A Good Day

One of my favourite places on earth is the Parque el Teidi and this is where I spent my birthday and had a wonderful time. We always hire a car for a few days when we are in Tenerife and a visit is never complete until I have been up to the Teidi. I don’t mean I go right to the summit of the volcano, but to the wonderful park that surrounds it and it is just like visiting another planet, which is why I suppose they use this area to make films, in particular, The Planet of the Apes was filmed here. When we got up this morning and looked out of the window we could see that it was very clear on the top, so decided to go up today. Where better to go on my birthday than one of my favourite places?




Would you believe I took 190 photos during the day? Well I did. I love my little pocket camera which is a Pentax Optio. It’s got a wonderful Macro and a Super Macro as well which I use quite a lot when I photograph my textiles, but the LCD viewer is too shiny and it has no view finder to use when it’s too sunny. So I just have to aim in the right direction and hope for the best.


DH took a few photos of me by the Tiedi and just pointed the camera at me, they are quite passable considering. If anyone has an answer to this problem I would love to hear it.


When I came back there was a bottle of Champagne waiting for me from the hotel management! They must have their computer set to tell them when someone has a birthday while staying here.

PTB motif

This is what I have been playing with tonight using my favourite motif from Plas Tan y Bwlch.
My birthday is not until Friday, but thanks to everyone who sent good wishes. I am able to connect to the Internet, but it is rather inconvenient as I have to go down to the hotel lounge to do it. The blog is written using Microsoft Word which is transferred to Blogger in the lounge.
Teidi is the highest mountain in Spain, it is a Volcano and was active as late as the 18th century. As the plane approached Tenerife I caught a sight of it above the clouds and hurriedly grabbed my camera.


Mount Teidi (volcano)


Wind farm

I also took a quick photo of a wind farm as we were landing. It’s not very good quality I’m afraid.

Palm tree
This looks like a very ordinary tree, but when I looked at the trunk I found it so inspiring. Here is a small sample for you.


Tree trunk.

Busy

I'm having a birthday soon and I have already had 2 cards as I will be away on holiday at the time. This lovely textile card above is from Sue Gallacher and it doesn't do justice to it I'm afraid, we share a birthday, but I'm just a tiny bit older (smile).


Between packing and cleaning, yes, cleaning! It's a good thing my DH insists on taking me on holiday a couple of times a year. This is the push I need to give the house an extra clean. I hate leaving the place messy. But I have been having a little play and above is a little peep for you.
I hope to blog now and then while I'm away as I'm taking my laptop with me. I won't be going to bed tonight, we are leaving at 4 am this morning.

ATC

I thought I'd explain why I was disappointed with my latest ATC's. The fabric I made with the absorbemt paper turned out really well and the stitching finished it off well. I cut them out and decided not to back with any support fabric, such as Vilene. I have received some very good ATC's that are soft and pliable, so I experimented. I tend to like a fairly neat finish to my work, but this time the zigzag stitching wasn't satisfactory at all, so I went over it again. I had used a dark colour, but as I worked it became darker than I had intended and that was what I felt spoiled it. But as I said before I really enjoyed the whole process.

I spent most of the day tidying up the very messy side of the eaves, which is very awkward and tiring as it's impossible to stand up in this part of the loft. It looks a lot better, but I think I have a couple of days more work on it.

ATCs

The following 12 ATC's took me nearly all day to create and I'm not all that happy with the result either.


The one's above are in very different colours from those I normally use. They were all made using absorbent kitchen paper and a development of ones I'd made previously. They were painted with a roller using acrylics, sprayed with Moonglow and stamped with various stamping inks and embossing powders. I used variegated quilting thread in matching colours.


These were also painted in acrylics with a roller, but this time leaving quite a lot of the white paper showing. I added sequins in copper and some hand stitching.

An ATC

This is the beautiful ATC I received from Emmy yesterday morning. The design and colours are striking and the work is so very fine.


