"O" is for OCA... an update

Still working on Assignment One of the OCA Textiles Degree but plugging on and trying to make myself sketch. Last night's exciting subjects were my living room lamp and a felted basket with some spinning bobbins in! In a rash departure from pens/pencils I went full-on mad and got out the coloured pencils! Phew! I set myself a target of no edges as I'm a bit of a one for drawing the outline then filling it in - a throwback to kid's colouring books I think. It wasn't an outstanding success but a start at least. The DS is being awesomely encouraging and keeps telling me not to get behind with sketching as it is really important. Mrs Bleakley (Will's art teacher) has obviously done a good job there!

If you promise not to laugh I'll post pics of the sketches - hopefully you can tell which is which (!) but I warn you, they really are dire   : (  

Thank goodness my dyeing skills exceed my drawing skills is all I can say.....

 (ps. There are lots more sketches but I don't want to scare you all away! - and the separate OCA blog is under construction).

The lettter "O" has been brought to you by An Accidental Knitter's ABC meme - find more "O"s here.....

N is for Not Enough Hours in the Day....

Nothing serious to report just a pre-Summer School/OCA/pre-holiday/hospital/pre-GCSE results kind of week when everything seemed to come at the same time and nothing seemed to come together iykwim!

Anyway, back from Summer School where we had an awesome time (more of which later as it deserves a nice post of its own!). Some progress on the OCA front (also more later), signed off by one of the hospitals (two down, one to go - yaay!), so just Christie's left on the list. GCSE results are out on Thursday so we're all on pins here still for that one.

Now tackling a world-grade washing mountain that would put the average laundry to shame. Why does a pre-holiday laundry call cause almost every garment possessed by the OH and the DS to miraculously appear, resulting in a deluge of dirty t-shirts/trousers and other garments (about which the less said the better)? - yuck. Thank heavens for the new washing line - which, I'm pleased to say, I put up all by myself : )

Off now to get more done before it rains......


" N" was brought to you by the ABC meme - you can find the timely ABC memers here and their current posts here (the observant among you will see that I am still on N whilst they are up to P - perhaps my P should be "Promise to keep up!")

My first dyeplant bed - part one

This year I was determined to do some natural dyeing with fresh plants I'd grown myself. You may recall that I did make a start on the plants with some woad the year before last but I didn't cut any for dyeing as I wanted it to seed so I'd have more to work with. Sure enough it flowered and seeded last year and I have several small plants popping up in the front borders. I still can't quite bear to pick them though, so I may wait until the patch is a bit more established so I'll have more to work with (I think I might just have enough for a hankie so far!).

Buoyed with this success a dear friend of my Mum's offered to grow some plants from seed for me but first I needed somewhere to put them....

So the boys (I know you can only see one, the other one snuck off!) got to work building a dyebed....

Luckily I had had the foresight to create a suitable space (!)

The spade marks the spot....

And for a slightly less flattering version...

And here's one of Pete just because I think he looks fab in this pic   : )

Oh, and this is what happened to the other one, clearly exhausted with all the hard work...

Coming next - some dyeplants.....

L & M are for.... Last Minute....

From Summer School - Wednesday - Sock blanks

...preparations for Summer School. Cheating here and catching up with both L and M in the ABC meme but it's been a whirlwind couple of weeks! I'm whizzing round measuring/packing/weighing/skeining/labelling and writing handouts for my course next week so I hope you'll forgive a rather "functional" blog post this week.

I'll be teaching "Dip, Paint, Print, Resist" - a full week's dyeing extravaganza. I have lots of exciting projects and exercises planned and a full complement of 15 lovely students to work with so it should be lots of fun. We'll be "immersing" ourselves (sorry, terrible dyer's pun there!) in dip-dyeing, handpainting, self-striping, resist dyeing, faux fairisle, ball-dyeing and anything else I can squeeze into the timetable!

If you're in the Edinburgh area there's a supplier's fair on the Saturday (10am-4pm) with some of your favourite traders, including Pete and my good self, The Yarn Yard, Ripples, Scottish Fibres, Don Porritt and Michael Williams. There will also be an exhibition of students' work and the work from the Certificate of Achievement so do come along to St Margaret's University (Capital Campus) and say hello!

In other news - work is progressing on the OCA Textiles Degree Course - still on Assignment One and wrestling with the unfamiliar territory that is sketching but making some headway. There'll be a separate blog for the OCA work for those who might be interested but I'll post a link here when I find a few moments to get things up and running.

And last but not least, catch up on other (more timely) ABC memer's here