Back to..?

Even though it’s a few years since the start of term featured on our calendars, the first Monday in September retains all of those associations.  I began the day with a list and felt motivated to work my way through it, ticking things off as I went.

Don’t you think the ticking off is the best bit?

Having ticked off a fair few items, I decided I’d earned some blog reading time.  First up was Needled, which had a link to the new online Rowan magazine.  Five minutes of glorious colour, beautiful knitting and fantastic photography later and I can feel the knitting mojo coming back.  So, what’s it going to be?

Will it be the Honey Cowl?  I bought some soft-as-soft-can-be yarn in John Lewis sale earlier in the year and it would be perfect for this project.

or

Will it be the Shadow[]box?   The picture on the pdf of the pattern shows it knitted in black, which isn’t a great colour for revealing detail and though I remember being very taken with the design when I first came across it, my memory hasn’t recorded all the small points.  Time to go and take a look at Ravelry and see what others have done with it.

but

I clicked on a link and found this, which looks right up my street and could also work well with my softest of soft yarn.

except

in the sitting room is one of my fabric bags with an incomplete crochet wrap in it.

and

my hero is quietly awaiting the socks I’ve been knitting since...ermmm…and which need only the rib finishing off.  Knitted to one of those complicated Cat Bordhi patterns, once I’d done the “fun” bit, I lost interest.  However, unlike my friend Jordi, I avoided the second sock syndrome by knitting both socks at the same time.  How clever was that?

(I guess it’ll be the socks then)

Apples

We seem to have a bumper crop this year.  There’s already a bowl of stewed apple in the fridge (to which my hero turns up his nose) and the trees are shedding their fruit faster than we can pick it up.

At times like this, I get choosy.  This morning I went out and picked another bowlful, rejecting any fruit which were less than perfect.  I knew that some friends were going to be glad to share them.

Then of course, there were a few plums dripping from the tree.  They’re nearly over, but there’s still a few more which will hopefully hang on till I’m ready.

It being the first of September, it’s also the first day of Shimelle’s Learn Something New class and there are decisions to be made.  Will I construct my book traditionally with glue and scissors or set myself the challenge of working digitally this year?  Shall I create a book of pages or use envelopes in which to tuck in any related bits and pieces?  Just as I was thinking I’d wait and see how it goes, I came across a whole bundle of nearly fifty envelopes I made from magazine pages some years ago and when I looked closely at the subject matter of the very first picture, my decision was made.

Not only that, but there’s a suitable envelope there for later in the month too, because travel is planned ;-)

So, with a set of very fitting images there, it looks like I’m set to make an envelope book, though I plan to work digitally to create whatever is going to go into them.  This year, I have company too because Dorothy and Mary are signed up too.  I think it’s going to be fun.

Showtime

I wasn’t the only one to visit a show today.  Whilst I was at Winchcombe, my friend Helen was at Glendale.  Only 300 miles away!

There were one or two black clouds when I arrived though and I feared the worst.  But somehow, it stayed dry whilst I was there, even if it was a bit chilly in that marquee!

I was there to judge the crafts and a fine selection there was, too.  Everything from a driftwood tree to a knitted mermaid, with a few beautiful patchwork quilts, knitted cardigans and embroidered cushions in the mix.  The picture above shows the “Over 80” class – I wondered if those were the grandchildren entered in the show?!

After I’d finished my work, I enjoyed taking a walk around the other entries, including the superb flowers.

But my favourite entry of all must be this dear little panda, with bag, towel and goggles, ready for her swim.  Looks like she won third prize in the “dress your teddy” class!

Sunday afternoon

I spotted a link to this nifty way of adding a spiral binding on another blog last week and it left me thinking that it was a neater, more together take on the ordinary spiral bind.  I thought I’d give it a go.

I’ve had this huge pad of 12 x 12 double sided paper for ages, having bought it very cheaply in Michaels or somewhere last year.  I very seldom use such large sized paper and though I know it’s silly not to dive in and use it, each time I’ve made a book recently, I’ve pulled it out and put it back unused.  That’s partly because it is rather bright and would dominate whatever else was going on

but also, cutting into a large piece of posh paper takes courage!  I resolved that one yesterday but making the pages of my usual, small format book a quarter of the page – no waste = happy girl.

I actually made two books at the same time – they have soft card rather than stiff board covers and have the same bright pages inside, a mixture of pattern and plain.

