Speleothem Textile

Talk about putting myself out of my comfort zone! With no final idea of what I was aiming for I began by dying some different fabrics and tearing them up to form four small 'picture' bases, much in the way that I had done for the Gitbarrows pieces. Click here for that blog. Anyway, after composing the pieces I used the embellisher to 'stitch' the layers together and to distress some of the fabrics. Looking at them I then decided to stitch them together as one long piece - based on the textures in caves - and began to machine stitch and hand stitch into them. Finally I added wax to some areas, before scraping into the wax and pushing oil paint into the scratches - a technique used by Debbie Lydon and learnt on the Fibre Arts Take Two course that I am doing - although I have had a six month break from it! Hopefully the piece reflects the layered and rippled nature of cave deposits, with the wax relating to the shiny smooth nature of the deposits.

Initial pieceing ...

Using the embellisher to join and distress the fabrics.

Detail before waxing...

The final piece ..and detail below...

Bejeweled cobwebs

It gets rather hard sometimes to make different blogs about the same place, so I nearly didn't take the camera to Wedholme Flow the other day. It was dull and murky and the moss would be the same autumnal colours - however, the cobwebs were beautiful! Glad I took the camera! 

Looking in one direction you can't see the cobwebs....

but in the other direction they almost look like silver umbellifer heads.

Candle Snuff Fungus

I didn't notice the tops of the Cladonias acting as goblets for the water droplets until I downloaded my photos - if I had I would have taken more pictures! 

Autumn colours ....

..and reflections.

Buttermere delights

With a good friend staying for just one day, the good weather fell beautifully for, amongst other things, a walk round Buttermere. Perfect! 

Gaitbarrows NNR textile development

As part of a project that I am working on, I want to go down a more abstract line. So here are a few sketches of Gaitbarrows and then some abstracted landscape textiles...small scale; hoping to lead to something larger.  

High Rigg - Rocky's birthday walk

A birthday walk (12) for Rocky - in typical dank November weather. A very pleasant undulating ridge and the sun came out on Thirlmere for some nice views. A good variety of lichens too. 

A glacial erratic on the way up - covered in Umbilicaria pustulata.

Super lacy lichen as above.....

Brown Witches' Butter fungus...

Walking through the pine wooodland to the ridge, we noted the lack of pine regeneration - this one sapling, on the upturned pine root... was doing its best ...

Heading along the ridge....

Sight of the summit...

The birthday boy....

Milky blue sky...

More lichens....

Colour....

Stone wall detail.

The ladder stile over this wall was very steep and not dog-friendly. Last time we were here the brackem was really high...Rocky scaled the wall thinking he could just step onto the bracken top - he was most embarrassed to fall through it! 

..and sunlight over Thirlmere....and below.