By sion, on August 16th, 2010%
 yesterday Denise came over & we did a bit of playing with various media – neocolour & inktense pencils, india ink, paint & and some exhausted dye. My little pencil landscape jobby is lame proof of how much I hate trying to do landscapes. My desire for realism (or at least truth & meaning) falls into the black hole of my laziness/impatience, hardcore. A teeny tiny fragment of a landscape now – a rock, perhaps, or a bit of bark – that I could get right into (so why didn’t I? Because I’m an idiot who only just thought of that approach to landscape and who only now realises that this is how, in fact, she relates to landscape generally. And maybe life. Little bits of treasure; the big picture is boring). Anyway.
 Playing with ink to get impressions of landscapiness was much more fun – squirting water onto paper to set up paths for ink and then spraying ink over top & seeing what it does; THAT was cool. I got some nifty little bits to draw over/into. Messing around with old dye was cool too.I need to experiment & see if I can get fabric to behave the way the watercolour paper did with the dye – I’m guessing I’ll need to stretch it, but how cool would it be if I can get it to work?
 Then today, Dianne came over and we messed around with clay and then dye. She brought over a few molds for hands & feet & we cast them so I can mod them & make my own molds. Fun, and they look lovely when they come out of the molds (I daresay the ones I make from paperclay won’t be nearly as delicate & pretty heh – which really is the idea anyway, since I’m aiming for spirits of the earth). While they were drying out we started on fabric – Dianne wanted a big tree to stitch up as a wallhanging, so I mixed her up some DR-33 (like alginate; thickener stuff) and gave her a few pointers & let her have at it. Miss E decided she wanted to do one too, and since we were using brushes I let her have at it – and that’s her effort over there on the left. Cool, huh? I couldn’t get up much enthusiasm (I don’t know what’s up, but I’m not well; think I’ll go to the doc tomorrow) but before the weather went stupid did make up a landscape piece. Not sure, having done it, whether I’d want to sell pieces like that. I’m sure I could sell it as fabric, perhaps even as expensive fabric, but I’m more inclined to see it as a painting (one I might stitch on, but still). Quandaries.
By sion, on May 5th, 2010%
Anyone going up? As of today, Wendy Martin has her hot little hands on (amongst other things) a stack of Betta patterns and some of the specially-dyed fabric to make them with. We also sell the same fine cotton poplin we make all our dyed fabrics with in black for the Betta background, so if you’d like some let me know ($7 +p&p for the 70cm required for the pattern, and $6 +p&p for 60cm of vliesofix).
It occurred to me the other day that given a few hours I could workshop the Betta pretty easily, so I think I’ll do that at our quilt show. If it’s not too late to rejig the workshop schedules at the Coffs Quilters exhibition in September I might approach them too – I’m already booked in to do a few shorter demos/mini-workshops, so it might be possible. Wotcher think … would you be interested in taking home a wallhanging top (ready to stitch/embellish/quilt) for the cost of materials (pattern, fabrics, vliesofix) and a couple of hours?
By sion, on April 9th, 2009%
Sorry I’m being boring and/or absent lately. I’ve been spending heaps of time at kindy, absolutely fascinated by all those little minds fairly VACUUMING up all the knowledge you can throw at them. Bugger the sponge analogy; these kids are veritable Dysons! Really awesome to watch; seems to be the intellectual equivalent of a the physical development fast track babies are on. I guess there have been a few stages like that, but you don’t usually get to see a whole bunch of them doing it at once and inspiring each other to new heights. Unless you’re a teacher, I guess. Which I’m not interested in being, since I’m absolutely knackered by lunchtime and besides I have a really hard time not saying shit (or worse) in front of the whole class and then there’s all those weird snippy notes the more peculiar parents send in …
anyhow, lest you think there’s no textiley sort of stuff at all going on, I would like to enter these into evidence:
 
These being 1) some very inexpert hand quilting/embroidery I’m doing on a piece of fabric whose colour hasn’t got the zing its pattern does, which E has dibsed for a cushion cover, and 2) some felt in need of fulling, made at the end of a demo by Dianne at the guild last Tuesday. Tres fun. Tres hard work, the fulling part; works a set of muscles in my forearms that I obviously don’t use for anything else. Not sure I’ll do very much of it (apart from anything else, wool makes me crazy itchy), but if it’s fun to stitch on I could be tempted.
