This week’s knitting and pottery

I went to my pottery class yesterday, not to attend, but to collect a few pots that were finished. I went on a few kilometres from there to walk on the beach with Ellie at low tide.

My oyster shaped dish, about 20cm long

I use these for serving a few freshly cooked shrimp, or tapas

Round heavy blue bowl, about 12cms across

And this one, which I brought home in November I think:

"Galaxy" pot, about 40cm tall

I like it a lot, but I don’t quite know what to use it for. It is smoke fired on top of several layers of pinky and white enamel. It looks all bulgy at neck level, but it isn’t actually.

And then I have been knitting. A coat for my dachshund Ellie in case the weather turns cold. I didn’t realize she was so long. I measured but mostly just estimated. It looks a bit silly doesn’t it? And she very definitely didn’t like modelling it.

Ellie's coat

Ellie modelling her new coat

And here she's showing how versatile it is, it can also be worn as a cowl...

I’ve also been spinning.

Flower garden coloured batts for spinning

I ordered a few batts before Christmas, and they are spinning up well, the colours are very pleasing!

Lost sock photo

Here is the photo of the socks I finished for myself last week. It is the first pair of long socks I have done. Why are my socks always too large? I used the same wool as for Steve’s Christmas sweater.

Knitting for me

Start again, somehow the publish button pressed right in the middle!

Having finished things for other people for Christmas, I’ve gone back to knitting for me. Actually this scarf/wrap/stole I finished in time to take it to London with me at Christmas. The colours are really Christmassy and so I didn’t want to miss the opportunity to wear it.

 

Christmas wrap

 

 

I’ve been painting a lot

It has been quite compulsive. But as oil paint takes such a long time to dry, finished canvasses are few and far between. Here are a few that are ready to be photographed (some are for sale in my Etsy shop).

"Blue Vase", oil on canvas

"Méridien Rouge", multimedia, acrylic on canvas, with map collage of Greenwich Meridian

"Frozen", acrylic on canvas

And here is Steve’s Christmas pullover that I couldn’t find yesterday:

Knitting for Christmas

The trouble about knitting for Christmas is that you can’t unveil your creations until after the day. I’ve been preparing Christmas presents since last July. Here are a few of them:

Cécile's shawl

Bags to protect Nicholas' camera lenses

Fingerless gloves for the photographer

Scarf for Nicholas, with my favourite McCartney line... and in the end,

...the love you take is equal to the love you make

I can’t find the photo of the sleeveless pullover for my brother Steve. I’ll put it in a future post.

Happy New Year!

I’ve started a new blog for Project 365 – One French Word

Having thought about it for a couple of hours I have started a new blog just to deal with Project 365. The blog will be entitled One French Word and I shall try to explain one word in French every day, meaning, pronunciation, use in a phrase, maybe a quote or an expression. See how long I can keep it up! Do please sign up and encourage me.

A new year is about to begin, and I shall welcome it with Project 365

…Project 366 actually as there are 366 days in 2012.

Oh dear, has it really been three months that I have been silent? I have sooo much to write about, and loads of photos to post. I’ll catch up I promise.

But first of all PROJECT 365. WordPress has launched a project for next year to get us blogging each and every day. Now you may laugh a bit, given my very irregular habits, that I even consider blogging every day, but you never know, it may be just what is needed to get me back into the swing.

There are some pretty good ideas out there for a post a day, like a breakfast a day, photographing a stranger a day, photographing people in t shirts with funny logos… photography is a good idea, and just think, although you are probably going to get a lot of refusals from strangers, you might just meet (and stay in touch with) really interesting people. But I don’t think I can personally be bothered to go out and find a complacent stranger every day. On the other hand, I might manage a food photograph a day. Or what about a French word a day? I think I’m going to do that. And maybe a photo as well. Decisions, decisions. Oh well, I have a few hours left of this year to decide.

But I’ll also go back to the primary reason for this blog, which is showing all the things I am making, have made, art, knitting, sculpture and pottery. I’ll look out some photos this afternoon, and share them with you tomorrow. OK?

Here’s just one for today – a painting called “Goat grazing beside a stream”, which I completed in November. It’s quite a large oil on canvas, very thick and textured, done mainly with palette knives, just some brushwork. It started as a very dark background which I did with odd paint left on my palette. Then I added a bit of acid green and some flowers. I propped it up on my woodstove and looked at it for a while, thought I saw the beginning of a stream, with exuberant banks of summer vegetation, so I put that in. Then more flowers. Then I could clearly see the beginnings of a goat, so in she went. And then the waterlilies at the end. I like it, the colours are very vivid against a dark background. It is for sale in my etsy shop http://www.etsy.com/listing/86609729/goat-grazing-beside-a-stream-original