A little local difficulty

I’m having one or two problems with MS LiveWriter right now, so I'm not altogether sure how this will appear on my blog.

My Hero has a meeting in Stockholm on Tuesday, so this afternoon, I’m throwing a few bits into a bag and going with him! By way of recompense, I snagged us a couple of tickets for the new ABBA museum for Wednesday morning – all tickets for Tuesday, the opening day sold out long ago, sadly.

In the meantime, I’ve been thinking of how to record the trip.

Previous trips have sometimes been fully journalled

On this occasion, I used all kind of ephemera for the pages and bound them together with my newly acquired bind-it-all.

Though, actually, the content is mostly my blog entries from the days we were away.

Other Swedish jaunts have been more hastily recorded, sometimes just in my everyday sketchbook, like this one.

There’s actually more on my blog than there is in my notebook, probably because, as you can tell from the stickers, we no sooner arrived home than we were off again ;-)

There ought to have been one more journal but search as I might, there was no trace. Just as I was about to give up, I spotted one last pink Moleskine sitting there and yes, it was the one from June 2009.

It records the Swedish visit we made with our pianist friend Tra and epitomises why I keep notes in a little book. As soon as I began to read through the pages, I remembered all kinds of details I’d forgotten.

She was recording a CD and I sat for a few hours, watching, listening, sketching, noting. I blogged a little about the session here but left out a few details which made me smile when I read them again just now.

I’d forgotten how every little noise is picked up by the sensitive recording equipment.

and how the recording engineer put his head round the door to announce that he could hear a regular noise – which turned out to be the conductor’s foot! I see the note I took about the adjustable chairs too, which did make it into the blog entry.

Of course, I was sitting there with plenty of time to scribble and sketch, there was no-one to look over my shoulder or to ask what I was doing. It was the perfect place to sit and draw and one which doesn’t come along very often.

So, what will I do this time? We’ll be away for just a couple of days and not really long enough to establish any kind of pattern or daily routine. I’ll post photos and stuff here as usual, which provides me with a great record of the day’s activities. But will I create any other, more conventional journal? I don’t know!

I’ve got a really tiny art kit in my bag and I guess we’ll all see how it develops during the next couple of days!

Can't stop

Once I get the bit between my teeth, I niggle away at something until I’ve worked it out.

Whilst shopping this morning, I stocked up on white, gold and silver Uniball Signo pens which fit the Silhouette pen holder and came home ready to make a set of samples. The first decision was, what simple little image should I use?

Looking through my files, I came across this journalling block. It looked like just the kind of thing I was after and I opened it up in the Silhouette software. As I did, the thought occurred to me that the logical next step would be to cut it out with the machine as well.

Hmm.

It took a bit of thought to work out how, but the reward for persistence is…

Success!

For my own record as much as for your interest (assuming you haven’t given up already) I created two separate shapes – one to sketch and one to cut. I left one shape in place and moved the other out of the way as I sent the file to the Silhouette to cut or to sketch.

Having worked out how to do that, I’m done with it for now.  Sometimes, the pleasure is to be found mostly in the working it all out stage, don't you think?

My next challenge? Hmmm…

Messing about

Unusually, I’ve got a great number of work commitments every day this week, except for today, when a little fun was forecast.

After I’d been to the dentist, that is.

Oh, and after I’d been to vote, too. 

No fun until after my responsibilities have been addressed.

But yesterday, during a short break, I was doing one of those mindless internet browses, mooching around Facebook to see what folks are up to when I stumbled across a good idea for using my Silhouette.  Knowing that I had – somewhere – a pen holder for it, I thought that perhaps I’d give it a go.  Driving to and from Cheltenham last evening, I considered the possibilities and looked forward to cranking the machine up and giving it a try.

For my non-crafty friends, the Silhouette is a digital cutter.  There’s a small blade by that blue knob and the machine works just like a printer, but instead of printing a line, it cuts it.  So, like me, you’re probably thinking that there’s not much point in having a pen instead of a blade, because surely that’s going to make it behave just like a printer, isn’t it?

Well, yes.  That’s exactly what I’ve thought until now, too, and the pen holder (a small moulded piece of black plastic) had gone to the place where small moulded pieces of black plastic go – who knew?  Except later in the morning, I came across it – ta dah! – in a box on my desk.  Lucky, eh?

