Friday 26 August 2011

Misericords

Here is another excellent example of the misericords.


These are four of the medieval tiles.

Misericords

This picture is one of the misericords in Great Malvern Priory Church of St Mary and St Michael.  I shall have to return and take some more photographs as they were very interesting.  The church also has two outstanding stained glass windows designed and made by Thomas Denny for the Millenium.  There is a huge display of medieval tiles along the inside wall of the reredos.  These were made on site and date from 1453, 1456 and 1458.

Blue Ginger Gallery, Cradley


Not the best photo in the world, but the gallery is so welcoming and has a wide range of quality goods for sale including textiles, ceramics, paintings, cards and handmade books.  Excellent cafe too.  I had been planning a visit for a while and Eileen coming to stay gave me the ideal opportunity to venture there.  I shall be going again soon I think.  They had a wonderful dog called Lottie who was a Labradoodle plus a couple of Kune Kune pigs.

Thursday 25 August 2011

Malvern Makers Exhibition Ledbury

Ledbury proved to be an excellent place to be today.  Eileen and I visited the exhibition in The Weaver's Gallery and also managed to spend small amounts of money on such goodies as an old cotton sheet, a cork tile, second hand books, lots of tea and coffee and generally had a good time.

Our morning plans came to nought as we spent far too much time in Malvern exploring the delights of the Parish Church where we discovered some amazing medieval tile and modern stained glass.  We then sped off to Ledbury having decided we could not fit in a visit to Hellens at Much Marcle.  We passed the Picton Garden which Eileen assures me is a delight of Michaelmas Daisies renowned throughout the land - shame I was totally unaware of this fact.

Friday 19 August 2011

Rustlings

Sox and I were enjoying our evening walk in the dell and I found a dead blackbird.  We have not seen any for weeks and I suspect the squirrels/magpies have killed and eaten several of them.  This one looked as if it had been bitten.  Also got a visiting ginger cat who is partial to a bird or two and recently seen by 'Dave the roofer' running across the main road carrying something.  Shame it does not catch squirrels!!

The upside of last night was that I was sat in the dark on the bench in the garden when Sox became very animated and interested in the next door neighbour's fence.  Out from under the shrubs popped a small hedgehog which proceeded to meander its way across the lawn and under the bench I was sitting on.  It suddenly realised I was there and dashed off in the direction from whence it had come.

Sox is not very well at the moment and only eats occasionally so each evening I have been putting any cat food that was left out near the garage.  This little hedgehog must know about it because within half an hour it had reappeared and after rummaging around under the bay window and through a clump of shrubs it was found noisely eating the cat food.  Hope it gets fattened up a bit more before it needs to hibernate or it will never survive the winter.

Thursday 18 August 2011

Bookbinding in Malvern (2)

This is the result of my efforts at the Bookbinding workshop.  Anna had cut out most of the constituent parts and all we had to do was assemble them, but I struggled.  The book is quite small, but the leather feels fantastic.The little catch used plaited leather and a curtain ring.  A pin was hammered into the edge of the front cover as a closure.

Have decided to enrol for the course starting in September for two and a half hours each week until December.  I think the idea is that you do your own thing so I will need to decide what I want to achieve.  It must include an embroidered cover of course and I want to learn the technique of stitching the signatures together which make up the inside of the book.

Monday 15 August 2011

NEC Festival of Quilts


Went to the show on Friday and Sunday.  Not much fun on Friday as I was on my own, but absolute bliss to be able to drive there from home in 50 minutes. It is just over 40 miles.

Saw Carol from the Quilt Museum and had a quick catch up and, of course, also managed to spend more money than I planned.  Sunday was much better as I met up with Annie.  She had inadvertently booked a workshop which provided me with the opportunity to go and say hello to Fiona Wilson and listen to her lecture - which was excellent.  Wish I was years younger and could afford to go and do a degree.

Lots to see and the book this lovely bird was in was an absolute winner.  Now all fired up to do some work and try out my new purchases.  Had a busy weekend all in all and now back to the reality of entering the second week of having the new roof put on our house.

Bookbinding in Malvern (1)

Had a fantastic day on Saturday at the local college having enrolled for a Summer School class on orthodox style bookbinding with a lady called Anna Yevtukh.  She was Russian from the Ukraine.  I eventually ended up with a beautiful leather bound book.  Pictures of the finished article will follow, but here are some of it as work in progress.





