The first snow of this winter - Brrrrrr

Today we have had the first snow of this winter with bitter cold winds too. A good day for staying in the workroom although I did venture out for part of a minute to take this photograph for my 'image of the day' which is 351 today. Not many to go to complete the year.

I have been busy lately with lots of things - not Christmas ones yet. They begin when my grandson finishes school and stays with me. I have sent out the cards which needed to be posted.

I have been spending time on my photography and digital imaging and laying out a book. How time flies when doing these.

There has been time too to create some textile pieces. They have been a mixture of art quilts, panels, books and folders.

I don't have time to show them all or go into the detail of how I created them but I am sure many of you will be able to see which techniques I have used. There is very little new out there just variations.

This is a letter or note folder. I have used white acrylic velvet and dyed it then layered it up with fibres, chips and black Misty Fuse. I free machined the scrolls over the top.

I have been experimenting a lot with making paper but not with pulp. This piece of paper is painted ready to embellish.

As I have already mentioned, I have been doing a lot of photography and one of the topics I am working on is 'Time Pieces'. My OH gave me a lovely carriage clock many years back for a wedding anniversary present and I took some photographs of it. I used one of the images, applied a special effect in Photoshop, enlarged it, printed it onto coated silk then free machine quilted it. I applied some gold paint on the numbers and pointers. I also free machined a message around one side of the clock face. Now here is a confession. The reason for the text is because when I printed the image onto the silk, I did or didn't do something and it printed to one side. I couldn't bear the thought of reprinting or cutting it down and wasting all that ink and silk so I created the text -"Put time aside to fulfil your creative passion". Neat Eh????

This little quilted panel was an attempt to use the basic technique and colour scheme of Lynda Monk and adapt it . I didn't quite get the colour scheme right and set myself the challenge of double machining the machine patterns so that they were exactly over each other. It worked but I like Lynda's colours better.

Now the colours on this little book were what I was trying to achieve. I must be bolder when it comes to 'washing' over the top with another colour. The cover was another paper experiment.

Bad news at the moment - my embroidery machine has had to go back to be repaired AGAIN. So I had to pack it all up again to be collected by the courier.

The last time I did this I took a photograph of the box and applied a special effect to it. Didn't expect to be using this image again so soon. Why do we feel such a personal loss when our machines have to go away?? I do have another one so I can still do all my sewing but........

And speaking of photography again. I did a study using a sheet of polorising filter and here is one of the images.

and another one-

I think I finished up with 90 images from this session.

I haven't time for more. Must get something to eat which reminds me - My 10 year old grandson said to me a couple of weeks ago when it was time for bed -'if we didn't have to go to bed and didn't have to eat or go to the toilet, we would have much more time to do what we want.' Hmmmmm now there's a thought.

Cheers everyone