Right now it’s just going to sit there waiting for Easter, two birthdays, 3 separate sets of houseguests and one 6 yr old’s birthday party to be over.
By sion, on March 11th, 2009%
 Finished drawing the giraffe at the club meeting today. Isn’t he cute?
After the meeting we went to Connie’s, where I played with some babies, chose the new binding fabric for the club’s member quilt blocks, and bought most of these to (maybe) add to the grandbaby quilt stash:
The star and the odd-nifty mosaic print I grabbed at Big W the other day, the rest from Connie’s today. Not sure how I missed them before, but the oversight’s been remedied now.
thought I’d share the pieces from the other day’s dyeing that I nabbed for myself. The browns lost a lot of colour; that peculiar yellow really isn’t satisfying at all. The last time we used it & it went all washed out I assumed it was because of the absolutely horrible water at sis’s place, but it’s obviously just that dye. I need to make a note of the code so we never buy it again – and if Batik Oetoro ever send it by mistake again they can bloodywell take it back, & on their own dime too! lol Anyway … so I’m going to have to do some browns research using the other yellows and try again, because it was truly droolworthy. The technique itself worked beautifully, and the piece of fabric is lovely, it’s just not as deep and dark and marvellous as it would have been if that yellow didn’t suck. Here are a couple of fat quarters showing back & front because I was experimenting with stripes. I like (not sure why I didn’t grab the rhubarb pink & green one), think I’ll do some more experimenting along these lines.
 
 
 
I totally love that last one. Much brighter green than I’d originally intended, but it looks magical. I need to do some more forests this way, I think – what do you reckon?
There are also a couple of our usual dyepainted FQ which mum did, but one of them is too dark to photograph successfully (I’ll try again in daylight) so I can only show you this really awesome piece:
and then there’s the giant rockemsockem bright I did (1.5m x 1.1m), which also hasn’t photographed very well – there’s a lot more subtle green, and no visible banding IRL – but the pic at least gives an idea. I might have to try it again in daylight conditions:
ok, I’m off to bed.
By sion, on March 9th, 2009%
I always forget how much I love the dyeing when I haven’t done any for a while. Absolute heaven, if you discount the stupid mozzies and sweltering and occasional bastard bloody march fly. Yesterday I rediscovered, with the help of a very peculiar yellow that Batik Oetoro sent us by mistake last year, an absolutely stunning range of rich, warm browns. Toffee, butterscotch, burnt sienna, burnt umber, rust, mahogany; those sort of colours. So yum, especially with hints of greens and golds and magenta/violet. I was just going ooh brown, brown, brown, let’s have some more brown! I didn’t get any pics of those or the bits I experimented on using paintbrushes, but I thought I’d share a couple I took while I was still clean enough to handle electronics. They’re cropped to detail level because despite being overcast good grief it was a BRIGHT day and the camera just could not cope with the shadows & lights, not even with the flash on. I toyed with the idea of taking a supplemental pic of the really groovy fake varicose veins I somehow gave myself, but decided to spare you the sight of my ungroomed extremities. Since they didn’t get dry enough to bring home with me, Mum finished up the washing & ironing (how unusual … not) and I gather now I might have to fight her for my favourite piece. I obviously need to make more so we can bear to part with some (Judy said today “you know you are supposed to actually sell it, right?” heh).
in other news, how lucky am I? I’ve been geeking out a bit lately trying to set up Ken’s new computer and wipe the laptop so he can pass it on to the next NSAA secretary, and they bought me Jane Davila & Elin Waterston’s Art Quilts At Play. So stoked. I rarely buy books, but I had decided I was going to get that particular one, so how cool is that?