Over the weekend I have been tidying the eaves in my loft workroom. There are four small rooms, but it's impossible to stand in any of them. Things tend to get thrown in especially around the doors, until eventually it's impossible to get inside. Today I decided to tidy the third room, two rooms are already tidied. But stooping for hours is tiring and this evening I decided to play with PSP instead of doing any stitching. there's still the untidiest of the four to sort out. This is the one that has all my machine knitting yarn and rubbish in. I'm hoping to make a start tomorrow.

Baby Play Mat

Just finished a Play Mat for a new baby girl. I found this fabric at Abakhan recently and thought it was nice and colourful for a baby. I stitched out Welsh words for her and made a bag to put it in with Leusa's Play Mat on it using my Bernina and the Artista software. I put a handle on it as I don't think cords are safe for babies.


I had fabric left over which made two blankets with blue ribbon for my own little grandson who has just left his cot to sleep in a bed!

Another ATC

This morning I received this lovely ATC from Corryna Janssen in the Netherlands. This is her website Corryna's blog


I was thrilled when my friend Rhiannon brought me this old newspaper she thought I'd be interested in. She must be doing an early Spring Clean! The date on it is April 29 1949. I was 12 at this time and this newspaper has reminded me of how much everything was changed.


Do any of you remember when nylon stockings started to be available? You can see from this advert that they were very new and difficult to get hold of at this time. It was a couple of years later that I had my first pair, bought for me by my big brother. They were nothing like those you wear today, they were far nicer and softer and lasted longer. They were more luxurious.

My brother was doing his National Service and was sent to Amman in Jordan and later went to Egypt because of the troubles in the Suez Canal and his National Service lasted far longer than it should have to my mother's great concern. He remembered being in a Guard of Honour to King Hussein who was at the time in a public school in England and had arrived home by plane.
His suitcase was full of gifts for myself and my mother. How I wish I still had those gifts to share with you.

Bits and bobs

I thought I'd make your mouth water with this little piece of art made by Sue Gallacher, who brought it to show us at SerenTex today. I hope to be able to show you the whole piece on SerenTex later.


This is another mouth watering photo especially for Gina, who seems to have a love of cupcakes, and there's a whole tin of them over on the SerenTex website. These were made by Rhiannon who spoils us with her lovely cakes. If you pop over to Gina's Fan My Flame blog now you will see the most fantastic selection of creative dolls.


I made these cards last night. The card on the left is for a cousin who is ill and the card on the right is for a member of SerenTex.


The painters have covered the windows and I though it looked very inspiring from inside and could not resist a photo.

Tidying my workroom

This ATC was supposed to take me 20 minutes. It's a challenge for the Textile Challenges group. I was in such a hurry and enjoying the challenge, but my mind was elsewhere and I almost destroyed my sewing machine. Luckily it was my small machine that I take to classes. How did I do that you might ask? Well I had used adhesive to stick a few things together and when I was stitching, it oozed out covering the teeth of the machine and everywhere else. But I did what I could to get rid of the mess. Luckily it's working today. Phew! I finished the ATC and I'm sure if I hadn't had to spend time cleaning the machine it took 20 minutes.


I've also been tidying my workroom, yet again. I know it will be the same again in a couple of days. The red and blue drawers were bought years ago as 2 sets of 3 drawers, but I found I could force them apart to create a tall set of 6. I treated myself to some more plastic drawers as you can see and I bought four sets.


I created 2 sets of 6 drawers saving myself a lot of floorspace, which means I can still have my keyboard out. I had been thinking of putting it away to make more room.

More raindrops with PSP9

I've had a lot of fun creating these little raindrops in PaintShopPro 9. They are not difficult for someone with a bit of experience in using the programme and I have promised a few people who are interested to try and explain how I do it. It's not a beginner's lesson!


This one is an evening raindrop.


This is the part of the program being used for this (vector).
You will need a suitable photo of scenery. My file was 5"x4" and 200dpi.

Open the Preset Shape Tool, choose 'callout 3' from the list and drag it to the required size. It will or should be white.

Flip the shape.

Using the Pen Tool, re-shape it to look like a raindrop using the 'nodes'.

