Wild women and embellishing

I am back again. I think we have finally ironed out all the technical problems with installing a new computer - about time too! Dougal made the three computers talk to each other, but in the process killed off the photo uploading directory. He fixed that when he was up here a couple of weeks ago, then Bill thought he would upload a later version of our Nikon software - big mistake. I couldn't edit anything or save it at all. All the writeups gave this version a big wrap, but when Bill took it off and went back to our old one, bingo, we are back in business!! sometimes I hate techology.......................

This lovely wild woman is my swap from Dale's Wild Women swap - see www.thethreadstudio.com Elizabeth Price of NSW made it, I don't know anything else about her, but I am thrilled to have her winter wild woman. I have now bought Sarah Lawrence's book to give me inspiration to make some more.

I have also enrolled in Dale's online embellisher course and these are a few examples of what I have done so far. The first picture shows some wool tops embellished onto some nuno felt which I made years ago and didn't like at all. I hated the technique because I could hardly move for days afterwards - did no good at all for my arthritis, but also because the colours of the wool tops we were working with were positively anaemic and I don't like pastels much at all. I dyed some of the bits with the Landscape dyes I bought at the Wrapt in Rocky forum, now I love the colour so I am going to dye the rest and use it for backgrounds. I doodled some circles on the back, but wasn't sure I liked those so covered them all up on one end - fascinating possibilities for extending this with all sorts of other bits.

The next photo shows some of the lovely sari silk strips embellished onto black felt. This is so much fun.

Next I embellished some crystal organza and other sheer organz onto satin backing and scrim, then cut out the flowers and embellished them onto the strips, linking them with a silk thread. I can't hold a needle properly to do embroidery stitches, so I beaded the centres.

Now I just need to make a start on Week 2 a day before week 3 is due to arrive...........oh well......

I have spent most of the last few days at the University with the annual book sale. We had a reasonable response today, but I suspect the Olympics kept a few people at home who would normally have been out buying - can't say I blame them, this post is being written very slowly as I have one eye on the TV. I have remembered to set the DVD player to record tonight's closing ceremony - it will be too late for me to sit up and watch. I was very cross that I completely forgot about recording the opening ceremony. I sat and watched the first half hour, then had to succumb to sleep. Haven't had time to watch too much, but there have been quite a few exciting sessions, just as well they only come about every four years!

Now I had better go and put the washing away before I go to bed. Back to the Uni tomorrow for the second day of the book sale, and hopefully not too many books left to pack away after. We usually announce patrons can fill a carton of books for $2 for the last hour or so, amazing how many books can be packed into a carton sometimes!!! Better than being put in the recycle bin though. Forgot to say that we were give a pile of old magazines to sell - Womens Weekly, Womans Day, New Idea and Womens World dating back to the early 1960s. Amazing! Amazing too to think of what we were wearing and doing back then! I think I will have to buy a couple of the ones which are left to bring home with me just foor old times sake.

Cheers for now, I really do hope to be back again very soon.