Thank you

Well that blog silence didn't last long did it?

Seriously though I have 2 important thank yous to make.

Firstly, I would like to thank all you lovely friends who have wished me luck on my project and let me know that I will be missed while I'm away, I was very touched.

Secondly, I want to thank my lovely family for giving me the best birthday I have ever had.

Yesterday I became a pensioner, ouch!!!!, that looks even worse in print!!!!

I had said some time ago that my best birthday present would be to spend a weekend with all my family together, no small wish considering there are now 22 of us, and hiring a house for such an occasion was no meant feat.

I had put the idea to bed for this year as we all have heavy commitments and as some of you will know our son and his DF are getting married in August, but to make it up to me my OH said he would take me away for the weekend and take me out to dinner on Saturday night, so I needed to pack something posh to wear.

We set off on Friday mid morning to an unknown location, he wouldn't tell me where we were going, even though I thought it was a bit far North for a random weekend away, he just said he thought it would be quieter further North, hmmmm!!!!! I am renowned in the family for my gullibility.



It was not till we finally arrived deep in the Norfolk countryside at this beautiful house the I spotted a familiar vehicle, DD2's people carrier, and then I noticed the birthday banner on the door, and promptly burst into tears, my poor OH wondered if they'd done the right thing, but he couldn't have been more wrong, it was the best surprise I could possibly have had.

We had a lovely informal meal when we arrived and made ourselves at home in this gloriously spacious house, which was a real family home.

Here's our youngest GS ignoring the resident chicken, who later became his best friend.



On Saturday night we all got dressed up for a special dinner which was cooked and served for us in the house by a team of caterers and was absolutely splendid. We had champagne and a beautiful toast from my OH, another lump in the throat moment.



And then a family pic of course.



And just to prove that there's life in the old girl still, I had to have a go on the trampoline with one of the younger members, who later did a great impression of the little boy in the film The Shining, on his tricycle.



I had a wonderful birthday cake and to top it off had the most beautiful presents and cards from all the family, so I really did feel very special and loved.

Thank you all so much for making my dream come true, I soooo.... much didn't want it to end.

But I really will have to go now and get on with some serious work.

Bye for now

Mike Young

The time is rushing by towards the hand in date for my entry in the CHF textile competition, so I have decided to follow the example/advice of a a very wise (hence the owl pic) blogger friend Val and take a blogging break until the piece is finished. I don't really want to be away from the scene, but I spend most evenings surfing and I really need that time to get my sketch books ready and work on the embroidery for the piece.
I shall look forward to sharing it all with you in September when it's gone on public display at The Forge Mill Needle Museum in Redditch.
I shall look forward to returning to Blogland in August.
Bye for now.

Apologies

Time is taking wings, as usual, and I realised I had been very rude and not shown my last 2 CG PC's

This as my lovely PC from Pat working to our March theme.





And this one is from Carol M who's done an amazing job using techniques that I could only dream about.



And this was the inspiration, yes I know it says September, but it really was our April theme.



And just to show how 'out of it' I am at the moment this lovely PC arrived from Jenny this morning and I had no idea it was for me. It's really beautiful in the flesh.



The theme for this month is Monet's Water Lilies.



Thank you all very much, sorry it's taken so long for me to put yours up Pat.

Meeting Alice Kettle and the CHF finalists

We had a wonderful w/e, which started on Friday with a lovely easy drive up to a great caravan site just past the NEC at Birmingham called Somers Wood. It's right in the countryside and best of all it's adults only, so it was really peaceful, which was just what we both needed after a very busy week.

As some of you will know I was a bit nervous about this workshop with Alice Kettle and meeting the other finalists in the competition, but as Julie so rightly said it would be fine and I'd have a great time.



The venue for the day was a purpose designed classroom with a bank of new Pfaffs to play with, and lots of lovely fabric and thread for our creative endeavours.

We started with a meet and greet session, followed by a show and tell. Everyone's work was very different, which made for much lively discussion, with Alice offering us all lots of encouragement and helpful suggestions as to how we might emphasise certain areas of our work.

I wish I had taken some photos of the work the others brought with them , but the day was a packed one and the time just flew by. We had a photographer with us for the day so hopefully we will get to see where the photos are being used at some point and I can show you.

During a working lunch Alice gave us a brief history of her career to date and a small insight into what it's like to be a successful working artist. There are some wonderful pics on her web site and we were privileged to see some her work in the flesh, which was amazing.

After lunch we settled down to doing some line sketches and collages of the still life compositions that Alice had set up for us. Our brief was to look at the type of line we could see in the objects and their relationships with each other, with the purpose of using the collages as a design source for our stitch samples.





These are two of my attempts, I had a spiky sanding drill bit, a chrysanthemum flower, a wire wool pot scourer and 2 fishing floats in front of me, amongst other things.



And this is one of my stitch samples, using techniques, stitch settings and materials inspired by some of Alice's samples.

Here are some of the other students work from the day.





It was so nice to meet the other finalists and have a chance to work together, under Alice's guidance, she is a lovely encouraging and generous tutor.

The rest of the w/e was gorgeous too, but that'll have to wait till later in the week as I'm still buzzing from all the advice and ideas I received on Saturday and can't wait to get on with the project.

