Surface Design Class

Today I held a small surface design class with some of my old friends from Lyttelton Quilters. I took my camera but totally forgot about it until the end, so only have pics of my own work. We started with monoprints using thickened dye. Above is one that was printed 3 times - in red, yellow and then black.
In this print, I smeared paste thickly over the plastic backing, and combed it into swirls. Then I painted the dye over the paste.

Rust Madonna #2

Here is #2 in the series. These are fused but not stitched - I have promised my artist friend not to stitch them as she thinks I should frame them and get a gallery to sell them. I am in 2 minds about that. In the meantime, I have a third one planned that will black and white and rust.
For comparison, here are #1 and #2.

I know that I have been a bad blogger and blog-reader lately. This is because I have a lot going on in my other life - namely the "day job" that pays the bills. Because of an ongoing health problem, I decided to sell most of my financial services business effective 1st December. While this will help reduce my large mortgage, it also reduces my income considerably and I do not yet know what I'm going to be living on.

I intend to have December and January off, as there's little work for financial advisers over the Christmas and New Year holiday period anyway. Here in New Zealand, that is traditionally the time that people take their annual holidays, with schools are closed for 6 weeks and many businesses closed for up to a month.

Hopefully, I'll be able to spend more time on my art during this time.

It's official! I have character!

I've just done a test on the Authentic Happiness website, called 24 Signature Strengths. It's not one of those lightweight tests you get for blogs, the sort that only has 6 questions - this has 240 questions so is a bit more ...well...authentic. Below are my results - which seem pretty accurate to me:

Your Top Strength

Love of learning You love learning new things, whether in a class or on your own. You have always loved school, reading, and museums-anywhere and everywhere there is an opportunity to learn.

Your Second Strength

Creativity, ingenuity, and originality Thinking of new ways to do things is a crucial part of who you are. You are never content with doing something the conventional way if a better way is possible.

Your Third Strength

Appreciation of beauty and excellence You notice and appreciate beauty, excellence, and/or skilled performance in all domains of life, from nature to art to mathematics to science to everyday experience.

Your Fourth Strength

Curiosity and interest in the world You are curious about everything. You are always asking questions, and you find all subjects and topics fascinating. You like exploration and discovery.

Your Fifth Strength

Fairness, equity, and justice Treating all people fairly is one of your abiding principles. You do not let your personal feelings bias your decisions about other people. You give everyone a chance.

Does anyone else find this disturbing?

You can see a larger (and even more disturbing image) here. - you need to scroll down a bit to reach it. This skyscraper is in Dubai. Currently it's 707 metres (that's 2320 feet) tall and 160 floors, and growing. The big image gives you a better idea of the scale.

Dear Universe...

Taking a leaf out of the Yarn Harlot's book (although she's much funnier than I am), I thought I'd mention a few things to the Universe that aren't working here. Though my experience with the Universe is that it's definitely male, because it doesn't usually listen to me.

Here's a small list of things That Do Not Work:

1. When you're sending heavy rain over the country, please remember that the east coast of the South Island (our ancestors were SO original in their names) exists. We actually need the rain. The west coast doesn't.

2. The yapping spaniel that drives my dogs mad. Could you perhaps make it mute? Currently it yaps from the minute it leaves its home, all the way along the street. Or better still, get its owners to move away.

3. Birds getting trapped in the roof. Somewhere. I don't object to the rich variety of birdlife living on my roof - after all, it's the tallest building around - and the fact that the birds are having sex up there too - but can you please prevent a repeat of what happened last year? My houseguests objected to maggots falling out of the ceiling onto their pillows. For some reason.

4. And while we're on critters, perhaps you could arrange for some of my neighbours to have gardens? So that every cat in the immediate vicinity is not using MY garden to crap in.

Thanks.

Did you miss me? And the Rust Madonna moves on.

Not that I've been away - just without my main computer for 2 weeks. I also have a work laptop and a wee netbook, but all my dye business software and a multitude of documents as well as photo formatting software are on the desktop.

Here are some more lovely pinks and reds from the garden, as we approach the start of summer.
This is a completely gratuitous shot of Grizabella, for no other reason than she doesn't feature much normally. She is Seven's daughter, and a long-tailed Manx (Tailless) cat.
My vegetable garden is flourishing - this is lettuce, rocket, mesclun and baby spinach.
Of course, I haven't been idle. I'm playing with knitting fabric - hand dyed of course!
I also made a couple of changes to the Rust Madonna. My friend who is an artist (the painting kind) enthused over this, and wants me to frame it as is without stitching. Currently, I'm making a second version in different colours which I'll show within the next few days.

Still waiting......

....and being a bad blogger in the meantime - I am just so focused on other stuff, like what I'm going to do for a living after selling most of my financial services business (the "day job") that I have hardly read any blogs lately.

My daughter Sophie has just returned from a holiday in Samoa - you can see how crowded it is in the photo...I mean, there's another person on the beach!

Normal transmission will be resumed....

...once I sort out my desktop computer which has gone into cardiac arrest. In the meantime, here's a photo of the twins lying in front of the fire after their spring haircut, which happened to conincide with a frosty day earlier this week. Here in Canterbury, we can still get frosts in early November, which plays havoc with orchards and vineyards, as well as home gardeners who have already planted their vegetables out. Fortunately, mine were covered.

More of the spring garden

Some images from my garden today - clockwise from upper left: Aquilegia, Phlox, Campanula, Rhodohypoxis.
And a lovely Austin rose to finish with.