(PS Matt, I emailed you, so if it disappears into the spamfilter abyss let me know)
By sion, on March 4th, 2009%
we had a mad, mad thunderstorm here tonight. It was a while after sunset, but the sky was so full of clouds that it was white from reflected light instead of dark. I was sitting here watching the lightning and flinching at the thunder and an eagle flew past my window! Awesome. You see them around a bit, but usually so far away I can’t even get a recognisable photo even at full zoom on one of the good cameras. Seeing one about 10 metres away, dead on eye-level, was pretty damn cool.
I did a bit of work while my shows (House & Life) were on tonight, after the storm blew over. Tortoise is ready to plonk on his block, giraffe’s got a bit to go – I need a couple of new pens, which hopefully Connie has in stock.
By sion, on February 22nd, 2009%
I’ve got the theme song from Kimba stuck in my head. You needed to know that, right? Right.
I had a bit of a splurge yesterday on the Expected Grandson, because two shops that I went into had sales, and well, it’s almost obligatory then, isn’t it? Got these:
 
and an FP bath I’m not at all sure they’ll like. It’s got a support sling for newborns which I thought looked very useful for two people who have sod all experience with babies, given that even the fairly experienced worry about dropping the slippery wriggly buggers sometimes, but it is most emphatically not earthy-toned. We’ll see. Anyway, I was trying ever so hard to go for the neutrals and beiges she expressed a preference for, but I ask you, who could resist those zebra & giraffe suits? Or that deliciously – you have no idea how deliciously, I think I want one myself – soft zebra blanket, or those funky toys? I got a range of sizes, and hopefully I’ll get a few pics to share when the time comes.
still working on the quilt, but there’s not a lot to show for it when you’re tracing off bits for applique. Just lots of bits of baking paper, since I’m using gossamer fuse instead of vliesofix. I did get started putting some zebras together, tonight:
I decided to use a piece of very pale white-beige hand-dye for them because I think white would be way too stark. And because I like being able to get some shadows & lights from the fabric itself. After cutting a few strips of black to make stripes with and imagining how irritatingly frayish they’d be when I start sewing, I also decided that I’d be far better off drawing the stripes. So that’s what I’m doing, with my trusty Fabrico pens. I got about this far when I had to give up & admit that I really don’t remember how zebra stripes go:
and, since I get really irritated when things are glaringly wrong, I came to google zebras. In case you need to know, it turns out their stripes go like this:
So now I’ll do some more before I go to bed.
By sion, on February 17th, 2009%
the view from my workroom this morning:
Town’s going to be under water by this arv, not sure how bad or how long for. If the bloody rain doesn’t stop soon, maybe days. There’s been something like 450mm in the last 4 days, and that’s just here – it’s been raining upriver too (they’re already flooded in) and I hear all the way out to Armidale, so the poor old Macleay is carrying a whooooole lotta runoff. And occasional bits of tree.
SO glad we’re up on the hill :)
By sion, on February 7th, 2009%
I forgot about the last journal quilt. It kind of departed the text, to quote Opus.
    So the theme was something about maps. I think solvy was mentioned, but that went by the by (one of the ideas I had may well be the answer to my ongoing desire to capture something of The Nepal Experience, though. Before I get senile, preferably). So I started with this idea about the self, the way to the heart, the road signs and maps and guides we give people we want to learn the way in. I drew a weird symbol of self, which in my case prominently features hands and heart and mind and belly and feet. And one eye open, into which thou mayest read whatsoever one wishes.
  During the making it developed fire in the head, naturally, and a light from above which was almost obliterated further down the line, and some darkling damage was done to various spots, and one of my children bruised my heart while the other is thankfully offering sunshine so that went in, and my roads and waterways never did come clear no matter how much contrast I tried to add, and the dormant/growing things which sprang from my hand got a bit lost in the chaos. It kept looking twee and shallow, and in my attempts to make it more powerful I went a bit overboard. Crayons (iron on & regular & oil pastels), moonlight mist sprays & daubs, inkpad, heatgun, yada y blah blah. Mounted on a felt backing.
