiny tree this year.  No idea why that should be, I just hope we get to eat them.

On the needles this week....car wheels.  Tedious but necessary, four down, one to go.

Pick & Mix

Today's post contains a bit of everything!  First, here is some cute yarn I bought from Yarn Paradise.  I can thoroughly recommend this website - the choice of yarn is incredible, the prices are cheap (as long as you don't mind buying in bulk, but bulk can sometimes only mean 2 or 3 balls) and the shipping is by DHL and fast.  I'm not sure what I will make with pink yarn threaded through with little dolls, but whatever it is, I can't wait!

I finally got around to sewing a food bowl and toy for this little cat, so now he is up for sale in my Etsy shop.  He's one of a kind, seeing as he is a reject from the animated film - just too big!

This zombie is also finished - I have a summer fair coming up so am trying to build my stock up a little.  I'm not sure if anyone else likes kntted zombies as much as me - we shall see!

But look, his arms, legs and head come off and his stomach falls out - what's not to like??  If you'd like a zombie too, please get in touch and assure me I am not the only one....

This was another idea I saw in a magazine recently - minature seaside planting.  I'm really pleased with how this turned out - the planter held some tired daffodil bulbs for the past year and needed rethinking.  The two plants are actually from the Alpine section of the garden centre, but when put with some pebbles, gravel and shells, look suitably seasidey.

This is still as far as my tomatoes have got - plenty of flowers but not much else as yet.  I suspect I have already lost in the Great Tomato Race - we can't compete with a warm Devon greenhouse!

And finally, if you have seen the new sweetener Stevia on the shelves of your local supermarket and wondered what it is made from, here is the plant.  I am a sucker for unusual plants and when I saw this a couple of weeks ago, could not resist.  If you break off a leaf and chew it, at first it tastes kind of like grass (mmm, grass..) but then when you have really pulped it, the sweetness comes out.  I don't think you are meant to do this!  I read yesterday that you are supposed to harvest your leaves at the end of the summer, dry them in the sun (in the UK???) and then make infusions out of them with boiling water, rather like tea, then the end result can be used to sweeten drinks etc.  If there are any leaves left by autumn, I shall give this a go.

Next on the needles, three bluetits.  Rather like buses, you get none for ages then three come along at once....