Back To Work...

 Well, it took a few days to get the holiday washing done and the outstanding jobs out of the way, but we're back into the old routine now. I've had a few hours to devote to the chickens - I have to admit I spent far too long on the pearls as firstly we were experiencing a heatwave and inside the house was hot, sticky & uncomfortable and secondly, I just could not get them right.  Sorted now I think and I am working on the irridescent plumage of the black chicken now, much more fun.

 I've been experimenting with making little pendants full of the seaside - still in the prototype stage.

 After a false start with a super-glue incident turning the inside of the bulb milky white, I;ve got the look I want.  Now I have to wear the pendant for a few days to see if it will stand up to it and also to check nothing untoward happens.  I've already had one of them where the water has gone a but yellow for some reason, perhaps the cork?  Any suggestions welcome.

I'm hoping this works, as they are so pretty and a great reminder of our holiday.

Normal Service Has Been Resumed...

 We've just had a much needed week away, staying in Alderney, which is one of the Channel Islands.

 While the rain poured down back at home, we had plenty of sunshine and empty beaches.

 We sat and watched the gannets from the cliff top...

 ...strolled round the harbour...

...lazed in the sunshine digging sandcastles and got gently burnt to a crisp.  This was a busy day at the beach.

I caught up with old school friends, read endlessly, drank plenty of wine and beer and probably ate far too much.  It was just what we needed and while it was a wrench to come back home, I feel refreshed and ready to don the yoke once again....tomorrow!

Lazy Bum...

I have about 6 WIP's on the go this week, as well as a painting.  I have been putting some work in, but as Mr.B is off work for a week and the weather has been beautiful, we have been out and about while we can.

After discovering that Clovis can travel in the car without throwing up (always a bonus!), we took him for his first visit to the beach.  He was a bit overwhelmed by it all - that's a lot of sea!

He spent some time off lead, but then saw a pretty greyhound that took his fancy and sprinted off over the dunes in pursuit, so had to be kept on the lead for the rest of the day, just in case.

We had a picnic on the beach, I even went paddling, and Stacie came home slightly sunburnt.  Not bad for 1st October in Britain!

Currently on the needles: a gorilla, a scarf, a blanket, some wristwarmers...
Being sewn: a tweed triceratops
On the easel: a fishing bear - three dog portraits waiting in the wings

Grapes Of Wrath.....

After a shaky start where it felt I had forgotten how to paint, this little watercolour of Corblets Bay in Alderney is coming along nicely.  I've been working on the rocks in the foreground for several days now - the idea was to use a large brush and keep it loose....well, that didn't happen, did it!  It never does when I paint, I just get caught up in the detail and when I emerge two hours later, my style remains my style.  Even when using a large brush!

I wish I had more time for painting at the moment - our grape vine this year has produced yet another mammoth crop and I am trying to utilise it.  I'm making grape jelly as usual - we like it, plus it is good for spur of the moment gifts as everyone else likes it too.  So far there are 11 jars of the stuff, a bucket of grapes in the kitchen awaiting processing and about another 20lbs of grapes out on the vine.  I have a feeling most of them will end up compost - life is too short to stand over a boiling pan of juice & sugar!

Beaches & Beasties...

Whilst I went straight back to work after our brief holiday, I have had time to start a small watercolour.  This is of Corblets beach in Alderney, the beach that has the biggest waves.  I took many reference photos of the waves, but not many of them turned out as well as I had hoped!  I feel very rusty painting again - I have not done much lately and it shows.  However, it is very enjoyable to be painting somewhere I love and I am slowly getting back into the swing of it.

I've also knitted another one of these - I had a brief hiatus from the animation work and a zombie was what I wanted to make.

This pattern never fails to amuse me!

I am currently crocheting another monster, quite difficult when using fluffy yarn, I can't see what on earth I'm doing!

No Crafting, Just Chilling...

Anyone who reads this blog on a regular basis will know that I have been very stressed this summer - constant building noise was driving me to the brink of insanity.  However, just before having to go back to work, we took a few days off and caught a plane....a very small plane!

To a very small island - this is Alderney in the Channel Islands, just off the coast of France and where I spent my teenage years when my parents retired there.

Not much has changed, the beaches remain the same.

No-one there but us most of the time.

Stacie's favourite pursuit, assembling a sandy Dalek army - she also did more sketching than I did!

I was too busy collecting shells....

...collecting photos for future paintings...

...or freezing myself in the sea!  Going swimming was a bit of a mad thing to do but when you are challenged, you have to step up.  It was COLD!

We also bird watched at Gannet Rock,

and explored various forts and German fortifications left over from the war.

