Michaelmas Term

Very long time no blog! 

It's been a strange and at times difficult Summer with the Mental Elf playing up and the Black Dog making a reappearance - all due to a muddle with medicine dosages. 

The slugs eating all of my Dahlias and most of the Sunflowers didn't help. And the rain! There was hardly any macrophotography to be had as all the poor winged creatures hid from the deluge (and me). After i decided to actually kill the slugs (upsetting),who seemed to be the only living things left in the garden, i didn't feel justified in photographing them. 

    I've been feeling much better since mid-August so i can only excuse myself for half of this long blog-gap. Anyway, self-recrimination is no way forward.I hope anyone who reads this has had a perfect Summer - with fewer slugs!

 Here's what i've been up to:

Knitting

[reverse side of cushion]

I made this cushion for a great friend of my great friend John. Ulla is a Danish forensic psychologist (among other things). She came to visit at the end of August with news that after many years in England she had decided to return to Denmark. I couldn't make it to her farewell party so i made her this cushion. Ulla is a truly beautiful person. I can't not mention that!

This is an example of 'My Intarsia Hell' ! It's always worth it in the end, though.

Bears

At long last, i got hold of some proper German mohair! I spent a whole week designing, re-designing, amending and revising a pattern for a bear small enough for  one whole bear from 1/16th of a metre of fabric. It's incredibly expensive.

I don't have an entirely finished bear yet but will do soon.

I tried out the pattern in felt, first. I think it's an excellent fabric and has something sweet about it so i shall be making more bears and other animals with felt. It's also cheap and doesn't fray!

Limbs and bodies were fairly easy to anatomize proportionately but there are several disembodied heads lying around.

Painting

The canvases have gone white.

 I thought this might happen one day. It's about an interest in texture. There are a couple of canvases like this, begun years ago. I thought they were waiting for colour - i took my reluctance to be some kind of block-nonsense; now i think colour can sometimes be inappropriate.

 As i'm piling so much matter onto the canvases, i think it might be time to try working on wooden supports.

I've been making a lot of my photographs black and white. Perhaps this has crystalized my view.

'...a poor describer of light.'

Crochet

 First crocheted blankey finished. I couldn't work out a way to square it in the end, although i did try. I think it was already too big.

It measures about 48 inches across. Kind of neither here nor there, purpose-wise. I'll try a squared one next and keep going.

Last but not least...

The livestock. Everyone is fine and they deserve a whole post to themselves, really. I''ll just mention this little treasure. She came into the house  at the very end of August. We had seen her in the gardens during the Summer and were sure she lived at Number 5. However they had moved away. She is logged with the RSPCA as a lost cat but other than that i have no way of finding her owners.

    

 Of course, we have fallen in love with her. We are calling her Dolly.

It became almost immediately apparent that Dolly had a secret (approximately 4 secrets).
Kittens due any time now :-0   !!!

(Cats 5 - Dogs 1) 

not including the kittens.

....in other news

Unrelated to Morse's sudden passing (or is there ever such a thing as 'unrelated'?), progress has been quite slow of late. I am, however, attempting to coerce myself into an industrial revolution.
   Here's what i have been up to:

bears in progress!

Catherine's cushion all done!

i crocheted the back using a self-patterning yarn

heart and circle details. I'm going to get a larger cushion-inner before i post it.

the red painting which seems to be becoming less red the more i find myself interested in textures.

Goodbye Morse

I can't believe i missed out June altogether! I confess to having fallen into a sulk about the weather which has been even worse than usual for an English mid-summer. I was stoical at first and then ran out of steam.
   When i was a child, i would sometimes be chided for snivelling with the rather frightening phrase: 'I'll give you something to cry about if you don't stop!'. I was sharply reminded of this last week when i found our oldest cat in a strangely flattened position near the back door...
    I am sad to report that Morse [The Inspector] died last Wednesday. It was 8 o'clock when i found him prone. John and i brought him inside so he could rest on my wool basket, his place, but he struggled and made a horrible crying miaow which made us simultaneously burst into tears.
     There was a lot of panting and few more caterwauls over the next hour. Then his tail went limp, his pupils dilated and his breaths slowed to one every 50 seconds. It was all over by 11pm.