I don’t particularly like how it ended up, to be honest, but it seemed to true (even in that lol) to do anything but put a hanging strip on & send off. What the hell. I’m really not sure I like lutrador/spunbond in & of itself – I’ve seen some stuff that looks great on the web, but it doesn’t seem to do any of the things I expect, so if I’m going to continue using it I obviously need to figure out its strengths & work in different ways.
By sion, on February 3rd, 2009%
n because I haven’t written the list yet so I don’t know how many there are.
#1 is my baby girl, all Big and off to her first day of kindy today.
Everybody survived, too. She even got a sticker, which says “Good Work!” and which she was pretty chuffed about.
#2 is the arrival (FINALLY) of the new adapter for my laptop, so no more struggling with the constantly-crashing dinosaur of a desktop.
#3 is the concurrent arrival of my groovy new toy.
  
Is it not cool? Or maybe HAWT? I didn’t even know the handle swivelled when I ordered it. ~$25 at dealsdirect if you want one.
#4 is that the plumber FINALLY came today to look at the hot water system. Cactus (no shit!). Needs replacing (glad it’s not my money). Too late to do it today (bum!). Since I’ve been restricted to pommy washes since I discovered it peeing water all over the laundry, in the middle of a freakin heatwave, I wasn’t exactly overjoyed. I can (and did, several times) wash my hair in cold water, but I suspect that immersing my entire lardy self under an icy shower might result in an ungainly demise, especially when it’s about a billion degrees in the shade. He reckoned there was enough hot water left in it (even though it’s been turned off at the fusebox for 2 days!) to get me a shower if I turned the tap back on temporarily & just dealt with the laundry being flooded. Fine by me, so that’s what I did. I would have gone to mum’s to grab a shower over the weekend, but I was told the plumber would be rocking up when he was finished the job he was doing Sat morning – major wires-crossedness there – so I had to stick around. Getting hotter and sweatier and more revolting. So, I’m clean, I boiled water again for the girl’s bath, and the plumber’s bringing a new hot water system around at 8am tomorrow. The 8am part isn’t so groovy, but he’s cool enough that I can probably handle pretending to be human before coffee.
#5 is the hangers I’ve been meaning to photograph & post about since I bought them just before xmas.
I’m not sure what they’re supposed to be for, but logic suggests it’s some form of textile hanging. I think they’re from Nepal, or maybe India; I got them from the same woman I bought the nifty bamboo hangers yonks ago. Whatever they’re intended for, you know they’re going to be used for quilts … I told her she should load up on them next time she goes over, & show them to the girls in at Connie’s. Did I mention that they were under $10 each?
There. 5 cool things (8 really, if you count the hangers separately!). Life isn’t all bad.
By sion, on August 31st, 2008%
check it! This
 Sentinel was awarded this
… viewer’s choice, category B (ie, everything that isn’t a single/double/queen/king bed quilt – lap quilts, wallhangings, cushions, runners, etc). I near died of the red-faced OMGness heh – especially after some bugger turned around and said “what colour’s red?” (mean, mean, MEAN, whoever it was!). I don’t know how many votes that translates to, but I’m bloody stoked, because there was some gorgeous work in the category.
I’m going to post a few more images from the quilt show on the club’s blog, but bear with me – I have to get cracking with the packing & moving now, and get ready a bunch of images for the publications that contacted me re articles on our exhibition.
Oh, and hi to everyone who came along to the show (and THANKYOU if you voted for Sentinel heh), and yes I will get the sionwynlee website sorted ASAP. All the signs & stories & posters etc you saw at the exhibition have been taking up most of my computer time lately (that’s my excuse & I’m sticking to it heh).
By sion, on August 14th, 2008%
I had to go to mum’s to do some printing for the quilt show and so Dad & I could go deliver flyers & posters while ma looked after bratzilla. I won’t even tell you how exhausted I was after trudging around all afternoon; suffice to say that I REALLY need to start getting some regular exercise. Anyway, I took the challenge WIP over to show mum, and just on the offchance I went ferreting around in her stash, and I found not one but two exactly the right sort of thing fabrics.