Lower the opacity and you can see what's happening. Double click on the Layer with the drop on and try out different Blend Modes. Lighten, Soft light or Dodge might give you what you are looking for. I don't promise you success, but have a little play to see what happens and try some of the filters to finish it off. I used Lights from Illumination Effects for one of them.



I've been thinking about Helen's Today's Title which is 'A meeting of opposites'. This one made me think of some Welsh proverbs which don't sound like anything at all translated.

'Two men have a better chance of meeting than two mountains'.

'A tiny man is stronger than a mountain of a woman'. I did once make a cartoon depicting this and will try and find it.

But what struck me most is something that is happening at the moment in our Global Village. I have good Australian friends, some I have met others only through a webcam. They are at the opposite end of the world feeling the intense heat and we are here in the snow feeling cold. How's that for a meeting of opposites? Rather difficult to portray.




Instead I'm taking the easy way out and posting a photo of a sunset - A meeting of day and night.

Quarter hour activities and raindrops

I was thrilled to be one of the people awarded the Butterfly award by
Feltique.


What a good idea Marie had - making something in a 1/4 of an hour. This is what I have been doing and it's getting things done. Well, actually I'm just doing things that don't really 'have' to be done, but things I'd rather be doing instead. I made these little cards in 2 sessions and I'm quite pleased with them. they will be very useful. The photos I took this evening don't show them up very well I'm afraid.


Ihis was another 1/4 of an hour session for the new challenge set by Helen of heb-art journal in her Today's Title is...

Now for all those things waiting that are going to take far more than a 1/4 of an hour to complete.

City and Guild memories 2

You will have realised by now that I'm back into blogging in a big way (smile). For some reason I had gone off blogging for a while, but I'm very pleased that I feel like doing more again. This is my second post of the day and is really a continuation of the last post.



This was some of the work I was inspired to make with my knitting machine plus the sewing machine using this story board. A dress with a light jacket full of curves.

Tracy is another 'squiggly gal' as she admits on her blog. But the ATC she sent me doesn't have a squiggle in sight.


It is a very beautiful woven piece. At first sight it has dark metallic shades shades, like the back of a beetle or peacock feathers.


But taking a closer look you can see the wonderful shades underneath that top layer. and the wonder of it is Tracy has the details of how she made it here - Tracy's Creative Side: Woven ACEO's


This is the first week of a challenge on the Textile Challenges Yahoo Group. It was chosen by Marie Nutt and we had to create an ATC in 15 minutes using stuff we found lying around in the workroom. I take a long time mulling over my ideas and rather careful when I make things. I found out last night I don't have to do it that way. From now on I will plunge in and create vigorously. It seemed to work just as well.

City and Guilds memories

There were some wonderful photos of a Kingfisher in the Daily Mail on February 2nd and of course I have saved the pages. Then I thought I'd check the Mail website for them. They are stunning. This image above is a tiny clip from the website which is too small for anyone to print out. I was not quite sure where I stood with permission for showing the photos. You will find the photos here Dinner? It’s fast food from the deep freeze | Mail Online I Googled for it using the words 'Daily Mail and kingfisher' and came up with some other good photos. If anyone is interested have a look at this one, which is very unusual behaviour for any bird. The kingfisher who came to tea: Britain's shyest bird makes himself at home in kitchen | Mail Online These photos are even better! Catch of the day: How a tiny kingfisher caught six different types of fish in two hours | Mail Online They are worth a visit if only for the beautiful colours and the graceful lines of these birds as they dive and swoop. You will even see them diving deep in the water.


Now some of you might wonder why I'm so excited about these photos? They reminded me of the work of one my favourite artists, a wood engraver whose website can be seen here.
Colin See-Paynton: Watercolorist & wood engraver whose work inspired some of my City and Guilds work years ago.



I was enjoying this work so much I made 3 boards! There is nothing I enjoy more than having a pencil in my hand and just curve and curve to my heart's content. I just love curves.



I'm sorry I was rather carried away with this post.