0. To wake up in cold in the night and be able to cuddle into my favourite fleshy radiator to warm up again.
1. Spongey, rather than slippy or squelchy, mud underfoot. The velvet-capped mushrooms to the side.
2. Travelling west at sunset, when the soft clouds glow pink against the blue, and a haze covers everything.
3. Thinking I’d have to have something dull (or strange) for a late supper but then, at the last second, remembering I have leftover Singapore noodles.
In an effort to get back into the habit of blogging regularly, I’m taking part in Blogtoberfest 2012 – at least one post a day on at least one of my blogs (full list of the posts).
I finally added string to my corkboard string art/house number project the other day.
I just used some cheap black cotton embroidery thread – it was a little splitty on a couple of occasions but other than that, it worked well and I like the weight/thickness of it. All one colour – I wanted it stark.
The stringing was a combination of enjoyably repetitive and frustrating at times – if the string got snagged on the wrong pin or if I couldn’t work out how to string it efficiently/neatly without duplicating or missing out bits. It’s not perfect but because I didn’t plan the number of pins or their spacing I would have been absolutely shocked if it had been. (I’m reasonably happy with it being imperfect but there is a contrast between the sharpness/neatness of the font: imperfect would look just … perfect with a less formal font, such as the one Dina used.)
The pins flipped out of the corkboard very easily during the threading but I decided to push them all right in to give them more support – which has pinned the string against the board so I don’t get the nice shadow effect thing any more. I still like it though – it feels like a real life version of the Scribble font I used on my photo “captions” ;)
All in all, it was a quick, easy and cheap thing to try and I think I’ll give it another go sometime soon. I’d like to make a colourful spirograph-esque circle perhaps or some other nod to retro string art designs. Something a bit more precise to excite my perfectionist glands ;)
I’m taking part in Blogtoberfest 2012 across my various different blogs – at least one post a day for the month of October to get me back into blogging regularly again. I’m keeping a (growing) list of those posts for anyone interested!
A bit like yesterday’s post, this is a half-finished make at the moment. This would have been finished if I could find my ball of black crochet cotton but since I can’t, it’s currently string-less string art/thread art. eBay is providing a new (to me) ball of black crochet cotton so I’ll post finished pics (and better pics in general) when that arrives tomorrow/Thursday but, you know, Blogtoberfest2012 demands daily posts…!
I’ve been wanting to try making some string art for a while but have always been put off by the idea of having to hammer in lots of little nails. Then I found Dina’s string art tutorial which uses corkboard so no hammer required and it’s pretty forgiving (I moved a few pins but with the naturally open cork texture, it’s hard to see the wrong holes). I was even lazier than Dina though and just used a cork noticeboard – £2 from Wilkinsons. They used to have ones in wooden frames but I prefer this apparently frameless type (there is a hidden frame structure, which makes it pretty strong and ready to hang).
I’ve used 10mm (3/8″) cut tacks instead of pins – I tried panel pins but the test string slipped off them more easily and I like the mock-industrial dark metal look anyway. As I said, the string will be black too and when I’m stringing it, I’ll even up the heights/positions of all the tacks so it looks a bit neater in general (seemed little point in doing it now).
It’s our house number and will hang in the (very visible from the road) porch. The house exterior is currently dirty cream & green (bleugh!) but we’ve been meaning to re-do it since we moved in to (off-)white and black, and all the other stuff I’ve got in the porch is monochrome in anticipation of that. Hopefully this will both look good finished and coordinate well with the other stuff in there. If it doesn’t, well, at least it was quick, easy & fun — and I can take it all apart again to reuse in some other way.
1. That special silence between us when we’re both trying to think of a suitable pun. Our mouths bobbing open and closed betray the internal cog spinning.
2. The delicate fishbone pattern in the stream of water running down the gutter.
3. Chopping fresh coriander always reminds me of when I first discovered the herb – and proper curries – at university. As the knife releases the smell from the green leaves, pictures flash into my mind: cooking spicy potato cake things with D, A & E at 83 and the smell of upstairs at The Future Balti in Wibsey.
I’ve not been blogging enough recently, for various, uninteresting reasons so inspired by Lynsey of Swirly Arts, I’ve decided to throw myself back into the blogging deep end and take part in Blogtoberfest 2012 to try to remedy my “not blogging” problem – posting every day in October, one way or another, on one site or another (preferably more than one!).
Some of the posts will probably be short/picture heavy but I am going to try to include a lot of “makes” in the month, because I’ve not been making stuff enough lately and I’m missing it. Most of them will probably end up on The Really Good Life or How Can I Recycle This? but as this is neither “good life”y or recycled, I thought it wasn’t really appropriate for those sites. It is though, fittingly, a little swirly ;)
It’s a World of Warcraft “hearthstone” – a little thing you click in the game every time you want to return to your in-game home. I’ve been meaning to make a “real” one to go on my (house keys) keyring for a while but didn’t get around to it until today. The bits are meant to be there – it’s Fimo “Effect” which is supposed to look a bit like stone/marble. It needs to go in the oven to bake hard, but it can wait until we’ve heated up the oven for something else.
It’s very small and very geeky but it’s a start!
1. A gust of fresh, cool air tickles through my hair when I open the door.
2. I guess at the size but it turns out to be perfect. And, better than that, the numbers are spaced exactly one ruler width apart one the board. I do like it when things are the same size as other things, far nicer than having to measure things.
3. Savouring each mouthful to try to identify the unusual flavours (onion seeds? lemongrass?).
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