   Morse was 14 years old. He arrived at the old house from further down the street in 1999, aged 1. He was returned to his owners twice but clearly preferred our house, so his official move was awkwardly arranged. His original name was Starsky. Always an unpick-up-able loner, his main contribution to the household was his extreme beauty. He loved sunshine and spent his last day on the swingy-chair at the end of the garden which he'd made his own. The sun shone all that day.
   He is buried in the garden beside his great friend, Stevie, a fellow tabby.

I lied!

 So much for all my talk of departing from the orb paintings last Autumn... Having over-Wintered at the sewing machine and then spent cosy Spring evenings learning to crochet (well, we didn't really have a Spring - just a very, very long Winter and now, a sudden Summer), i have, for the last 4 or 5 weeks, been enjoying afternoons with an abstract red canvas.

4th May

11th May

18th May

25th May

                                                       This poor old canvas was begun in 2010

I have not begun a figurative panting.

   But i do think the orbs have become spirals! Which must be a loosening of some kind.

  

  In Knitting News, a name cushion for Kelly's sister Catherine is under construction.

It's the longest name i've ever knitted!

crochet: project ii

(Clapping hands together and rubbing them briskly), here is the exponentially growing second crochet item - a blankey! (or throw or afghan or cat's comforter...)

This is the funny thing about crochet - one minute you can't go round in circles at all and the next, you crack it and you actually can't stop! Instructions for keeping the work from 'cupping up' and threatening to become a wooly cylinder only clicked into place once i switched from joining rounds in neat circles to travelling in a continuous spiral. The maths is pretty simple (though i don't pretend that it makes sense to me): i began with a chain of 6 stitches which i joined into a ring. Then i made 12 double crochet stitches into this ring. Next round, i increased into every other stitch. Every round after this, i make an increase one further along than last time - so, for example, i am now increasing into every 23rd stitch. It's diameter is 29 inches....for now! I'm mostly using double-crochet with the odd round of triple. You get into a kind of mad race with yourself and don't want to slow yourself down with pretty popcorns or shells.
    As with my knitted blanket, i'm using a mixture of very cheap acrylic yarn punctuated with the odd bit of lovely stuff. A great find has been this:

It's a chunky acrylic called Marble by J.C.Brett. This one is shade no. 27 - about a fiver but the chunky comes in generous 200g skeins. Sally made me a glorious wrapper from this kind of self-patterning wool. What's great about it in a mixed-colour item, is that you can pick colours from it to find matching plain yarns, colours you may not have thought would fit into the scheme.

   And because i'm making it up as i go along, i'm finally finding a home for leftovers, erroneous choices (from badly photographed 'bargains' on ebay) and crazy, fancy stuff like this which i just bought because i liked it:

This is a shade called 'Donkey' (!) by V and A Products. The yarn is called Mo-et and is incredibly fiddly to work being a sliver of ribbon with a breath of mohair loosely twisted around it (and prone to unwind). The ball is a sensuous treat to hold - incredibly silky and slippy. I can't resist a bit of gold sparkle.

   I spotted this at one of the haberdashery stalls in the market.

 I'm not sure if it was a bargain or not - £3 for 100g of wool and acrylic blend by Jarol. I love the colour which reminds me of tonics two-tone fabric.

Obviously i can't carry on like this indefinitely. I'm thinking of making a series or triangles, petal-wise and then more triangles to fit the first ones, jigsaw-wise to make a square or a rectangle of it.
  There's nothing so good as having a project on the go! 

   Many thanks to my glamorous assistant Mr Safko.

6th bear leaves for Massachusetts!

A thousand bear-hugs to Anja in America who has homed yet another Bovis Bear!

