~ Mostly Cyanotype ~

Cyanotyping has taken hold! For the last few months, whenever there is the slightest hint of sunshine, My Man goes rushing to his observatory to take a solar image, and I race to the dark drawer to take out the previously prepared cyanotype cloths and papers and labels.

Over on What If Diaries, Jude, has been what~iffing buttons...one of my favourite things. It seemed a natural progression, (sympathetic evolution, as Jude would call it), to put buttons and cyanotype together, so yesterday, I was in a blue heaven....

It is so hot that I am actually wearing a dress! Almost unheard of.

I am so happy with the results of this What If

A little daisy managed to get in there too.....

.....and of course ~ moons

garden foliage has been put to good use

I wanted to have something of us three, as Our Boy could go off exploring at any time now. I had the idea of our handprints on an old piece of linen....and finally got Our Boy's print yesterday.

Top ~ My Man, centre ~ me, bottom ~ Our Boy

I love hands...it's the first thing I notice about a person. I have a textile piece I did of Our Boy's hand when he was much smaller...

We had some pretty peony blossoms in the garden

and when all the petals had fallen off...

I thought I would try dyeing with them....

...just an ordinary brown...but I like it.

I have been harvesting nettles...

....and drying them. I have a dryer, but, as my word for this year is 'simplicity', I prefer to try to keep to that whenever possible.

One I did a few months ago, on Indian cotton....my favourite for doing cyanotype on

Crepescular Rays on the way to work this morning...

A dew~dropped cobweb in the bay tree

A few weeks ago, when it was still cold, but things needed planting desperately. It has been so hot for a week...and we are soaking it all up....it is the first time since 2007 that we are having a summer.  Last night, we, (me and My Man), slept on the floor of my shed....with our heads by the open doors, so we could star~gaze. The street lights get turned off after midnight now, so we could see the Milky Way and the Summer Triangle. It was bliss. I didn't want to go to sleep, but I must have, as I was being woken up at 4am by a little bird trilling away at us, telling us it was time to get up :~))

So, I have been playing with cloth a lot, but not so much stitching recently....although I did this for the Super Moon last month...

Backed with silk,and, as

I tore it for a ragged 

edge, I thought, what if

I use the silk threads

to stitch it with. It is

the first time I have 

used silk for stitching.

Oh my..it is a completely

different experience....

the sound, the feel...

June Super Moon

I made.....

 a Sage Summer Solstice Flower Essence...

Sage enhances the capacity for drawing wisdom from experience and is particularly recommended for people who find it hard to find purpose and meaning in life. They may feel resentful about events in their lives, seeing them as ill-fated or undeserved.

Sage is a remedy especially suitable for our later years, for helping to accept what life throws up for us in a calm and detached way. It helps to enhance the wisdom that comes naturally from years of experience. Such wisdom enables us to be in touch with our spiritual selves, to perceive a higher purpose in life and to experience inner peace. It is a remedy to use during changes and transitions, as it enhances the sage in all of us.

Anne McIntyre

I so love making flower essences. 

I made my very first one, Elder, on the Summer Solstice of 2001, and I was hooked from that day. 

To ask the spirit of a plant if we can work with them, and to receive the unmistakeable yes or no 'reply', whether it be for flower essences, or for making herbal remedies, is one of the most special experiences in my life....it is something I have done since I was a young child in one way or another, and it never fails to uplift.

It has been impossible to catch up here, but I have tried to include some of the things I've been doing for the last weeks.

We are sleeping in the shed again tonight....can't wait.

Cariad Mawr
H x

A day of sewing and sowing

Sampler in green with a few spots of purple for courage

I took a deep breath, gathered my courage, (that is my word for this year after all), and signed on for the wonderful Whispering Hearts class....my very first e-course....with Jude of Spirit Cloth. I have been breathing deep ever since, as I listen, watch and read. I work slowly, so it took a week of mulling before I started.  Today, I was rummaging in our bedroom and a scrap of deep green velvet silk was on the floor....you can't really tell from this picture, but that's it, bottom left. It made me decide to look for other scraps of green fabrics I have and see if they worked together. 

The centre heart is one I had prepared a long time ago. I've been carrying these little squares and cut-out hearts with me wherever I go for a few years. It's great if I have to wait anywhere for any reason to just pick them up and....well, sew! The material is from a shirt I found in a charity shop. It has panels of that green with purple spots you see here, purple with green spots, light blue with dark blue spots and vice versa. It is probably the most garish shirt I have ever seen, but I loved it for use in my sewing.

 I was really pleased with the way the green and white stitching, (Jude's magic stitch), turned out, and as I slowly stitched I was wondering why I chose green today. I rather liked what came to mind...

Green

because it's Spring

because it's the colour associated with the heart chakra

for the Irish in me

and because I am so thrilled that I can wear it at last :~)

Stitching the hearts in place comes next ~

Today I also spent a couple of hours potting compost and sowing seeds in the greenhouse, singing happily as I worked. We now have more lettuce and cucumber, as well as courgettes, peas, runner beans, basil, and a lovely, (I hope), salad and herb mix. Can't wait to be grazing our own salad greens again.

The weather has been glorious. Sunny, blue-skied and warm. I have had such a lovely Sunday with Big Mama Bumblebees coming in to the studio to say hello, Blackbirds singing the sweetest songs all day, and Mrs Wren busying about just outside the doors ~ mere steps from where I was sitting....oh! I love Mrs Wren.

Oh!! and I nearly forgot....I found one of these at the bootsale yesterday ~ for £1!!! Tra~la~la :~) Ours is bright sunshine yellow though, with the faintest blush of orange at the bottom....can't find an image of that colour online anywhere.

Hope you are all having a happy Sunday too.

Cariad Mawr

H x

~ Out of the Clouds at Last ~

~ and back to earth ~

hands that have worked hard from the age of nine look
like this 41 years later!
The gold wedding ring was my mother's. She never took
it off and I was really upset that she could not keep
it with her when she died 25 years ago.  I keep it on my heart
finger to feel that much closer to her.


For nearly two weeks, we have been swimming in mist, and as much as I love clouds and could quite happily sit on one and float away for a while, in fact the clouds have been sitting on us, closing us in, keeping us blind and in the last days of it making us claustrophobic and antsy.

Yesterday, it lifted. We saw the sun....ohhhhh.....all day. I worked in the garden, weeding baby nettles from the greenhouse which have left the sensation of tiny hot~poker pinpricks under the skin of my hands; I love nettles so much and in the summer, those same stings help me control my hay~fever; I enjoyed the satisfaction of plunging my hands into compost made by us and our insect friends :~);  danced with two very large earth~worms (and My Man), sang along with Johnny and Ella and Louis  and wind~dried two wash loads.

The towels danced too ~ a most energetic twist ~

Today I'm singing this

What songs are you singing today?