I wasn’t sure about the floral, but those hints of teal really grabbed me (because IMO that sleeve was looking a bit lonely, even with her reflected). I bought some chiffon to knock down the contrast & dull the colours a little, but it’s too dark (right hand side of pic). The organza is better, but not quite dark enough. The little swatch at the bottom was painted with a thin wash of black & pthalo blue, & is much more what I want, so I went ahead & painted the big piece:
With the organza overlay on the left (how I’ll be using it, I think), without on the right. You can see the other piece of fabric I liked there at the bottom – it’s a pretty silvery grey with a white pattern that hints at lace and knotwork and damask. Here are a couple of shots of the two fabrics (with & without the organza overlay) with the hand:
 
Much happier now. Much richer. Anyone want a piece of grey hand-dye with a lace rubbing on it? lol
By sion, on April 13th, 2008%
We’ve been working hard on the patterns for 3 bags (the slouch everyone seems to love, and two others nobody’s seen yet). Mum’s been making samples and testing patterns, and I’ve been writing & illustrating & trying to fit things into a sensible layout and so on. I’ve been having a ball with the diagrams; I lovelovelove figuring out how to express in a diagram some weird bit that sounds like nonsense in words. Doing them helps me figure out the words to write, too. Have I mentioned that I love CorelDraw? On top of everything else to love (least among which is not the magic undo and the ability to paste bits and copy properties (outlines, colours, whatever) from one object to another. If it would only tell me the circumference of an irregular oval I’d marry it.
how fun is that?
bleh, I’m tired. Oh yeah – both the girlchild and I ended up on Bactrim to sort out all the stupid toxic relentless crap in our skullular cavities & orifices. She turned into a whole other child after just two doses (no more screaming terror of rain and breezes, yay!) but mine seem to be fighting back a bit. I hope the Bactrim’s winning heh. So sick of the revolting crud in my head and the stuffy sore ears etc. You should not be able to feel your eardrums just sitting there inside your head, y’know?
By sion, on April 3rd, 2008%
 Got everything washed, rinsed, dried & ironed (scrim at left, waiting to be cut up for sale). Have to get some pics of the huge stack of poplins on the weekend; the sun did me in today taking pics of the sateen. Which is omg SCRUMPTIOUS. Pictures do not do it justice at all. It was lovely before, but it positively glows once dyed & ironed … all the depth of colour and lustre you’d expect of silk. I bought myself some sateen sheets a few months ago and am totally in love with how they feel & look, and this fabric is even more beautiful. I’ll be seriously surprised if we don’t sell out of it at the Port Macquarie show in a couple of weeks (always assuming the local girls don’t clean us out first heh). I have to test, but I suspect the sateen will be absolutely lovely to use for needleturn applique (I cannot gush enough over how lovely it feels heh) and I’m positive will be jawdroppingly gorgeous quilted up. Can’t wait to get some under a needle …
I did a bunch of pieces for applique (could be used for piecing too, but you know where my focus is); rainbow stripes, and some gorgeous colour blends useful for birds like rosellas & lorikeets, king parrots, kingfishers & Gouldian finches:
 
 
I’ve been trying to be good lately, but if I’m honest there are a few pieces I doubt will ever escape my clutches:
 
 
 In other news, I got the poster for the quilt show sorted & even approved by the committee (every member of which had their bitchy boots on yesterday loo, ooh er). Except that apparently I’ve been spelling pavilion wrong all these years, so I had to rejig it ready for printing & distribution. I’m trying to get used to THAT WORD only having one L – it just looks wrong. Kind of doing my head in, too, given as how I’d always considered myself a good speller … stupid borrowed-from-French words. Pavilion pavilion pavilion. Pavillion still looks betterer, so :p
By sion, on April 1st, 2008%
