Still Abit Fuzzy Brained!!

I'm getting back to normal slowly. I'm still feeling abit off. I was going to go back to work today but just couldn't do it. Yesterday I went out to a few shops and did some food shopping, thinking that I was feeling better. But by night time I felt exhausted. My bodies telling me it needs more time to rest. So I'm having 4 more days at home, then next week I'll be working Monday and then Friday for 4 days. So atleast I have a few breaks in between.

I've been doing a little bit of sewing here and there. Nothing to show just yet.

I have to give you some links to some fantastic Embroidery. Go to the blog Fat Quarter or to Flickr to see a beautiful Assisi-dragon piece. Make sure you click on the photo to enlarge it and check out the amazing variety of stitches. I love this piece - I have to keep going back to look at it more to take in all the stitching. Colours are beautiful too.

Also Lisa did the Personal Library of Stitches class with me. She did some wonderful contemporary embroidery samplers for the class using lots of colour and great designs. You can see them on her flickr page . She posted a great photo of all the samplers together on the Joggles class forum. They looked wonderful. I don't think she has that photo on flickr.

Anyway, bye for now.

Things are going well.

Thank you for all the well wishes. I haven't had a chance to reply to you all, but I will soon.

I'm feeling abit tired and sore still. It isn't so bad though as it was key hole surgery, so it seems to be alot easier than when I had my caesarian. Anyway I'm taking it very easy and resting alot. The good news is my husband will be home from his motorbike ride today. Yee Haaaaa!!!! I'm not sure if I'll let him go away again if things like this are going to happen when he goes (only joking).

My mum is still in a fair bit of pain but they managed to get her up and sitting in a chair yesterday. Hopefully things will keep progressing well for her.

I was surprised to see the new Joggles classes are out. I didn't think they would be for awhile yet. There looks like lots of good ones. Go here to look at them.

My Quilting Arts magazine has finally come today, so I'm going to go and relax now and look through that. I love the cover, I can't wait to look inside.

Anyway, I probably wont blog for a week or two. I'm just going to take the time to rest and get over this. See you for now.

What a Week!!!!

Well things didn't turn out the way I thought they were going to this week.

On Wednesday I started getting some stomach pain, which lasted all night and into Thursday. It wasn't extreme pain but it wasn't going away. So I went to the Doctor who referred me to the hospital where they diagnosed that I had to have my appendix out. I was feeling abit scared of having an operation. I was also feeling abit sorry for myself as my husband is away and he was out of mobile phone range for a few days. Anyway, I had the operation very late on Thursday night and I got to speak to Duncan (my husband) on Friday night. Anyway he is on his way home. He may be here tomorrow or Monday at the latest.

The worst thing though was that when my Mum, Stepdad and son were coming in to see me at the hospital on Friday morning, my mum fell over across the road from the hospital and dislocated her shoulder and has a small fracture in her hip. She ended up being in emergency all yesterday and is in quite abit of pain. She is fairly old and has quite a few things wrong with her, so this is the last thing she really needed. It looks like she will be in hospital for atleast 2 weeks if not more. I really hope it all goes okay for her.

I got home today, but will be taking it easy for awhile and wont be working for 1-2 weeks. So I didn't end up doing the stitching I intended to this week. But after I have a few days of getting over this I should feel up to doing some I hope.

Happy Easter

Hope you have a Happy Easter.

My husband is going away tomorrow for a week on a motor bike trip out to Cameron's Corner, where the NSW, Queensland and South Australian borders all meet. He can't wait. He will have my camera, so I wont be able to post any new photos till he gets back. I have to work a few of the days he is gone but I'll be trying to get some stitching done on the other days. It is school holidays though, so if the sun comes out (we have had rain on and off for weeks), we may go on a few outings to the park, etc. Otherwise we may have a few snuggly days watching dvd's.

Personal Library of Stitches

This class is going way to fast. This is my exploration for Week 4. I used about 8 shades of green. I also used a couple of thicker threads and also DMC 6 strands. This thick background is just made up of layers of Cretan stitch.

I then went on to explore some stitches that can be used to represent flowers. From left to right - Algerian Eye or Star stitch, Fly stitch, French Knots grouped together, top - French Knots and Bullion stitch and bottom - Palestrina stitch. I used two different coloured threads in my needle for the Palestrina stitch that has the yellow in it.

This was really fun and I'd like to do a full piece with this type of background sometime.

I now have the Week 5 notes to go on with and then the Week 6 notes come on Thursday. I still have lots of exploring of stitches to do for all of the weeks. This class really gets the ideas flowing. I now understand why Sharon Boggon from Pin Tangle (and the teacher of this class) has such a very long sampler.

