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It has been a while! Restoring my home and studio to a useable state post-builders is taking far longer than I had anticipated because I am using the enforced movement of my possessions to reconsider where to put them. This is probably a good thing.

Today, I made the scanner accessible again, so can show you the water colour "ravatar" I painted to use on Ravelry*: a dragonfly shape cunningly fashioned out of a circular knitting needle and yarn!

* Ravelry.com - an on-line community of knitters, crocheters, etc

A Hooray and a peacock

Hooray and hurrah! The scaffolding shroud cutting out the day light from my flat has been removed after seven gloomy weeks. So now I am in the midst of finding everything I need to get on with painting/life, having put it all "in a safe place" for the duration of the building works.

I was not entirely idle, though: I drew this knitting peacock for Creature magazine's special "End of The Road Festival" edition - the brief was perfect for me, so I had lots of fun doing the drawing : )

Gardening August 2009

My flat is in a state of chaos (hence the lack of paintings!) due to the cyclical decoration of the outside of the building: the scaffolding all has to be taken through my flat! Plus takes up a lot of the side area where the pots shown here usually live. So this August is a lost cause for gardening in itself, but I do like the colours and textures in this photo of the disarray : )

Innocent smoothie hats 2009

I've knitted little hats for Innocent's big knit for the last few years, and had company making this years first three in the form of my knit pals in Stitch and Bitch London and Innocent's own staff. We all had a fabulous evening of knitting, cake and smoothies at Fruit Towers for the launch of this year's campaign : )

More Womad

Here are a couple of pen and ink sketches from Womad:

Womad and builders

Hello again : ) Painting is somewhat difficult at the moment due to omni-present builders and scaffolding making everywhere gloomy and with dark shadows across painting desk. The good news is that they have almost finished their work, and it will look great when complete!

In the meantime, here is a watercolour sketch I made at Womad this year:

dragonfly sky

My blog has been languishing neglected recently while I focussed on learning how to use etsy's software to set up my new etsy shop , for which this painting is the banner! So much to learn, and very exciting.

Organising Knitting day 3

This is a cute cropped cardigan, using some fabulous Noro wool yarn. So far I have knitted the back, and cast on the left front side. 'Not bad progress, since the yarn was only given to me about ten days ago! Oh yes, and I am knitting this project on a circular needle - less possibility of dropping stitches making it this way.

gardening project 2009 day 8

I bought these lush-looking petunia plants at the farmers market : ) It will be a surpise when they flower, because I do not know their colour! They are destined to be added to the window box alongside the pink and red perlagoniums.

Organising knitting day 2

This pretty bag was knitted from cotton ribbon last year. Then I lined it with some vibrant cotton fabric printed with dolphins, etc. The project got stalled when I decided that the natural colour wooden plaited handles I had purchased with the yarn simply did not go with the bag! Last week I bought some clear acrylic ones, which will look great : )

Elderflower tea

Inspired by the hermitage's wonderful description of elderflower fritters, here is my recipe for elderflower tea: Take a couple of huge heads of elderflowers from a Gloucestershire garden. Remove insects. Put into a paper bag, preferably brown, and hang in an airing cupboard until the flowers have completely dried out, and begun to fall from their stalks. Store in a pretty tin or glass jar. Boil some fresh water. Put a few of the dried flowers into a much loved china cup. Pour the boiling water over the flowers. Watch the flowers gradually unfold, and the brew turn bright yellow. Sip slowly and enjoy! I love the memories of early summer this evokes in the depth of winter.

June - Organising my knitting day 1

Joining the wonderful on-line resource that is ravelry has encouraged me to finally sort out and organise all my half-knitted projects! I thought it would be fun to do this by identifying one a day, and painting a tiny illustration of it for my blog, so here is the first. 

In fact, this is a new project: I realised at the Stitch and Bitch London meeting last week, that I need to have a simple project on the go for when I am chatting and knitting! I am making a gorgeous raspberry pink bolero cardigan from a Marion Foale pattern that I had saved from years ago: )

gardening project 2009 day 7

The long cold winter killed off some of my perlagoniums, so it was easy to be tempted by these beauties at the farmers market yesterday: )

Animals and ankles

I painted this bat and dog for a children's illustration competition recently: there were nearly 1,000 entries apparently, so odds of being short-listed are very tiny, but I did have all the fun of painting the three pages for my entry, and they are good additions to my portfolio : ).

The connection with ankles is that I am recovering from spraining my left ankle very badly, so am envious of the bat's ability to fly, and the dog's confident ready to play stance! It continues to be interesting to note the healing progress, and move through life at a slower pace, paying careful attention to how much movement my ankle can bear at any one time. Ice packs and arnica have proved very helpful, too.  The key this weekend seems to be to do a little involving standing/walking, then rest again with my ankle propped up. Thank goodness for the football cup final on tv yesterday, and knitting! This afternoon I am off out to watch the London Roller Girls being filmed for Blue Peter : )

CPSIA petition

Hi,
I wanted to draw your attention to this important petition that I recently signed:
"Re-Think the CPSIA"
http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/rethinkthecpsia?e
I really think this is an important cause, and I'd like to encourage you to add your signature, too. It's free and takes less than a minute of your time.
Thanks!

Blue gloves update

The lovely blue angora gloves were languishing half-made, but thanks to joining the wonderful Stitch n Bitch London last week, needles are being wielded again. It is brilliant knitting with other knitters : )

Gardening project 2009 days 5 and 6

The promised paintings : )

Sadly neglected blog

Hello again! Life has been extremely hectic for the past almost four weeks: a couple of illustration deadlines which required a lot of time spent painting. Me and my home are showing the signs of neglect now, so it is great to have a day to catch up! The good news is that I found some empty paint containers : ) The seeds have yet to be sown, so the vegetables will be late summer varieties. Paintings to be posted later.

Gardening project 2009 day 4

I'm hoping to find some trade-size empty emulsion paint containers: they would be perfect for growing salad leaves!

My plan is to paint the outside of the containers with left over emulsion paint;  pierce drainage holes in the bottoms, and spray the outside with WD40. Apparently, this works to deter slugs and snails!

Gardening project 2009 day 3

I will be buying some small bags of potting compost (peat free, of course), to start the seeds off. It will be small bags because that's all I can carry on foot and the bus! Hopefully, I will be posting here regularly again from now on: I am still amazed at how having a nasty cold affected my ability to paint last week. It would appear that I do technical things when I am painting that I am no longer conscious of - assessing whether the painting is dry enough for the next layer, etc ; )