been a weird week. The other day I had a pain all day under my shoulderblade, with one episode of my right arm suddenly feeling incapable of lifting a grocery bag. Ignored it most of the day, then it suddenly got really rather painful somewhere around midnight, and my whole arm was hurting and the little & ring fingers were going numb. On a Friday. In a town with no 24-hr medical clinics. I’m all like wow killer indigestion, haha ok so reassure me that I’m not having a heart attack or something, but online friends nagged me into going to casualty (ER) instead, just in case. SIGH. Meant dragging a sleepy pook out of bed & strapping her in and driving myself there (and halfway there I thought um, yeah, driving is probably pretty stupid even if you don’t really believe you’re having heart issues). I had an asthma attack by the time I got there, so I was all short of breath & skittish which probably contributed to them being worried enough to keep me in overnight. Which meant ringing the folks at 2am to ask them to come collect El (fun phone call!), and after mum & dad left carrying a confused & distressed limpet I got stuck with all manner of things & taken upstairs to have more monitory things attached and blah. Painful and undignified and boring. They kept downgrading the diagnosis and I was like ok cool, so can I go? but they wanted to do this & that test to be sure. Upside is that I guess I got a free medical, nearly – c-spine & chest films, blood workups for diabetes & cholesterol & whatever enzymes they look for when they suspect heart attack. All fine, I gather. Final verdict, after sticking tubes and needles and assorted poisons into me? Probably a pulled muscle, seeya! Two conclusions I came to after getting permission to walk across the hall in my sexay patient gown and go to the loo all on my own:
- I need to take better care of myself so’s I don’t wind up in here for serious, because ow and ick and BORING, and
- I need to keep my house a bit tidier so just in case I DO end up in here again, I won’t die of shame having to ask someone to go collect some gear for me and the pook.
Anyway, so that was quite enough excitement for this little black duck. Yesterday & today mum & I went a bit berko on the dyeing. We found a source (finally!) for cotton sateen recently, so I dyepainted some yesterday & a buttload more today. I also dyed some silk hankies today, along with the hanks of cotton thread I made up last night. No pics of the fabrics yet (but OMG the sateen is lovely stuff!) but here are the threads and hankies:
           
By sion, on March 11th, 2008%
we spent yesterday dyeing. The last of the cotton’s in the machine, about ready to iron, but the silk hankies & throwster’s waste I dyed at the last minute with leftover procion is already rinsed & dried. And YUM. So easy – I’ve never had much to do with silk, & have been hanging onto these hankies & fibres for a year or more I think, and it was a total no-brainer. Is silk fabric this easy to rinse? I could not believe how quickly the water rinsed clear even from the lumpy throwster’s waste.
 
 
By sion, on January 19th, 2008%
 DUQ is showcasing a bunch of the 2006 journal quilts, including one of mine, Bella Flora. Making of is back here if anyone’s interested.
Note that while it’s shown elsewhere (including the DUQ site and probably the magazine) portraitwise, and works fine that way, it was designed landscapewise, because I was very late to the journal quilts party and had no idea they were all supposed to be portrait orientation. Duh me. Poor Buffy, organisatrix of the group exhibition, ended up resewing several hanging sleeves for me at the last minute, since I had of course gone right to deadline for getting them in …
I swear I’m going to get down to some PROPER sewing soon, before I go nuts. I’ve been working hard trying to get the ebay store going smoothly and to turn all our patterns into pdfs so mum can print them herself. I’m not sure if she just wants to be all independent or if she thinks it’s a burden on me to do the printing – it’s not, I love that sort of work. Well, so long as the stupid printer isn’t having another hissy fit at me. Not the laser, the laser’s lovely; the 2500 is a real shit at times. Anyhow, tidying up the pattern files is tedious work, esp when I have to compensate for Corel’s weird insistence on doubling the top & left margins when saving to pdf, but mostly just time consuming rather than difficult.  Some parts of it are kinda fun – I manually traced all mum’s drawings for Blue Days in Corel, so it has MUCH smaller and easier to manipulate files now. It was a long job, but they’re such lovely shapes; she did really well. I kept thinking I’d like to do something with the drawings myself, but I think I’ll wait until I’ve got a few other things off my plate first heh. I think I’ve got her half convinced to do another pattern along similar lines – it’s a consistently good seller, so why not eh?
