Weekend away

Goodbye London

Passing Painswick churchyard

In a Painswick Garden

House hunting -

Walking near Stroud -

 Some lovely gardens in or near Cheltenham -

 Cotswold countryside -

Goodbye for now -

Woodblock Wednesday - unexpected colours

Earlier in the week I had a go at printing The Jugs, to see whether the registration was all that bad. Hmm, it's not all that good, but it'll do for now -

 The one without the background -

 And both, with their intended colour swatches, which don't always turn out as planned!

Blocks for the outline, and the background. I probably won't use the beaky-shapes at all, too much fuss....

Printing on the workbench in my home studio -

At class today, I wanted to try a non-blue colour and the first step was to try to remove the blue - printing without inking gives "ghost prints" -

 Even so, the "rose madder" became more purple than I wanted -

 So, why not overprint and make it really purple? -

 Another, without key block and with a paler background (but still quite purple) -

All today's prints -

 ... with the watercolour swatches, for the record -

 The block -

 A quick look at what everyone is working on -

And how nice of Elizabeth to bring in some "irritable cough tea" to help drive away the last vestiges of my irritating cough -

Mullein, mallow, coltsfoot, comfrey - 1 tsp in
boiling water; take 3x a day

World palindrome day

In the UK today (2nd February) is 02.02.2020 

In the US today (February 2) is 02.02.2020

In some other parts of the world they write 2020.02.02 - but country by country, date formats get complicated!

(And if you look at how your digital photos are automatically labelled, you're likely to see something like this

IMG_20191027_083039.jpg  )

This article tells you more, and has asked for readers to submit palindromes. This one has to be a made-up story - but it's a good one -

My mate with Aspergers has just completed his PhD, as it happens -- on palindromes.
We now call him Dr Awkward.

Seasonal segue

Christmas came early this year when I was given a handknit jumper, knit and passed on by a friend who claimed it needed a smaller person to wear it. As someone who simply cannot part with the garments I laboriously knit in the glory days of the 80s and 90s, I value the time and work that goes into handknits and was so happy to give this one a new life. I've been wearing it often.

But on Christmas Jumper Day - Friday 13th, this year - which was set up by Save the Children as a fundraiser in 2012 and has raised over £21million, I'll be following the advice to get my xmas jumper from a charity shop. In fact one such is already to hand! This handknit woollen "Nordic" beauty has been in my cupboard for some years now - I love it - and best of all, it's not specifically "xmassy", but it is special...

We should be rethinking our xmas buying practices, says this article (and many more articles) - but why stop at xmas? "Less is more" all year round, and green isn't just for xmas.

Horror statistics are everywhere, and here are the ones that got me writing this post.

Acrylic, a plastic fibre, was found in 95% of 108 garments currently on sale from 11 high street and online retailers

Acrylic releases nearly 730,000 microfibres per wash, five times more than polyester-cotton blends, a recent study found

Two out of five Christmas jumpers are only worn once over the festive period

One in three adults under 35 buys a new Christmas jumper every year

Especially that last one. How many over-60s buy a Christmas jumper ever??

Christmas is, of course, "a time for giving". A time for buying useless stuff for people who have too much already, in my bah-humbug view. Then comes the post-xmas letdown and the darkest, coldest weather sets in and thousands of kids go to school without breakfast, not to mention all the other evils brought about by lack of, or poor distribution of, resources.

If you've got financial security, how lucky you are. This article, about someone who gives away a huge proportion of his substantial income, was a wake-up call for me. I know I can now afford to be more generous, though this is very different from the decades of frugality growing up in an immigrant (post-war to Canada) family, and then as student, wife of a student, and single mother; you get in the habit of holding on to what you've earned.

But which charities use their donations most effectively?

This article pointed out that charities with less than £5000 of income don't need to be registered - news to me! It has good information about how to assess the effectiveness of a charity, and how to find local charities.

It also points out that if you're a higher rate taxpayer, you can claim back tax on part of the gift aid added to your donation ... ah yes that's the rich taking care of the rich, bah-humbug...

Ravages of time

"Aha!" I thought, "Here's the leftover fabric from my favourite tablecloth ... looks like there's enough for making a set of placemats for a xmas prezzy?"

I like a tablecloth on my table - the wood is horrible, yellow-grey old oak with a few chips. (Photo not provided, can't bear it.) This is my current second favourite -

What you don't see is that it's made from a remnant that is adequately wide (across the stripes) for the table, but the remnant could have been maybe 20cm longer to make it adequately wide for the table.

Back to the cloth itself. Comparing the unused leftovers to the well-used tablecloth, I got a shock -

So grey, the tablecloth! Well, it would be - it's been in frequent use for about 10 years. Perhaps it's time for a new one.

The table isn't a standard size, in fact I got it because it's small (with extension leaves) and fits well into my not-huge "Great Room". So it's easier to buy fabric (110cm x 150cm minimum) than to pay more for a ready-hemmed cloth.

A Sunday-morning online search eventually found a source of Lithuanian linen and I'm trying to choose between the double-faced grey/white

180cm wide, 240g/m2

and light grey/dark grey -

145cm wide, 240g/m2

or one of these lighter-weight linens -

140 cm wide, 200g/m2

and then there's this smaller check -

140cm wide, 200g/m2

Dither, dither ... gotta plug this one into the unconscious and let it ferment for a while....

Drawing Tuesday - Petrie Museum

This fine fellow caught my eye - a wooden statue of Horus (wearing the double crown of Egypt), with some of his gilding and a beady black eye. The muddle around his legs is thought to be part of the linen wrappings. 

But first I messed about with other artefacts from 30th dynasty (Ptolomeic) Saqqara - and ran out of time for finishing Horus....

Judith collected some pots, in outline, and went on to a larger collection of pots, but ran out of time with that and is taking it home to finish...

Najlaa focussed on some faience fragments "with depictions of Nile marsh plants and birds", about 1350 BC -

Jo got out an "old" brushpen and put it to good use, sometimes in combination with a roller pen -

 Carol now has a collection of shabti at her bidding -

 Janet B's humanoid pots ...

... and pot-buried skeleton -

Janet K too chose various types of pots, whether for their individuality -

 ... or for paying attention to their relation to each other in the display -

 Mags revisited some favourite pots -

Her careful and delicate drawing is hard to see on screen - this detail has been edited (on my phone) to add more light and "pop", but doesn't serve the purpose either -

(Paleness is a problem I often have with my own work - too tentative! - and despite reminders-to-self  along the lines of "Be bold! It's only a drawing for heaven's sake!" it's a hard one to tackle. Perhaps what's needed is to carry only pen-and-ink? The very thought makes me quiver with terror! But hey, "it's only a drawing"....)

Extracurricular activities

Carol couldn't resist cutting up one of those ikea scarf/tie holders and adding "a bit" of layered and interwoven yarn, and a few beads ... voila, a new addition for the Christmas tree! -

 We are keeping an eye on the growth of Mags' train stitching....

Thanks to Najlaa for bringing a 2014 issue of Morley Magazine, in which I appear among the prizewinners - centre front! -