Fifi

"Don't put this on your blog!" she said, but I am anyway. I spent a pleasant morning with Sophie (aka Fifi) before dropping her in Christchurch. Because she' s cute.

Glorious glass

This is the lovely lampworked glass heart bead I bought yesterday at the Culverden Fete, an annual North Canterbury event that attracts in excess of 6000 people per year. It was lovely having a day off, the weather was kind and the setting was beautiful - a farm nestled up against hills, with views of the Southern Alps.

Movember

It's almost (but not quite) November. And this is the time for Movember.

Movember (the month formerly known as November) is a moustache growing charity event held during November each year that raises funds and awareness for men's health. It's an international event, and you can read more on the website here. Why? Because men are far more likely to think they're bulletproof and not go to the doctor's than women, so when things go wrong, they're often not picked up early when they can best be treated. Women are more aware of their bodies (hah! who can help but be aware of something that causes so many problems?) so we tend to get regular checkups.

My friend Jill's husband Arnold is supporting Movember this year, helping those men with prostate cancer and also depression. We have started supporting Arnold a bit early as he apparently needs a bit of head start in the mo growing department.

Kiwi bloggers who want to help can donate here. If you're from somewhere else, encourage your significant others (the males, anyway) to register and start mo growing.

Composition in Rust

I've been working on this over the weekend when it was a) too wet or b) too hot to be in the garden. I enjoy making rust fabric, but it's hard to find something interesting to make with it, as there is not enough contrast in my rusted fabric alone.

I decided to make a fused composition, so liberally borrowing from other artists' styles, I first drew a design. This is A3 size, drawn on two A4 pieces of printer paper taped together. I then cut the shapes out, one by one, and fused them to either rusted fabric or to other fabric that I felt would blend with it. I still wanted a fairly low contrast piece.

The fused pieces are just sitting on the background so there are gaps between some of them. What I'm doing now is deciding whether the fabrics are right. I am in 2 minds about the upper left-hand background (especially the horizontal stripes) and the orange piece of the first woman's hair. Your comments please!

Mary, Mary, quite contrary, how does your garden grow?

I love spring - it's my favourite season. This lilac bush travelled with me when I moved here. You can see a bit of the espaliered apple tree behind it in the fence corner. And something growing vigorously in front.
It's also iris time.
And flowering cherry time. I can see some lovely grass seed heads there too. Weeding time as well!
Look at this Meyer lemon - who thought a tree this size could have 7 huge fruit? I have to find somewhere to plant this now.

Labour Weekend

It's the start of Labour Weekend here in New Zealand (unless you're like me and took yesterday off as well). It originated to celebrate legislation bringing in the 40 hour working week, which the majority of NZers no longer actually work. It's the first public holiday since the start of winter, so it's always a popular holiday. Traditionally the weather is crappy, and this weekend lives up to the tradition, with strong cold winds forecast here for this afternoon.

I took some photos of lovely flowering plants for this post, but failed to notice my camera was set on "manual" so the colours were quite strange. The only one I've kept is this pic of the raised gardens out the back that I've just planted out with things that can tolerate the current weather. I've just bought another big garden, like the one in the foreground, but I'll wait till the weather improves before setting that up. I'm planning to have fresh vegetables all year round, but have also planted scented flowers like stocks and nicotiana in these gardens, so I can enjoy flowers as well.

And the winner is....

...Anna. Now I have to package up a wee gift for her and send it off to the UK. Just a note to those who leave comments - if you don't have a profile or any contact details on Blogger, I have no way of getting in touch with you.

I was interested to get such a range of replies to my questions, which only goes to show that we are indeed all different.

And so that this isn't entirely a text posting, here's a photo of some small bags I made about 5 years ago.

Porn for food lovers

I couldn't resist these beautiful purple asparagus. They look too good to eat...but I'm going to!

First the blues, now the greens

You will need to read the previous post to follow what I'm talking about here.This is Brilliant Blue coupled with Lemon Yellow & Turquoise - probably the closest to what I wanted.
Though Sapphire Blue with Lemon Yellow & just a bit of Turquoise look good too.
I also tried dyeing fabric with some natural wool dyes and garden chemicals. From left to right - lichen, little orange seeds, copper sulphate, sandalwood sawdust and iron sulphate.

500 down....and a question for my blog readers

This is my 500th Post! I've decided to send a small hand made gift (or 2) to one of the blog readers who leaves a comment and answers my question. This is a "pull the name out of hat" thing, there's no right or wrong answer. Read on....

I have always thought that everyone sees colours and patterns when they close their eyes. Apparently, this is not so. I see beautiful clear colours, and often intricate designs and patterns - sometimes when I'm asked "where do you get your inspiration from?", I can only reply that I've"seen" them in my head. I had no idea that this was not what everyone did. Above are some blues that I've dyed this weekend in an attempt to get the blue I "saw", and I have some greens percolating at present.

So my question is: do you see colours and designs too? And if you're an artist of any kind, do you use these in your work?

PS I am adding this after reading the first few comments - I don't TRY to see anything, the colours and designs come completely unbidden and are unrelated to anything I'm working on.

Nature - the greatest artist

Whether you believe the creatures of the world were created by evolution or God, there is no doubt that they are magnificent. The photos today celebrate World Animal Day which was held earlier this month. Above is a black Persian cat - I loved this photo for the stark contrast of the fur and the eyes.
And this collage is to show some of the amazing colours and shades and patterns that occur in wild animals - truly beautiful. We artists can only try to produce something this good, while nature does it every day.