Anyhow. Anyone wanna buy some fabric? G’arn!
     
By sion, on November 23rd, 2007%
By sion, on November 22nd, 2007%
Paul has a few words. Whether you like the man or not (I always have even when I disagreed with his ideas, but then I’m chronically amused & entertained by the type), you’d nearly have to admit he brought STYLE to aussie politics, style that’s been sorely lacking for the last umpteen bloody years. I miss good dialogue, interesting insults, flair, COLOUR. I’ve been so damn BORED by this election, like for 6 months before it was even called. When I’m not bored I’m really distressed by the reactionary crap from almost everybody ABOUT almost everything. It obviously doesn’t really matter who the hell is voted in because you all suck, so for pity’s sake just get it over with and shut the hell UP already. Please.
Maybe I’m just grumpy because I’m sore. One of these days I’ll figure out what the hell is wrong with me – fine for weeks, and then a week or two of days when I can barely move because everything hurts. Everything, ache, ache. Not that sitting still, or even lying down, is any better: it all hurts anyway. Tired, tired, tired. Been tested for RA, thyroid probs, diabetes, lyme disease, dengue/ross river/barmah forest/etc fever, etc & so on. Nuttin. Fed up. Unimpressed that my doctor – the first doctor I’ve ever liked enough to patronise almost exclusively – quit her practise a couple of months ago so I have to find somebody else who actually gives a damn, is stubbornly curious, & won’t just think I’m malingering. Grumble grumble. The only thing I managed to accomplish today at the shop was making up a few bundles of fabric to list on ebay. They look rather pretty, but the camera cacked itself before I found out whether the photos are anything like reality so I have to keep my fingers crossed a bit longer (makes typing the listing descriptions etc difficult <insert annoying fox> boom boom!</fox>). Somewhere I have at least one more full set of rechargables, but no idea where – took over an hour to find the charger lol.
oh, I guess what I finally got out of the box? It was on layby FOREVER it seemed, and then I was waiting for dad to modify my table for me, and then I bought a different table and was waiting for that to be modified, and then I decided this is ridiculous and took advantage of my son’s visit to get it inside. not on its proper base, because I’m hoping dad can mess with its innards & get the electronic uppy-downy stuff working. I love the idea of a sewing table I can raise & lower to suit … so meanwhile I’ve got the shaped top resting on the manual uppy-downy table, so I can make sure I like working inside a boomerang before I get dad to cut a whacking great hole in it. I took a photo of the noo ‘chine on the “noo” table to post, but …
By sion, on November 19th, 2007%
I’ve been silent because I’ve been working on listing a bunch of our patterns etc on ebay. Haven’t added any fabric (have to make some packs up, photograph them, & put them somewhere we won’t accidentally sell/use them lol) yet, but the shop is up for at least the trial month … Sionwyn Lee Design on eBay.
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yesterday Denise came over & we did a bit of playing with various media – neocolour & inktense pencils, india ink, paint & and some exhausted dye. My little pencil landscape jobby is lame proof of how much I hate trying to do landscapes. My desire for realism (or at least truth & meaning) falls into the black hole of my laziness/impatience, hardcore. A teeny tiny fragment of a landscape now – a rock, perhaps, or a bit of bark – that I could get right into (so why didn’t I? Because I’m an idiot who only just thought of that approach to landscape and who only now realises that this is how, in fact, she relates to landscape generally. And maybe life. Little bits of treasure; the big picture is boring). Anyway. 
Playing with ink to get impressions of landscapiness was much more fun – squirting water onto paper to set up paths for ink and then spraying ink over top & seeing what it does; THAT was cool. I got some nifty little bits to draw over/into. Messing around with old dye was cool too.I need to experiment & see if I can get fabric to behave the way the watercolour paper did with the dye – I’m guessing I’ll need to stretch it, but how cool would it be if I can get it to work?
CHITCHAT