Life just got away from me!

I don't know where the rest of the day went! Work was fine and I managed to study the Richard Box book. More about this in a minute. Then when I got home I organised dinner and sat in the sun for a bit waiting for Martin to get home. We had a leisurely dinner eventually and then being Tuesday it was shopping night. This seemed to take for ages even though my list was so small. I have so much food over from my weekend entertaining that I'll be able to make very little effort in the food department this week. Good! When we first decided to shop late at night it was wonderful. Really quiet, no people, no queues. Now it is crowded, busy and long queues at the check outs! I can see that eventually I'll be shopping at midnight! It was gone 9.30 before I got back and that's the evening gone! So nothing on the sewing front will be finished. I might be lucky and get it all done tomorrow.

Re the Richard Box book, 'Drawing for the Terrified'. This is a really useful book to have. So for those who have asked, especially Gabrielle and Sandy, I'll go into a little more detail. The book I've got is a hard back, I don't know if it has come out in paper back yet. It has 126 pages just to give you some idea of the size. It contains carefully designed structured exercises for learning to draw a wide range of subject matter with complete confidence and covers all the basic elements of drawing: materials, equipment, seeing your subject, drawing in monochrome and colour, tonal values and shading, colour theory and lots more. Clear instruction is supported throughout by detailed step-by-step illustrations and finished pieces. I copied this from the jacket back. It does all that it says and more. There is a lot of reading but if followed the reading amplifies the exercises and make them much more useful. The use of colour is covered in great detail. It's the kind of book that I can enjoy sitting up in bed reading last thing at night. I like all his books as they are very easy to follow. His free machine embroidery is exceptionally easy to follow and having met him several times at shows I know he is a very nice bloke and good at what he does. He is very generous with his time and expertise. I have no affiliation with him just like his stuff! Its a jumping off ground for developing ones own style.

Below is a bird's eye view of the Storm at Sea block in it's nearly finished state along with the cut out squares for the nine patch quilt top. I'm quite pleased with the colours I've chosen and I think it will look fine when finished. Once I can get started the nine patch will be cinch.















I did manage to do some work on the sketch book and have some ideas for a wall hanging based on reflections/water though to a certain extent I have moved on a bit so its not so obvious to the uninitiated. I'm quite excited about this and will use layers of chiffons and gauze to get the effect I want with cut outs either by cutting or by burning with a soldering iron. When I have a moment I'll start pulling some fabrics out to give me some idea as to what I want. I think I have just the right piece of dyed fabric for the background but if not I'll dye one. Then I'm going to use stencils over it and/or stamps. I have this lovely sticky backed rubber stuff that I can cut into shapes and stick to blocks of wood or polystyrene. Just this minute I had the thought of using polystyrene and I'm now cursing as I threw a whole load out with the rubbish this morning. Rats! Oh well there will be more as it is such a common packaging item. Its the cutting of it that's the pain. I use the electric bread knife at the moment but I'm sure there must be something simpler. Let me know if you know of anything please!

Well I'm off to bed. I'm exhausted!