I have often reminisced about how awful dental checks were when I lived in Alderney and that it was pretty antiquated at the time.  We as children all dreaded the visit to the school of the local dentist, it was not a good experience.  In the museum I found the actual chair we all had to sit in and it was so much worse than I remembered!  Zoom in if you can to read the notice....no wonder we all had problems with our teeth in later life!

I have been crafting since I got back - more on that in another post.

Hitting The Ground Running...

Back from a holiday of rotten weather, crowded beaches, bad food.....no, it was a fantastic few days in Alderney, with Mediterranean temperatures, deserted sands, bird watching, shell collecting and generally lazing about.  The only thing wrong with it was that it was far too short and I have to go back to work this morning.

I have lots of photographs to keep me busy painting sun and sand over the winter months - if I can get through today that is!

Song Of The Sea...

It's not long now until our mini-break in Alderney and I'm so impatient!  It's not been a good summer for me -  I know I keep banging on about it, but the noise and disruption caused by the building works three feet from our house has really affected me badly. It starts shortly after 7 a.m. and carries on until 5 p.m. and is driving me CRAZY! We can't have windows or doors open as it is too loud, which makes the house hot and stuffy.  Even with everything battened down, the vibrations can still be felt.  So no lie-ins, no sitting in the garden, no gentle summer breeze wafting through the house, no birdsong, no escape.

Usually I use the school holidays to catch up on some painting, but it's very hard when your concentration is shot to pieces and your nerves are stretched to breaking point!  However, I am manfully carrying on with this acrylic - if I put on my headphones and turn the music up, I can almost drive out the presence of the Doozers.  Plus the subject matter reminds me that I will get a few days respite soon!

I'd like to camp out in the offices of the people who say we are not entitled to any compensation for having two summer ruined by building works and play the drums while running a vacuum cleaner, a blender and a hairdryer for 10 hours solid, five days a week and see how long they last before getting annoyed...if only!

I promise I'll try and shut up about it from now on - it's boring and depressing, but hopefully goes some way to explain the lacklustre blog posts lately!

There's A Kind Of Hush...

So, this morning there were no builders outside....I waited just to make sure they weren't lulling me into a false sense of security, then it was time to whizz round the housework, do a bit of cooking for later, fly to the supermarket and back, and ahhhh, have two hours at the easel before lunch.

This acrylic is based on a photo of a lighthouse in Oregon - nowhere I have been unfortunately!  It did beg to be painted though - the idea of being by the sea in the sunshine is very compelling at the moment.  So much so that we have booked a few days in Alderney at the tail end of summer.  I cannot wait - just to sit on a beach with my paints, to beachcomb, to eat fresh fish and chips and not be woken up by diggers and drills....

Currently on the needles - the alphabet!

Phew, It's A Scorcher!

 

We've had what the press have been referring to as a heatwave here in the UK the past few days - yes, it's been quite hot, but I am sure those of you living in sunnier climes would laugh at us calling 32C hot.  It was rather muggy, especially after a few spectacular thunderstorms and torrential rain, but that didn't stop me getting on with things.

I finally got over a bad case of artist's block and have started this little watercolour.  It's the view down through trees to the water below, using a photo sent to me by Midge from Soggibottom blog in Devon.  I'm not sure how it will turn out or if it will be worth it, but I am very happy to be using a brush again.  

On the other hand, my daughter has been painting like a maniac the past week - we've gone back to using the 'Paint Your Own Masterpiece' book and she has churned out another version of this Cezanne.  All I do for her is make a light sketch of the main objects, the rest she does by herself. (For those of you who are new here and are thinking 'so what?', my daughter has Down's Syndrome, so this is really quite an achievement!)  I think this one might deserve framing!

As well as knitting a grizzly bear (hot work!) I have been teaching myself how to make loom band bracelets.  It was getting embarrassing at work (infant school) being shown up by six year olds who have mastered this and I hadn't the first idea.  So when I got a bag of the bands free with a magazine, I took the bull by the horns and had a go - turns out it is not that hard after all, and I can see the attraction, they are strangely addictive!  I want to try one of the very intricate designs and then I can file this under 'done it'!

Despite the heat, we have managed some lovely leisurely walks with the dog in the fields behind our house.
They are sown with a crop of beans this year but in amongst them are millions of daisies.

It is so pretty - shame they want to plough it all up and build 450 houses on it.  We are praying that this doesn't come to pass as long as we are living here.

I don't know what Clovis would do without his daily canters through the countryside - he's never been a dog for road walking, it has to be running through the grass and bushes or it just isn't a walk.