Anyway, I used the same file as the person who shared her work on Facebook, I copied her to the inch and drew this doodled “thank you” using a black Muji ballpoint pen on white paper.  I was pretty pleased with the result and enjoyed watching the machine draw all those little squiggles.

But yes, I’ll bet you’re still thinking “but it’s no different from printing it out on a printer”.  Well, we have an inkjet printer, and of course, if I put water anywhere near a printed image, the whole thing runs.  So, how about using a waterproof pen in the Silhouette, then, and doing a watercolour wash over it?

Huh.  So much for waterproof pens, eh?

The Jellyroll Glaze pen was better – but the line it produced was so gloopy that the design lacked precision.  Since that was one of the attractive features of the process, I wasn’t too keen on the result, even though it didn’t smudge one bit when I inked over it.

I messed about, trying several different pens from ball points to roller balls and felt tips.  I’m not sure that I was finding out anything I didn’t know but hey, I was having fun.

I even thought of trying the white Jellyroll Glaze pen and putting a wash over it.  Not bad – but gloopy in the same way as the black one was.

But of course, the main reason for wanting this to work was this – white ink on black paper!!

Clever, eh?

And, even though I found my pen holder in the end, I discovered that a bit of masking tape wrapped round the pen to make it fit the blade holder worked perfectly well too.

So, thank you, Debbie, for sharing your idea on Facebook!  (sorry, I can’t make the link work)  Find more information and ideas for using the pen holder here.

Looking for a needle

I had plans to have a go at a new technique which required a particular needle, so I did a search of the top drawer by my sewing machine, where such things are kept.

I seem to have a collection of sewing needles “for all occasions” and often wonder to myself why anyone would want an “ordinary” needle when there is a variety of different types depending on the task in hand.

Actually, I had no idea just how many needles I had!

I had the very large – nearly 12 inches long, for making dolls – and the very small number 12s for quilting, which are barely an inch in length.

I found a weaving needle with the angled tip and large eye and a few tiny curved needles, for working on a three dimensional object.

I was surprised to find two tambour hooks – not needles at all, but so fine and needle-like I might have overlooked them.  Good job I wrote on the plastic bag!

I found two packs of (unused) twin pointed needles, “a revolutionary concept in tapestry and cross stitch”.  Interesting.  Anyone tried them?

I also found a large Locker needle hook, with an eye at one end and a hook at the other.  Never used that one either, though I expect I needed it for something or other when I bought it.

I remember looking high and low for leather needles at some point, but only have the sublime and the ridiculous it seems.  That large one looks pretty vicious!

But do you think I could find the needle I was looking for?  Of course not.  But as I was gathering up the contents of the drawer to put everything back, I did make one last rather sweet discovery – my late father’s handwriting on the back of one of those packs of needles. 

What a strange place to write a reminder.  What on earth does it refer to?  Well, I can make a guess, but have no idea who Harris and Langley are/were.  But never mind.  On a Sunday afternoon when I have nothing better to do than tip out the contents of one of my sewing drawers to look for a needle, it was lovely to find something so unexpected there instead.

Oh yes, and I know that someone will be curious to know what particular needle I was looking for.  I had an idea that I had one of these because I fancied having a go at making one of these.

I found a good tutorial here, albeit on a slightly different scale, perhaps ;-)   You know how I love a challenge!

Here and there

and somehow, not much to report.

Or, perhaps that should be “not much I can report”, because there are some parts of my week which were fascinating but confidential.  Like the reason why there were so many empty biscuit boxes in Elaine’s waste bin last Tuesday.

We did have a lovely day out on Wednesday, when we met friends for lunch at Bibendum and then went to the Treasures of the Royal Courts exhibition which was fascinating.  Sadly, we just missed Naomi Campbell leaving the sold-out David Bowie exhibition, and couldn’t wait until Johnny Depp came out (the steward told us he was in there somewhere, too).    Instead, we met the son and heir for supper and were delighted to hear his good news – which of course, is his alone to share.

The week finished off nicely in the company of good friends here and there and all of a sudden, it’s Saturday.

Never mind.  I promise to be a little more creative tomorrow!