Practise makes perfect, (I hope!)

A lino cut print of a tree I can see from my upstairs window.

Three birds were added after the first print, to give the image 'life'.

Then I made another lino cut, where I decided to try and make a reverse image. Unfortunately, I couldn't seem to get the lines fine enough!

I played around with it a bit more, printed again, then added lots more twiggy branches with a paintbrush dipped into the printing ink. Is this 'cheating' I wonder?

An attempt at one of my crows, although someone else who saw it thought it was a chicken! ha ha ha, I suppose it does look a bit like one.

Then I had a go at a two colour print. These are all just experimental you understand. (My excuse for the failures!) But hey, who knows, if I keep practising, you know what they say about that.

There are so many cranes on the skyline these days, I decided I had to have a go at trying another lino cut using them as inspiration. Again, I found trying to get fine lines very difficult, bit I'm also using very small pieces of lino, so maybe I need to try and work larger. My eventual plan is to be able to print some good images onto cloth, and then to stitch into them.

Finally, I am dedicating this post to my dear husband who lost a long and hard fought battle this last week. He is now at peace. Rest well my lovely man.

A Difficult Time.

Sunrise from our front room window early in November 2015. My husband had been admitted into hospital just a few days earlier for emergency surgery.

A lovely walk in a local park one morning just before the New Year. My husband is still in hospital! He has been, and still is very sick.

I've done more walking than usual, and certainly no stitching or much artwork for the last two months, Hence the absence of any blog posts since my last one in October.

However, I haven't been standing alone.  Our two sons and daughter have been very close by during this difficult time. Our daughter flew over from New Zealand, and stayed until New Year's eve, when after 8 weeks, it was time for her to be reunited with her very patient husband back home.

Today, I finally decided it was time to at least have a play around with some textile art, I had no idea where to start, but felt I needed to throw white paint at something. I think I partly wanted to try and block out the last two months, and to also make a fresh start in some way. Covering a postcard sized piece of work I made last year with white Gesso, seemed the way to go, and so that's what I did. While it was still wet, I pressed a piece of black cotton fabric into it, and then when it was dry, I did some reverse applique, just to add a few spots of yellow, I went a bit mad with the free machine stitching, but it felt good to be behind my machine again, and then I added a few more spots of white paint. Ah well, at least I've made a start at getting back into some creative stuff, and better by far than sitting at home moping. We've no idea how much longer my husband is going to be in hospital, I think we're in for the long haul, but I'm so pleased that in between times, I can lose myself for a couple of hours each day making textile related art!

Some rather strange doodles above and below, which I made whilst sitting in hospital waiting for my hubby to be diagnosed. They really are strange, especially the one above, and I wonder if they reflect in some way my frame of mind at the time.

I saw a couple of painters walking about with a ladder, and that prompted the ladder like structure above. I hope it won't be too long until my next post, but in the meantime, thank you for reading, and may I take the opportunity to wish you a very happy, peaceful and healthy 2016.