Some sunflowers have snuck into the mix as well!

How To Make a Dr Who Fan Very Happy...

...take her to meet him!  If you look closely, you can see that it isn't really Matt Smith and that definitely isn't Karen Gillan (nasty wig!) but as far as my daughter was concerned yesterday, it was good enough.  We certainly didn't have to ask her to smile for the photo!

We went to the Dalek Invasion of Portsmouth, held at the Royal Marines Museum.  We kept this outing secret until the last minute as we  weren't sure whether to go or not, it all depended on the weather.  As you can see, the sun was shining.

We even ate barbecued burgers while sitting on the grass!  Amazing to think two days previously, we suffered all-day blizzards and freezing temperatures!

Here's me stuffing my face too - it was so wonderful to sit outside and be warm for the first time in what feels like an eon.

It was only a small show, but there were various people in costumes wandering about - a cyberman..

...K-9 was zipping about too.  The daleks were raced against each other which was hilarious, and also the Matt Smith lookalike and a David Tennant not-so-lookalike had a mad running race around the daleks - 'Matt Smith' won.

So what with being immersed in Dr Who for a few hours, followed by....

...a walk on the beach in the bright sunshine, it really was a fabulous day and we took home a very happy and contented Stacie. 

And That's That!

This got finished today - hooray!  It is a very large canvas, involved a great deal of paint, a great deal of pain from my injured shoulder as I had to paint it on an easel rather than my usual stance of drawing board in the lap, and a fair amount of language entirely unsuitable from a lady.  I do not like copying another artist's work, I have serious problems with perspective on such things as chairs, and the more I worked on it the more mistakes in the original I uncovered and struggled to correct.  But never mind, it is for a friend of mine, it's what she wanted and I hope she likes the end result!

.....And Breathe......

Well, that was the week from Hell indeed and I am very glad it's over!  Dealing with various disasters took up most of my time and I didn't have much left for this, but some progress has been made.

I don't normally (ever!) try and reproduce a picture painted by someone else as I find it not only boring but frustrating due to discovering the other artist's errors or differences in style and technique along the way, which make for a stilted and awkward result.  However, this is for a very good friend of mine who has been a gem for us during difficult days and who has just singlehandedly re-decorated her bedroom and turned it into something from House Beautiful.  She wanted a painting to go on the main empty wall and has been searching for months to no avail.  What she finally found was a greetings card with the perfect scene, and asked if I could reproduce it.  Then she bought an enormous canvas that doesn't even fit on my easel...must confess my heart sank when confronted with that!

However, I have to admit I am actually quite enjoying this - the colours are pretty, the view is calm and not having to think about composition but just matching the colours and slapping them on in the right places has been very therapeutic.  There are a couple of white chairs, some flowers in pots and the balcony railings to still go in, which might be a little trickier than normal (I'm not great with perspective!) but all in all, I'm happy so far.  This is in acrylics by the way.

Would you like a list of my misery from last week? Let's condense it...car failed MOT, costs 4 months' wages to fix due to expensive Japanese part,no car in meantime, huge amount of time wasted fruitlessly searching for seondhand part, phone bill will be massive, walking everywhere, carrying heavy shopping, daughter missed dental appointment due to lack of car, electricity bill wrongly jacked up to silly level (sorted), large cheque lost in post (sorted), dog needs vet (will have to wait until car back), dog pooped twice on carpet (he's a big bugger too, so poo is proportionate), child I work with spectacularly pooped in pants two days running, shoulder hurting due to dog throwing himself after cats while on lead......I think that just about sums it up!  However, I haven't cried, thrown any tantrums or toyed with the idea of doing a Reggie Perrin...yet!  Let's hope the coming week is better!

This One's Mine!

While searching through my stash to find beads for my sister's necklace, I came across the perfect beads for my own.  My lovely focal bead has been sat on the sideboard for weeks now while I pondered what to do with it.  I discovered these lovely little pink and grey natural pebble beads which I have had for quite a while and never had a project worthy of them.  The two match beautifully and I m really happy with the result.  If I can't make it to the beach, at least I can wear a little reminder of it around my neck!

Shells & Swans

I ordered this bead from Cheeky Cherub Designs last week, and when it came yesterday I was overjoyed.  The photo really doesn't do it justice, it is so beautiful.  Now I have to think about how I am going to make a necklace with it - I am thinking on natural thread with a few shells maybe.  It's been such a long time since I made jewellery, I feel a little rusty.

I'm finally happy with the swan painting - I gave the water a fairly thick covering of white Inktense pigment whcih calmed the patterning on the water considerably.  It can be purchased on my Etsy shop now.