They each measure 6 x 6 inches (because it was 12 x 12 paper, I put away my usual metric rulers and got out my quilting tools) and have the spiral binding in the centre of the spine, done using my Bind-it-all and following the tutorial in the first link of this post to the letter.  It worked well.

Except…(isn’t there always an except?) I neglected to take into account the size of the binding ring when measuring the card for the covers and as a result, the pages showed beyond the cover edge.

I quickly trimmed off about a quarter of an inch and resolved that one easily.

But of course, my worktable looked like a game of pick-up-sticks afterwards!  So, this afternoon I’ve been playing about with them, because we can’t be wasting paper, can we?

I’ve woven some into a loose pattern which will look great on the cover of one book, and am now contemplating what to do with the rest.

This?   This?  or possibly something different.  We’ll see!

If at first you don’t succeed…

Inspired by an afternoon with a friend yesterday and with a morning to myself ahead of me, I decided to revisit one of the techniques from my New York workshop. I thought I’d begin with the simplest, the hand sanitiser gel transfer.

Though I’ve seen “purell” brand sanitising gel here in the UK (it appears to be the brand of choice in the office where I work), I had only the “Cuticura” gel, so before I began, I did a test transfer of one of the prints I brought home with me.  My scientist training has taught me to alter just one variable at a time if I am to reach a satisfactory outcome!

As you can see, the Newport Transporter Bridge is clear in all detail, the black areas have transferred well and apart from the fact that I was printing a portrait image into my landscape sketchbook and didn’t think to rotate the image before I posted it, all is well.  Happy girl.

Next, I printed out some images on to a transparency film we had at home.  Mary had warned us that some pre-prepared inkjet transparencies don’t work well since the whole point of the preparation is to ensure the ink doesn’t smudge or transfer to other surfaces.  I thought I’d work around that one then and print to the “wrong”, shiny side.  Though the image stayed put and didn’t run, the clarity wasn’t good and the ink didn’t dry.

So I printed another sheet on the matt, treated side this time.  The print was sharper and the images dried.

Transferring them to my sketchbook however resulted in poor results.  the print from the still sticky, untreated side is marginally better than that from the treated transparency, but neither is very good when compared with the transporter bridge.

And though the daisy image (wrong side) would be acceptable on a birthday card or something, the fine detail of the Thai wall painting is lost in a blur.

Time to rethink.  A conversation with Maggie gave me the idea of reusing the transparent film we’d used in class.  Having transferred the image, the film was clear and inkfree so this morning I retrieved the film from which I’d transferred the transporter bridge from the bin and ran it under the tap to get rid of any remaining ink bits.

I prepared an A4 carrier sheet of heavy lutradur, just like we had done in class and marked accurate margins for printing, because the piece of film wasn’t a standard size.  Using double sided tape, I stuck the film onto the carrier sheet and thinking economically, thought about printing a word doc rather than a full colour image.  I even remembered to mirror the text!

As I fed the film into the printer, I noticed that the edges were different from the centre of the film.  The transporter bridge image didn’t fill the whole piece of film and there had been a narrow margin all around – now I could see that the edges were still coated with something or other, whereas the centre of the film was shiny and clean.  When the print came out, it was clear to see that the coated areas were crisp and sharp, the centre, shiny and used area was blotchy and heavily coated with ink.

Setting the printer to an economy setting might have helped here – clearly there is a lot of ink sitting on the surface – but I doubt whether that would have affected the crispness of the image.  Anyway, before I tried again, I needed to transfer the ink off this film and see what’s what.

The transferred image makes it clear to see the difference.  The edge closest to the margin is crisp and could almost be a straightforward print, whereas just a short way in, where the film has been used already, the print is blurry.

So, back to the drawing board.

At this point, I did ask myself why I’m so keen to transfer print from a film to a piece of paper when I might simply put the piece of paper through the printer and cut out the middleman, so to speak?  Well, I have ideas to transfer these images onto things which won’t go through my printer…things like a piece of wood, the page of a book or a piece of heavy card.

Of course, I could have taken the easy route and read one of several books I have on the subject, could have gone to the DASS site and bought the proper, recommended film and read there that it can’t be reused, thereby saving myself the energy, effort and ink.  But you know, sometimes getting there is part of the fun!

Isn’t it?