I haven't done the last 2 of the Stitch Explorer challenges but I'll catch up on them when this class is finished.

Banjara Patch

This Banjara Patch came in the post this week. The two main shisha mirrors are quite big. I love the beads, bells and coins along the bottom. I bought it from Rayela's Art Etsy Store. I love it. I don't know what I'm going to do with it yet. I will probably put it up on my studio wall. Check out all the other interesting things Rachel has in her shop.

You can read about the Banjara and Roma people in Rachel's post on her blog Rayela's Fibre Focus. It's sad how these people have been treated throughout the years.

I only came across Rachel's blog recently but I've been enjoying going back through all her previous posts - I still have lots more of her posts to explore.

I also found this website called Surya's Garden which is a trust set up to revive the ancient Banjara - Lambhani embroidery skills and motifs. I love how colourful their traditional dress is. This site also has an interesting section on their History - Go here to find out more.

Personal Library of Stitches

Did more stitching today. This is another sampler for Week 3. Hoping to get one done for week 4 before the next class notes come this week. This class sure has got my creative juices flowing. I've been getting lots of ideas of things I want to try and I've been drawing lots of designs in my sketchbook.

I went and saw the movie "Duplicity" last night. It was good but it jumped back and forwards in time abit so you had to really keep track of what was going on. It was abit confusing at first. But it was good as abit of light hearted entertainment.

Personal Library of Stitches

I managed to do some more stitching. I was having just abit of a play. Its abit of a combination of Lesson 2 and Lesson 3. I'm going to d0 samplers for Lesson 3 and 4 next.

Going to the movies now with a friend to see Duplicity - hope it's good.

Personal Library of Stitches

My Week 2 sampler for PLOS was looking abit bare so I added more to it. I'm happy with it now. The week 3 lesson looks really interesting, I'm going to get started on it today.

Personal Library of Stitches - Online Joggles Class

I've started the Personal Library of Stitches online joggles class with Sharon Boggon. To find out more about the class go here.

I've been wanting to explore embroidery stitches more so this was the perfect class for me to do. It's been fun. Week 3's class notes are coming out tomorrow, so I'm looking forward to that.

Week 1

Week 2

I really enjoyed doing my last post on Indian Inspiration. I think I will do some inspirational posts again on different topics in the future. I found lots of great sites and photos that I hadn't seen before as well as being able to share those I love. Its also great having all these links in the one spot that I can go back and refer to. It's a shame that the music can't be linked in with the post so it can be played along with it anytime someone goes to it.

Indian Sensations

This is a piece I've started on, which is inpired by India. There's lots more embroidery on it still to come.

India is so rich in beauty, colour, culture, religion, amazing textiles and architecture. Although I haven't been there before it is one place that inspires me creatively. So I wanted to do a post that celebrated all these wonderful aspects of India and gives lots of inspirational avenues to explore the many aspects of Indian style.

So sit back, pour yourself a cup of Chia, put your speakers on, imagine you are wrapped up in an exotic embroidered sari in your favourite colour and let yourself slip through space and time into a land of enchantment, visiting ancient temples, taking in the aromas of the many spices in the Indian Bazaars and let your spirit dance to the beat of the drums....

Photo Credits

Click on photo credits and click on the links to go to each of the various photographers sites. You can find many amazing photos of India on Flickr.

More amazing Indian photos from various photographers can be found on my flickr favourites page.

Explore the many Indian Inspired books:

Also some books I want to get The Techniques of Indian Embroidery and Indian Embroidery.

Watch these wonderful films:

Slumdog Millionaire

Monsoon Wedding

A Passage to India

The Darjeeling Limited

Spend some time looking at India through others eyes - explore these blogs and websites: (click on the names to go to the sites)

Deezden - Dithi does beautiful Indian art work and her blog is so colourful and inspiring

I'd Rather Be in India - Tiggy writes about her visits to India, her second home. Her dyeing, stitching and teaching are inspired by her love of India.

Rang - The Colours of Life

And Another...

ArtnLight

A Cup of Chai

India and I

The Indian Road Romeo

Indian Embroidery Styles

Indian Yarn

Once Upon a Tea Time

An Indian Summer

Photo credit - go to Photo_Mind's photostream

Drift away on the aromas of curries and spices on these blogs:

Indian Food Kitchen Blog

Petrina's Indian Food Blog

Also explore Flickr Groups inspired by india:

I Love India Traditional

Incredible India

India - Miniature Paintings and Wall Paintings

Shisha Embroidery

Indian Food

India - Art and Crafts

India - Village Life

Hope you have enjoyed your travels.

