Doing what we like doing

In this week's Sunday newspaper I read an article about how the author feels guilty for not wanting to go off and do adventurous activities on her holidays, but prefers just staying around the place.  And I thought I was the only one that loved being at home ..... where else can I sit and read whenever I like, do some stitching or journalling whenever I feel like it, spend time with my other half relaxing in our recliner chairs, stroke the cat, go for a walk in nature at the best part of the day, talk to my family members, in fact do all the things that make life worthwhile?
  

Ibis feathers collected locally from the riverbank

©Christine Linton

Embroidery and beading

Just thought I would post my New Years Eve machine embroidery.  It started off with hand embroidery for the city buildings at the bottom and for the first few fireworks, then I thought that it needed more life for such a sparkly type of evening, so I dropped a lot of metallic thread waste on the sky part and free-machined with clear thread.  Now the fireworks give the expression of excitement.  I used a piece of black satin given to me as a pillowcase, it was quite thick.  I mounted it on a piece of corrugated cardboard from a box, which is why it's not quite straight all round.  It has gift-wrapping ribbon hanging from it which I thought was an appropriate embellishment.

New Year's Eve embroidery 

©Christine Linton

New Year's Eve embroidery, detail of the fireworks 

©Christine Linton

Something I have tried to machine embroider but not yet succeeded to my own mind, is bird feathers - but I did bead one that I liked.

Beaded feather  

©Christine Linton

Cheryl Bridgart on the other hand has some stunning machine embroidered feathers in this image amongst a website full of stunning machine embroidery.  She inspires me to try again.

Just a little whimsy

Couldn't resist putting a link to this story for all the goat lovers out there, as well as the people who value common sense.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-01-23/comedian-claims-gruff-treatment-over-goat-fine/4480106

And on You Tube -

Comfort zones

We all love our comfort zones.  But ... out for a walk this morning, planning on a walk along Linear Park, feeling a strong psychological tug to walk up the side streets instead.  But I won't feel the "nature rush" I thought.  In the end I followed the tug.  After a pleasant walk - not immersed in nature but pleasant - I walked back across a grassy area to go home, looked over and discounted lots of bedraggled old feathers, then found - this!  And you can't even see the iridescent nature of the central mauve/blue area in the photo.  But a lovely reward for going outside my comfort zone.

 

Owls

Embroidered Owl  approx 2010?

©Christine Linton 2013

I'm not quite sure when I made this embroidery, but lately I keep seeing drawn, painted and stitched owls, so I'm going to take it as a good omen, perhaps meaning that I have the wisdom to follow my creative path .....
Found this blog on my blog feed which has beautiful art work of owls and this interesting info on owl .symbology.

Making texture in hand embroidery

My latest obsession is texture, in particular texture in trees, on the bark, the visual texture of groups of tree tops, the way the closer leaves can be seen in detail and the further ones merge into blobs of flat greens of various shades.  Texture on tree bark is a whole subject in itself, and I've been taking far too many photos of tree bark texture in the last few days; I'll have to do some heavy editing if I want to still have space on my hard drive.  I'm definitely looking at doing some hand embroidered texture around a tree theme, so I looked out my Hand Embroidery Unit Folder from 2011 and found this tree trunk texture piece that I worked in various threads and yarns, mostly couched.  It is one of my favourite pieces from that Unit.  It gives me a good start on thinking what I want to do with this theme.
 

Texture tree, threads and yarns, couching

©Christine Linton

While I was looking around for other textured embroidered art, I found this blog post from Alex Hall which has the most fascinating textural interpretation of pebbles - when I clicked on the image for a close up look, I was delighted to find rows of chain stitch, one of my favourite stitches, as well as bullions and french knots - worth the time to study it.
http://underatopazsky.wordpress.com/2011/10/26/embroidered-pebbles-2/

Experimental art - my own quote

©Christine Linton

This is my personal view of experimental art.  I think you already guessed that!