dimming the lights - but not for the reasons that you might think!

I'm very excited to find that my silver birch cushions change their appearance according to the light.  At the weekend someone who has previously had one of my Autumn cushions contacted me to say that they would like another and did I know that as the light changes on them throughout the day that they change in their appearance; echoing early morning light, full day light, twilight, evening and night.
Colin made me get one straight away (Summer was close to hand) and we closed the curtains, dimmed the lights, slowly brought them up to full brightness, and then dimmed them again, and we had the whole cycle of a woodland waking up, being alive and then going back to sleep.  I'm really, really happy that they do this, and can't believe that without the kind feedback, that I would never have noticed!

Jackie

What's he gonna look like with a chimney on him.

Poor Colin was convinced that the Brinsley wreck was about to collapse today.  The house is still a building site; the plummer has "first fixed" the pipes, and the electrician is due in tomorrow and the water company have still got to sort out an appointment date.  So when he went in the front room and heard a low "fizzing" type noise, he couldn't work out what the problem was; gas, electric or water -one by one, he turned them all off, and went around the house investigating every room for drips, holes in gas pipes etc, but couldn't find anything amiss......
After a few anxious moments, Col's really good at most practical things, but hates messing about with water and electrics, he realised, with both relief and annoyance at being so dim, that the fizzing was from the bottle of cola that he'd brought with him, ah maybe it could be written into a sketch for a cola advert, for a coke break!
Jackie.  

Poison Ivy

I've been dyeing with ivy today (it makes an interesting yellowy colour) but all of the time that I was doing it, I couldn't help but sing the tune "Poison Ivy" - I'm now getting slightly anxious that this is a sign and that I should really invest in separate utentsils (collinder, spoon, bowl etc) and that it might not be too good for our health to be using the same untensils that we use to cook.
I'm keen to get a pressure cooker too, as I'm keen to use it to manipulate and distort man-made fabrics with it, I already used Cols heat gun and soldering iron to distress and distort voiles and polyesters, but I think that there would be a lot of scope to more subtlely manipulate larger pieces of fabric, (think Issey Miyakes designs) and the high temperatures of a pressure cooker would allow this to happen.
Jackie

running with faries

Me and Col went for a run in a torrential downpour last night - Col's not keen on running in the rain; he's allergic to rainwater (really!!) and he gets cold really easily.  Me? I love running in the rain; it makes me feel alive, and it makes me feel like a "propper runner"; anyone can go out for a run in the nice weather!
Last night we just got wetter and wetter and our rainsoaked clothes got heavier and heavier - but as well as getting wet and heavy, my trousers began to bubble and froth - at first I thought it was the spray from a scummy puddle, but no, the washing machine can't be rinsing our clothes out properly, and the unwashed away detergent was bubbly away quite nicely, it wasn't quite the bubbles that you can make by blowing fairy (washing up liquid) around, but it was very very frothy!
Jackie

Thank you for being my friend.

I've been given a Herman!  He's a friendship cake given to me by a fellow running buddy, and is I suppose a cake version of the old fashioned chain letter.  Herman is alive (he starts off as a yeast) and you have to take care of him for 10 days, stirring him, talking to him and feeding him, splitting him up into little baby hermans which you give away to 4 other friends - before finally putting him in the oven on the 10th day and murdering him!
At Saturdays Nordic walking class (which was very good) somebody was discussing making a Herman App for their phone so that they can see where he travels too  ( a bit like book crossing I suppose)
Jackie

Mugshots

I'm moving on to the "people" part of my drawing module, and poor Colin, who is usually so relaxed, is getting very stressed out.  Whenever he sits down for 5 minutes (which is not very often) I pick up my sketchpad and start drawing him.

It probably doesn't help that my sketches aren't particularly flattering; Half of the problem is that when I sketch I always try and catch the essence of something rather than a likeness, which is fine for sketching in nature, but probably a bit unflattering for people. And Col would probably be the first to admit that he has the face of a "mugger" rather than a "muggee". 

Jackie

Nordic Walking for onions!

My natural dyeing has gone much better today, I now realise that the reason that the grass didn't dye satisfactorily was because it was a couple of days old, whereas most of natures finds need to have time to dry out before dyeing, grass needs to be very fresh or else the chlorophyll, which gives it the green, gets destroyed. 
I've also been dyeing again with onion skins, this time with a mordant (Allum) which allows the dye to penetrate the cloth more readily, onion shouldn't need mordanting, but it does make the colours much richer, and this time they came out a lovely rich rusty colour.  I'm also lucky in that quite a few people are starting to save me their onion skins, including people that I don't even know!

My friend and Nordic Walking Instructor knows how keen I am to forage for things to dye with, and so she has very kindly invited me to her Nordic Walking Class at Shipley Country Park., to do just this.  The people who attend the class sound lovely, one of them has already volunteered to start saving onion skins when she heard about what I do.  I'm really looking forward to starting the weekend with a good walk, a forage and a chat to some new friends.
Jackie