Namaste

Happy Late Valentines Day

I'm abit late for Valentines Day. I meant to post this on Saturday but didn't get a chance. I crocheted this heart using one of the tutorials from the 'Top 100 Tutorials for 2008' that Ellen has on her Blog The Long Thread. There's lots of ideas to try. This heart tutorial is by Bella Dia and can be found here. It was lots of fun and easy to make.

I got these beautiful tulips from my husband. Hope you had a lovely day.

Sam the thirsty Koala from the Victorian Bushfires

Sam the Koala was reunited with the fire fighter who gave her water and helped her to survive. These photos are gorgeous. They have said that she is doing well.

For the full story go to here.

A wild koala could normally rip you to pieces with their claws. Wildlife rescuers sometimes have great trouble trying to catch sick or injured Koalas and can get hurt in the process. This is beautiful to see. We have a large Koala population in the place I live and have a Koala Care Centre that looks after sick and injured Koalas. We sometimes have a Koala in the tree at the front of our house.

See the video of Sam and the fire fighter here.

If you would like to make a donation to the Victorian Bush Fire Appeal you can go to the Red Cross Website.

Bush Fires in Victoria, Australia

The stories coming out of the many affected areas of Bushfires in Victoria are devastating. At the moment they say over 700 houses burnt and 108 people dead, but they expect there will be more. There is a whole town that has been burnt to the ground. The wind turned and there was hardly any warning for them all. What a horrendous thing to go through. It was amazing how some people managed to get out. You can read about it on the ABC news website. There are still fires burning in Victoria and NSW - but hopefully there wont be anymore loss of life. Its also horrible to think of all the wildlife, livestock and pets that have been lost as well.

We live in Northern NSW so are well away from the fires. My heart, thoughts and prayers go out to the many people affected by this. Also to the many firefighters, police and other people who are helping - it must be very tiring and emotionally draining for them all although I'm sure they would give their all, even when exhausted, just to help in the situation.

Week 2 Layout - Online Workshop Now We're Rocking with Photoshop

I finished this today, just in time before the Week 3 lesson arrives. I've really been learning how to do lots of different things in Photoshop Elements. I'll have to have a play.

January Stitch Explorer Challenge

I went shopping on Friday and got these materials and threads for the Stitch Explorer Challenge. The pink lace was sitting on the side of the bench when I went to buy the other things so I thought I would buy a metre of it. Not sure what I will use it on.

So today I worked on the January Stitch Explorer Challenge using Chicken Scratch. Above are 2 examples.

I then played around with designs and colour to create these. You can make some great mandala style designs out of this style of embroidery.

Jessica Sprague Online Workshop - Week 1 Layout

This is my finished week 1 layout for the online workshop I'm doing with Jessica Sprague called "Now We're Rockin' with Photoshop.

Camping at South West Rocks

We went camping for 4 days over the Australia Day Long Weekend down to South West Rocks. Its a lovely beachside town.

Look what was outside our tent every morning and afternoon - Kangaroos.


Here's a mum with her little joey poking its head out of its pouch.

Our campsite.

This is Trial Bay Goal which was built up on this lovely headland. Bad photo but I forgot to take one out the front and this is the only one that shows the whole Goal. It was built in the late 1800's and used as a jail. Then during World War 1 it was used as an internment camp. There is still alot of the main structure still remaining.

I loved how the trees and hills where framed by this arched window.

There were lots of arches.

It had an earie feeling walking down here and also going into the cells. You can see 2 stories of cells on each side.

This is Smokey Cape Lighthouse. It is a steep walk up to here. About half way up they have made the old Lighthouse Keepers House into a Bed & Breakfast. Its a spectacular spot.

This is the view out in one direction, out the front of the Bed & Breakfast. In the other direction there is a long stretch of secluded beach. Beautiful.

We will have to go camping back there again.

A Quick Post

I'm doing a great online class at the moment on Digital Scrapbooking on www.jessicasprague.com called Now We're Rockin with Photoshop. I'm not really doing it for the scrapbooking, although I don't mind scrapbooking, but more so I can learn all about my new program Photoshop Elements 7 and also how to make my blog header more interesting. I've been wanting to be able to do all those swirly brushes for quite awhile now. This is only the first week and I've learnt alot already. Jessica also sends daily emails with extra info and challenges. Also there has been lots of digital freebies. Going to be busy over the long weekend so will post again early next week.

Have a good weekend!

Yay! Stitch Explorer Challenge has started

I was excited this morning waiting for Sharon's Stitch Explorer Challenge to be posted on her website. The first months embroidery style is Chicken Scratch.

When I was reading the post I realised that when I was in my early 20's I made my mother a blue and white checked tablecloth with Chicken Scratch embroidery on it (I didn't know the name for it then).

