I recently had a big sort out and reorganise, of course nothing much was thrown away but everything is now more logically organised. During the process of finding things long since forgotten I came across a small unfinished sampler strip of blackwork which I can remember sewing when Sar was on board.
With so little work required to finish off the sampler I'm surprised I hadn't completed it. So out came the needle and the required rows were added. As the piece is roughly bookmark sized I stuck a red felt backing onto it and added a row of running stitch around the edge to finish it off.
This is probably the shortest entry on the blog but I found it quite satisfying to finish off a piece so easily.
After Sar suggested the Christmas Swan would be a good addition to the game I decided a more exotic version was required. It also gave me the opportunity to practise the negative watercolour painting techniques. I picked the colours of sunset for the swan and started the painting with some weak washes of this colour across the paper and then added some blue around the swan's outline. On top of this I painted the swan.
I drew in the outline of the wave motif and then painted round the shapes in a series of washes. I painted over some of the waves to vary their tone. The photo shows a wash in progress.
I gradually deepened the washes and added some prussian blue in places. I started to paint the sky with washes between the cloud shapes.
As I liked the red and gold showing through the sky I didn't use as many washes as I did on the water. Finally I gave the swan an eye and tinkered with his beak to finish the picture. Now I just have to give it a story in the game!
It's always good to try something new and the Christmas present from Jo and Haydn gave me the opportunity to do that. The wooden swan came as a 'flat pack' kit with a set of instructions.
The lovely smell of fresh wood was released when I opened the pack and laid out the components for this photo. The shapes were pre-cut and just needed pressing out from the sheet of plywood.
The reverse of the cover sheet gave the instructions which were rather brief but I soon realised they didn't need to give a lot of detail. Each slot had a number which matched up with the number on the piece which would fit into it.
It was quite satisfying slotting the pieces together, a bit like a puzzle. Here's the basis of the body and the little cross piece attached the head and neck to the body. Later additions to the body reinforced the structure and the finished piece is very stable.
So here is the swan gliding along the bookcase. But the swan's potential didn't end there. I thought the wooden shapes and structure of the swan were attractive and would make a good subject for a drawing.
So thank you Jo and Haydn for a good present, it's something I wouldn't have thought of buying for myself.