   The little blonde chap flew out on Tuesday (a day behind schedule unfortunately). The gang is getting smaller!

When i told him he was going to live with his great friend Valentino (a little grey fleece bear), not to mention three other of his forebears, he begged me to splash out on his airfare so he could be there a.s.a.p.
      So i did!!! With any luck, he'll be having tea and biscuits with his Bovis family (and seven pussycats!) before he can say there's no place like home three times.

   [On a slightly visceral note, i'm waiting for a consignment of eyes and noses... more bears coming soon!]

  Many thanks, Anja - i hope the little lad is with you very soon and isn't too boisterous after his journey. X

Young bear leaves for Torquay!

The tiniest bear so far (only 3 and a half inches when standing) left for Torquay yesterday. It's the first Bovis Bear to move to the West Country. He's going to love the pasties and ice-cream. Lucky bear!

 Cream Teas! Sea! Marvellous!

 He actually received news of his posting on Sunday but unfortunately, had been A.W.O.L since the 'Bye Portrait before last - i suspected NoNo had made off with him but during a finger-tip search of the bears' room, he was found nestling (snoringly) in their folded up photo blanket. Thank heavens for that!

We were interrupted by Safko. Must have been his turn...

   Have a smashing life little, tiny bear!

the first, finished crochet item

The sample i grew fond of became a bag! i made a front to go with the back, a flap and a handle. Then i picked-up-and-knitted the sides and bottom and picot-ed all around the perimeters (lovely peaceful job.) 

   Plenty of inevitable cat and dog hair in the pictures and the colour has been extremely difficult to faithfully reproduce. (in reality, the first photograph is the closest match.)

Last Sunday i finally got 'round to constructing a canvas inner (undyed to show off the holes) so it's bits-n-bobs tight now and quite rigid. I still need to line the handle or the bag will be dragging along the ground.

 Ever helpful John suggests i branch out into crochet bags for iPads, pods, laptops and Kindles.
    I may attempt a tea-cosy. And a hat!

Bovis Bears set sail for Scandinavia!

Lovely news on Friday - two little bears were invited to live in Sweden!

  I'm really happy for the little jumbo-corduroy bear as i felt he might not be everyone's cup of tea, bless him (and he does go on so about hydraulic mechanics). As for the very small knitted lad - i don't know what we will do without him! As his listing has now disappeared, here is his biography, so you know what i mean:

Some knitted bears have very fixed characters. This is because some knitted bears lack the anatomical addition of a swiveling head which explains their often trenchantly fixed view, steadfast will and almost stubborn adherence to duty.
If you are looking for a bear whose pleasure it is to listen attentively as you discourse upon such subjects as dialectics, hockey sticks in graphs, the Turin Shroud or the Large Hadron Collider, then this is the one for you. He will also hear personal problems but is prone to offering practical solutions rather than a shoulder to cry upon as he is only 6 inches tall (when standing) and finds such shows of emotion physically uncomfortable.

This dear little chap has fully functional button-jointed arms and legs, the shiniest black eyes and a grand nose as the olfactory sense in one so diminutive must be even greater than that of the average bear to aid survival.

It was touch and go whether he would actually reach the shop window as he is a borderline genius and has been wooed by various organizations (i'm afraid i can't go into details - suffice to say we had to sign the Official Secrets Act). However, at the last minute, he broke down, shouting "I am a Bovis Bear, not a human being" and only calmed down when we agreed to revert to Plan A, the plan that all Bovis Bears are brought into this world for - to grow up and become somebody's greatest friend and companion and guardian ad infinitum.

He is a Bovis Bear and he's ready for (almost) anything! 

 
 It's so nice for them to be traveling together. Apparently their new companion has a working steam engine; to see one is the corduroy bear's greatest wish! To make a bear's dream come true is a wonderful thing.

 Goodbye bears! Safe journey!
 Only 6 left in the shop now, i'll have to get busy...