I'm not sure at how adventuous my exploring will be. My first thoughts were that I didn't really like the continuous pattern of this style but when looking at continuous patterns in the natural world (such as the photo above) there can be great beauty and style in this. So I'll give it a go and see what eventuates.

As I'm not that experienced with alot of embroidery stitches I'm using this challenge just to become familiar with the stitches and styles themselves, so if I don't come up with anything too wonderful, it will still be a great learning experience for me.

I'm thinking that I will be doing swatches that I will make up into Mini Quilts. Then I'll put them together to make a cloth book.

I'd be interested in hearing from anyone else who has done embroidery samplers before to find out the size they did them and how they organised them? Also what material do you prefer to use?

Colours to Dye for.....Not quite

I thought it would be a good school holiday activity to do some dyeing with my son and also do some fabric for myself at the same time. As you can see from the photo above the fabric wasn't the only things that got dyed. After a half hour stint on his slip and slide all the dye had come off.



I used dylon cold dye which I got from Spotlight. The funny thing is that they were selling the dyes but not the cold fix satchels to go with it. When I asked they said that they haven't been able to get any but that salt works just as well. Anyway I haven't done any dyeing before so thought I would try it anyway and used the plastic bags to put the material in. The results weren't that great. The colours are abit faded out and pastel on some of the material. One of the material types was quite good - it looked great when wet but faded out when I washed it. I'm thinking it is because I didn't have the cold fix satchels. Anyway I know for next time and we had fun which was the main thing. I don't know how well the colour in the t-shirt will last. I might use some of the fabric for stitching backgrounds or maybe for Monoprinting.

My aspirations for the year.

This is a picture of the Hindu deity, Ganesh. The photo was taken at the Crystal Castle near Byron Bay, in Australia. He is believed to be the "remover of obstacles" and the "Lord of Beginnings". He is also known as the "Patron of Arts and Sciences". So it seemed appropriate to use his photo as a good omen for the year ahead.

I wrote out all my goals for the year in this new Diary/Planner that I bought.



The list includes things I want to do, Some places I want to go to and things I want to get done around the house. Some of my creative goals are to make a beaded art doll, dye material, finish my UFO's and develop my embroidery skills. Also I'm wanting to go to the Textile Art Festival in Brisbane in May where Dale from the Thread Studio will be.

I am also going to be participating in Sharon Boggons Stitch Exploration Challenge that starts on the 15 January. It is open to anyone and just requires you to go here to read about it and leave a comment on this post introducing yourself and supplying your blog or flickr address. Go here for Sharon's blog.

There is also a Bead Journal Project challenge that has been going for a few years. I'm thinking of maybe doing it this year if they run it again. Will have to see.

Also the Joggles classes have been announced for the first part of the year. I'm going to try not to do as many classes this year. But I have been wanting to do Sharon's Personal Library of Stitches class for along time so I think I will do that. Also it will go well with the Stitch Challenge.

A New Year Begins

Happy New Year!!

We had a great night. We went out to our local hotel where there was a band playing. I haven't been out for New Years Eve for a few years. We had a great time - although I did have a few too many drinks. My legs were abit sore today too from the dancing and also we walked home (20 minute walk) as there was a long wait for taxis. So we had a easy going day today.

I usually write a list on the 1 January of the things I want to do in the year - this will have to wait till tomorrow. It's always exciting contemplating the possibilities your life could bring in the coming year.

Santa came to our house.

and these are his dirty footprints from his boots to prove it.

Santa was also abit hungry and he managed to eat and drink all the things Dylan left out for him.



We had a lovely Christmas day - hope you all enjoyed yourselves over Christmas.

Twas the Night Before Christmas....

The stockings are all hung up and even Jazzy wont be missing out.

We just had a really big storm, but no damage was done. Just lots of thunder and lightening.

On my way home from work today I was listening to a CD with lots of Christmas songs. I always have abit of a chuckle to myself about singing along to songs such as White Christmas and Let it Snow, when its a humid hot summers day outside. I love all those songs though. I especially like Judy Garland singing "Have yourself a Merry Little Christmas" and all the songs off the Bing Crosby "White Christmas" album. Those are all the songs my mum used to play when we were growing up. There's also some good Australian Christmas songs like "Six White Boomers" and "Aussie Jingle Bells".

We are having Christmas dinner at our house tomorrow and my Mum and Step-Dad are coming over.

Dylan is very excited and was worried that Santa wouldn't be able to come when we were having the storm. But all is well now and he has been assured that Santa and the elves are currently packing the sleigh.


Merry Christmas to you all. Hope you have a wonderful, safe and happy time with family and friends.

I'll enjoy looking at all those photos on blogs of White Christmas's from around the world.

All the best. Take care.