New growth

As usual, as soon as Monday comes around the week takes wings again. I did manage to do a little bit of artwork this w\e, but spent a lot of useless time once again trying to load things onto my web site, but as iweb is designed as a fun piece of software the code is inaccessible, so it won't let you put anything on it , like a paypal button.
However I have got my site republished and rejigged, so for anyone who hasn't seen it, it's been down for a about 9 months, you can see my 'other work' here.

I finally finished my bluebell sketch, which turned into a log sketch, as I became totally facinated by it's shape and lost interest in the bluebells.



I was going to work on the cowslip sketch but every time I looked at it I decided that maybe it was enough as it was and I might kill it if I fiddled with it, as that's sooo........ easy to do.



It's been so nice to get back to a bit of sketching practice, but I would like to spend more time on it and gain a bit more skill and confidence.

Over the w\e we went to a local heath that suffered a terrible fire about 2 years ago so I was delighted to see how much eveything had recovered in the meantime, but the scars are still there.



But even in their blackened state the trees make wonderful natural sculptures.



I deliberately underexposed this shot, very daring for me, to try and capture how dramatic this tree looked as we rouded the bend and saw it.



And I had a little help post processing from the 'master' for this one as the sky was really burnt out, but I loved the markings on the bark.



I'm off to my Alice Kettle master class on Saturday, so I'm very excited, I don't know if we'll be discussing our progress with our 'Freedom' project, but it'll be nice to meet half of the other finalists.

Spring fever

As I mentioned in the previous post I had time to do a small sketch of the lake after dinner and have since worked on it. I should have photographed it first to show it just in pen, will do that next time. I'm exploring different media to use in the field at the moment and am trying out some very nice watercolour dual brush pens by Tombow. This web site sells them individually which seems to be unusual. They have a great range of colours and blend really well with a little water. They also work brilliantly with traditional pan watercolours, which is what I've used in this sketch.



Now to the Spring fever bit:
We decided to have breakfast out on Sunday, just for a change, and were lucky enough to pick up some lovely croissants at a local shop on the way to the river. It felt just like being on holiday in France.





We went for a long walk along the river and came across lots of these Kingcups, which I hadn't seen in such profusion since I was a child.

After the river walk we drove around a bit looking for a lake my OH knew of but didn't know where it was, so we had a rather enjoyable magical mystery tour and ended up in this glorious bluebell wood above the elusive lake.





I spent a very happy half hour here sketching some of the bluebells growing by a lovely log, which I shall put up later when I've had time to work on it a bit.



We also managed to steal away on Saturday afternoon to a nature reserve near Winchester which was coverd in cowslips, again a wonderful come back for a flower that was everywhere when I was a child. I sat for an amazing 2 hours on the hill sketching the flowers and working on the lake sketch.

So all in in all it was a pretty good weekend. I hope yours was a good one too.

BYW thank you all for your sympathy re my computer problems, I have to own up that the fault wasn't with Mobile me but with me. My OH discovered that I hadn't sorted out my settings properly oops!!!!!!!

We stayed local

The Easter weekend didn't start well for me, what with the rain on Friday and Saturday. I made the mistake of thinking I would spend the time sorting out my web site on Friday, and subsequently spent a wasted day trying to get to grips with my OH's favoured software, big mistake. It's very male orientated and completely non user friendly. So on Saturday I downloaded a Mac trial of another web building software, this was better but didn't have a great help manual. By Saturday afternoon I was so fed up that I decided to hang the expense and reinstate my .Mac account to host my original site, only to find that's changed to the 'all singing all dancing" Mobile me, only problem is it seems to be completely incompatible with my operating system which is only 1 away from the latest one. So I'm no further forward :-( computers, don't you just hate them!!!!!

Fortunately we were having one of our GS's (Ben) over for a sleepover and a bit of magic playtime on Sunday.





We had so much fun making these ramps, (I know that's not the technical term, sorry Ben) for his mini skateboards, called Tech Decks, (hope that's right). It certainly got my ancient brain buzzing and we came up with 2 versions by the end of the day. We had such a laugh making them, sawing gluing and testing them out, I totally forgot about my irritating computer issues.

Ben also added a bit to his graffiti wall in my studio as I'd finally remembered to get the spray paints.



Thank goodness the sun came out today and we were able to leave the house at last. We decided to stay local as the traffic reports had predicted huge delays for the Easter break, so we headed for a local NT house Hatchlands park. We did the 1 1/2 mile parkland walk and were rewarded with the following treats:


Theses drifts of newly opened bluebells, I don't think I've ever seen so many.


And then we came across these beautiful anemones.



I was rather pleased with my next discovery, apparently it's called a Jew's ear fungus and when you touch it you know why. I just love the translucency of them.




And when they start to die off the get these lovely folds.

Just at the end of our walk I saw this tree with it's amazing textural growths, they look like cauliflowers.





And the last pic I took on the walk was this lovely big tree silhouetted against the fluffy clouds.



We ended the day in our usual fashion, dinner out, courtesy of Rosie by a local lake.
It would appear that the computer gremlins are still here as Blogger has decided, enough is enough, and I can't publish the lake pic.


Oh yes I can!!!

I even managed a couple of sketches today, which I'll publish later when I've reviewed them, I'm trying to do a sketch a day, starting today.

I hope everyone had a great Easter break and is refreshed for new exciting , creative adventures.