WOYWW 222

Welcome to my rather erratic blog on my craft work and if you have wandered in via a search and are wondering what on earth WOYWW is all about, wander over to Julia's Stamping Ground where you will see lots of crafters exposing their intimate work places in order to allow others to snoop at their worktops on a Wednesday. Well, actually most of us are probably putting up pictures of our worktops on Tuesday and commenting on them, in order to get them posted by Wednesday.

So on my desktop today you can see some of my experiments into playing with alcohol inks. Actually the one on the front right looks much better in the picture than it does in 'real life'. It is a bit wishy washy, but the light on it here gives it much more depth and contrast. Not sure what I do about that, I 've just been and looked at it again to convince myself it is the same piece.


In the next few days OH and I are going away for about five weeks on our narrowboat, (burglars don't even think about it. Just because OH and I are out of the house, it doesn't mean the house is unoccupied all that time. People seem to do a lot of coming and going in our home when we are away, I have had to make up all the beds before we go. And lots are popping in as well to keep an eye on the post, including a veritable rottweiler of a  Mr Twitchy Curtains across the road.) so I am trying to work out how much craft stuff I need to take to make a big inroad into the Christmas card task. This involves deciding what I really need, what I would like to take and how to avoid having World War three with OH about how much I am taking and how I can possible need all that stuff. In this picture you can see the beginnings of the pile. But there are still big decisions about what else to include.

At craft club this year the theme is Christmas trees, so I have to make at least 14 technically challenging cards for them. Then I need 120 assorted ones with at least some religious content so I need stamps and die cutter and colours of some sort and the list could go on and on.
And, of course, they will all have to created between opening locks and steering the boat if OH has had enough, walking miles to the shops and having to put everything away from the rather limited space each time we want a meal.

You can see here the beginnings of a couple of tree cards, not sure how they will continue, but that seems to be how all my cards happen.









And just in case people don't know what a narrowboat is like, this is a picture of ours. She's called Bendithion, which is Blessings in Welsh.

We aim to take her down through Birmingham, onto the River Severn, up the Avon back through Birmingham and up the Trent and Mersey Canal to Middlewich. Then along the Wardle canal, the shortest on the UK system, all of 51 yards long, and back on the Shropshire Union to its moorings. So if anyone lives anywhere near those canals and sees us, come and say 'Hi'.

Sorry Julia, not a short post, but it might be the last for several weeks, so Happy WOYWW everyone.
Chris