Sorting out fabrics for EDAC

Last night I sat down and started sorting out the fabrics for EDAC. Here are some that I am going to take with me. Some of the ladies have already booked them for themselves. I think my bag will be raided as soon as I land there tee.. hee...

Paintings that evoked some fond memories

Today I came across my old oil painting pad which I used to use during my school holidays. Actually I thought I had lost it but oh I was so thrilled to find it hiding amongst my other things and was very pleasantly surprised to see these two paintings which I had started but never finished in the pad.
The first one is a painting of the place where I grew up, a hill station nestling amongst the Sathpura ranges known as Pachmarhi. It brought back so many memories. I remember I wanted to paint this picture of the lake and that particular spot was my favourite spot from the road which used to skirt the lake because of the view. All the views were lovely but this one was my favourite. I think I had grand ideas of painting this picture. I thought I could paint like Constable or Turner LOL! I remember being quite disappointed when it didn't turn out the way I had pictured it so I left it unfinished.
Anyway let me give you a small tour of the painting. On the far right hand side there was a little hillock on which was my Dad's office. You can't see it as it was hidden amongst the trees. It was a lovely old Colonial type building. By the way most of the area that you see in the picture belongs to the Army. So as you move along towards the left far beyond you see a clump of trees those are supposed to be Eucalyptus trees and there was a big Banyan tree under which the Indian Army Bands used to practice. As you move along again still further to the left you see the bridge. Oh what fun we used to have as kids there. During our summer holidays my friends and I would tag along behind our brothers and come fishing here. Not that we caught anything but it was fun. Since my dad was in the army and being such a small place everyone knew everyone else so we kids were sort of tolerated by the army camp people.
The bridge that you see is a concret bridge which replaced an old wooden bridge as some of the planks had disappeared. It used to be very exciting for us as kids to cross this bridge. Now moving again towards the left you see some tents and some buildings. Well there were rows and rows of them still further left which is not in the picture. Those were the tents for the soilders. If you look closely you will see very close to the lake couple of pens. They were not used but I guess during the time of British Raj they would have been used. Those used to fasinate us but we were not allowed to go near them. That big hill straight ahead was known as Club Hill at first because there was a club at the foothills. Later on it came to be known as Pachmarhi hill. Although this hill was not the highest point but the panoramic view of the whole town was fantastic. We used to often climb it during our holidays. You see that house on the hillock on the opposite side. One of my friend used to live there. We would often walk back together from school and her dog would spot us from far and come running to meet us. It would then take the bag from my friend and take her home. A pity our house couldn't be seen from any part of the lake otherwise I would surely have painted it. It was just past my dad's office. All the mountains you see in the background are supposed to be the Sathpura ranges.

I tried to copy this horse from a card and found that I ran out of space for its tail so thats where I left it.




After all that nostalagia I come to the present. Some pictures of the flowers in my garden. Today was a lovely day and I did a bit of gardening. That's it for today.

Fairy Perch

Well this is the perch I have made for my fairy. I think I can show this to you.The flower and the leaves on the stem are ready made but the seat is made by using paverpol. I wanted the doll to sit on the stem of the flower but knew it would not be able to support the weight of the doll. So I made a seat and you know me, anything that can be done easily I do it. Not much brainwork required here. First bent a wire and wrapped it around the stem to make the base then wrapped this base with dyed linen dipped in paverpol and let it dry. This steadied the base. I then dyed some thin linen with some green colorhue which was lying around. I know colorhue is for silk fabrics but I used it for this linen to try it out. After all I thought, it was going to be covered with paverpol so what did it matter what dye I used. The colour has not faded. I purposely left it near a window where the sun comes in. I then bent thin wire into the shape of leaves and stuck this dyed thin linen onto it and cut out the leaf shapes and applied the paverpol with brush onto the leaves and made it lean onto the base. It stuck to it! Once it dried it was amazing how strong it became. I think one can even make some lovely fairy wings with this stuff. It is wonderful stuff. I am going to try out something else soon but got to finish my fairy first.

Now it is there and now it is not!

I have not posted for a while simply because nothing exciting has been happening at my corner of the world and nor have I been productive with my doll making. Well I have a doll in the making unfortunately as I said earlier I can't show her to you yet. I will post her picture just before I leave for the States next month.
As you can see weekend passed by with getting rid of the pond that we had. We found it very time consuming to maintain it. All it did was breed frogs and mosquitoes and goodness knows what. The fish disappeared as breakfast for the herons sometime ago. The foxes also kept chewing up the tubing for the filter system. So now we are building a rock garden which should look nice once it fills out and have got a pebble pond in its place. At least we can hear the noise of water falling even though there isn't a water fall only a small cascade of water overflowing into the pebbles. Also the birds can have a dip in the water. You cannot see in the picture but water comes out of the big stone at the centre of the pebbles and spills over and there is a small shallow area where the water collects so the birds are happy and so are we.

Saturday I went for my dollclub meeting. We had a workshop of how to make felt dolls. I came back with a head its not much of a head but still a head. I seem to be making only heads lately ha!

The sun was out at last!

At last the sun was out and the weekend was just beautiful. I took advantage of it and just relaxed in the garden with my nieces who came to visit us. Oh it is so lovely to feel the sun. Feels as though it is years since I saw the sun!
I also did some work on my fairy's perch. I experimented with Paverpol. Sorry can't show you yet. But all I can say is I am very pleased with it.
Today back to work and guess what, the weather is still beautiful. The weather changes constantly here that no wonder we get excited over just a fews hours of sun in this country as well as we talk more about the weather than anything else!!
Glad to know that Paris is having the sunshine as well Isabelle. So now I can imagine you too enjoying the sun.

Some pictures of the lovely climbing roses in the garden



This little bee was very very busy





Thought this tree looked beautiful in the sunshine the picture doesn't do it justice. The yellow is almost golden in the sunshine.