Thursday 11 August 2011

Worcester EG Exhibition

Chapel Memorial Room, Kings School, Worcester
Having felt like I was living in a goldfish bowl whilst the roofing work is going on I managed to escape for a couple of hours on Wednesday and went to Worcester to see the local branch exhibition.  It was very good - once I found it.  I continually get lost in Worcester and because I took the wrong entrance, I did not see the very clear signs to the exhibition.  Got there in the end.

The branch started a separate small group a few years ago which set themselves challenges.  There was a lovely display of what they had achieved.
This piece was a textured album cover.  My photograph does not really do it justice.  A lot of the work on display was framed behind glass and it was impossible to take any pictures without getting reflections which was a shame.  There were several examples of items made as a result of the workshops undertaken throughout the year.  The most interesting aspect of the exhibition was some very old pieces created by the lady who started the branch in the 50's.  An excellent idea was the small canvases for sale at £10 each.  The theme was the 'Elements' which had been interpretted in various ways by members of the branch.

Finally, this lovel mask.  It was an embellished piece, fairly small but very nice.  Well done everyone.  Perhaps next year I will have time to contribute something to the exhibition.

Toilet Humour

I found a couple of pictures of our shower room toilet the other day.  It shows the lovely Euthymol pink walls before and after stripping, plus the lovely rose motifs which had been stuck on at some point to decorate the walls.  Of course, as usual, I have got the photos in the wrong order.  The one on the left is later than the one on the right. Also in evidence is the side wall of the shower made from glass bricks!! Hopefully after the roof and the central heating the shower room will be transformed into a lovely family bathroom.


Tuesday 9 August 2011

UP, UP AND AWAY

The weekend saw a frenzy of activity with the scaffolders arriving and getting all of the scaffold up ready for a start by the roofers yesterday.  There were three nice young men each day.  They worked really hard and their banter was very entertaining.  This photo is the rear of the house with the scaffolding only up one level.  DH managed to finish stripping the wallpaper in bedroom 4 and I got a lot of gardening done, having had to move all my pots from around the outside of the house to somewhere a bit safer.
Rear of house
Monday saw the arrival of a pair of Roofing Birds!!  They managed to find plenty of birds (sparrows) and wasps nests under the eaves, some still had active wasps in them.  There was also evidence of where squirrels had tried to gnaw their way in through some protective metal mesh that had been erected in the past.  Goodness knows what else they are going to find.  Poor Sox spent most of the day hiding outside terrified.
Side of house from the rear garden
We can't get up the drive now so are having to park Nobby and the Whale (aka the hire car) along the road close to a neighbour's house.  I have been using a short cut across the stream to get to them rather than walking all the way round on the public footpath.

Friday 5 August 2011

Poem

Think I have found the poem that was the basis for the lovely doll with the pea buttons ....  It was by Robin Frost one of the Dymock Poets from the period 1908-17.

PEA BRUSH

I walked down alone Sunday after church
To the place where John had been cutting trees
To see for myself about the birch
He said I could have to bush my peas.

The sun in the new-cut gap
Was hot enough for the first of May,
And stifling hot with the odour of sap
From stumps still bleeding their life away.

The frogs that were peeping a thousand shrill
Wherever the ground was low and wet,
The minute they heard my step went still
To watch me and see what I came to get.

Birch boughs enough piled everywhere! --
All fresh and sound from the recent axe
Time someone came with cart and pair
And got them off the wild flowers' backs.

They might be good for garden things
To curl a little finger round,
The same as you seize cat's-cradle strings
And lift themselves up off the ground.

Small good to anything growing wild,
They were crooking many a trillium
That had budded before the boughs were piled
And since it was coming up had to come.

Thursday 4 August 2011

Lathe & Plaster Piece

Lathes 01aLathes 01b
Decided my photos were not very good so scanned the piece instead, which meant putting it in the scanner both ways as it was too long so the first picture is actually upside down..  At least it shows more of the detail.  This has now been bleached and waxed (pic below) but again the colours are not true to the original.

Lathe Wax 3

Wednesday 3 August 2011

Landscape Workshop - Newent

Afraid one is missing as the lady had to leave early

 Had a lovely day at Newent on Tuesday at The Patchwork Basket.  Helen Keenan was running a landscape workshop and there were 8 of us altogether.  Can't say my effort was very good and hardly any of us got as far as adding quilting and surface statiching to the work.  The average size was around 15"-18".

Once I get my sewing machine back from being serviced I will make another attempt at this technique, probably on a smaller scale and shall make it less complicated.  I can then progress to joining pieces into the strips.

This was my favourite piece