🌿 Robin and me 🌿 - my quick sketch embroidery - finished 🌿

 

                                                             Oh my heart !  

                                      He comes to my hand every day now .

                                      I just wanted to capture this precious moment .

Robin and me - the robin's eye 🌿

                                                                           🖤

Little Green Dragon - Bushcraft Fire-Starter Keep 🐉

 Today I finished the Little Green Dragon bushcraft fire starter keep . Another little Christmas present for someone I know .

I finished the Trumpington Cross embroidery . I think that I would like it framed in a simple round frame  if possible ..... not sure .....still thinking bout this . Maybe make it into a larger piece for a wall hanging ..hmmm .....

Anglo-Saxon Cross Embroidery - continued

 I'm thinking this would look great worked all in red seed beads .....It would also look great stitched all in green and I might just do that ..... just thinking ...... 

    I decided to stitch all the , what look like little studs with circles around them . I stitched the circles with back stitch and then couched over them  . I still have a lot more of these to do .

                                                                       💚     

Ælfwynn's Autumn embroideries - Little Green Dragon

 

Dragons are a very Autumnal thing , after all , "dragons frolic in the Autumn mist" do they not ?

 

           Well that is so the song says "Puff the Magic Dragon" by Peter Paul and Mary  🐉

  This will become another scissor keep . I need to go buy some ribbon to finish  it off .

Hope you are having a nice weekend . It is turning cooler now here in Cornwall . Misty evenings ....be on the look out for dragons !  🐉

                                                             

Ælfwynn's Autumn embroideries - Little green dragon

 

                                                           Needs some teeth !

A sweet little cottage in Kent - garden 🌻🌷🌞

 I enjoyed embroidering the pretty flowers into the garden .Some red , white and blue flowers in the pots by the front door . 

 I could leave it at this point but if I have some time to stitch over the weekend then I think I may fill in the sky .

The sun has been shining here , I hope it shines for all of you too over the weekend . 🌞 x

Ælfwynn's Autumn embroideries - A sweet little cottage in Kent 🐿️

 

 

                                                                      🍂🍁🐿️

                                       This may take me a little while longer to do .

                                                                      🐿️🍂🍁 

Ælfwynn's Autumn embroideries - Harvest Moon at the Sycamore Gap Tree 😔🍁🐿️

 

Ælfwynn's Autumn embroideries - Sycamore Gap Tree Harvest Moon

 

                                                                   🍁🌳🍁

So sad . Someone cut her down . Why ? 

I hope she can regenerate and maybe next Spring will come new strong shoots all around .

Ælfwynn's Autumn embroideries - Another Little Red Squirrel 🐿️

                                                                    🍂🍁🍄🐿️💚

                                                                     🌳🐿️💚

                                                                        🍂🍁🍂

Ælfwynn's Autumn Embroideries - Green Cricket 🌿

 

"To have a cricket on the hearth, is the luckiest thing in all the world !"  -  Charles Dickens   

                                                                    🍂🍁🍄  

Little Cloth Book Cottage Page - progress

                          Here I go putting in too much detail again .... lol !

Bayeux Tapestry fun - part one - practice piece

My young grandson Harry and I had been talking about the Bayeux Tapestry  , he is eight years old and very interested .
  I thought it would be fun to stitch a couple of small scenes from it  and let him have a go too .

So into my time machine we climb .  Back through time we fly to the year 1066 !
 The Bayeux Tapestry is NOT a tapestry !
 Back in earlier times , any needlework wall hanging would have been known as a tapestry, even though strictly speaking, a tapestry is fabric picture woven on an upright loom with a picture of the design behind it .
 I once had a go at weaving around a book to make a simple bag . I might do this with the children on another occasion to show the difference between a tapestry and an embroidery .
 The Bayeux Tapestry is actually an embroidery . Embroidered with crewel wool on a tabby weave linen .
 The word crewel comes from the old Anglo-Saxon word cliow or kleow, meaning a loosely twisted woollen yarn thread . The word changed over the years to become crewel .
  So crewel embroidery is surface embroidery using wool . Today it can be bought in several thicknesses or weights .
Tapestry wool is slightly thicker usually for Needlepoint and thinner Crewel wool is for embroidery.
  There are several good makes now that I can recommend Appletons, Renaissance dyeing wool , Gumnuts and Heathways . These are all lovely !
     I,m using Appletons in this project .  Appletons definitely seem to have more colours to choose from ....423 to be precise !
 For those who knit or who do textile art work and for those who like to break the rules and mix it all up , then there are even more specialist wools ,yarns, cotton and silk threads out there .
 We are so lucky to have so much choice in these modern times and lovely craft shops from which to buy our needlework supplies .
    How we take it all for granted these days !
 Back in medieval times the fleece would have been hand spun and then dyed  , with natural dyes made from gathered wild plants such as Indigo , Madder , bark , herbs and berries etc before being wound into skeins . This would be another wonderful thing to have a go at , maybe in the summer .
   The Linen Flax was grown and harvested, retted and scutched . Spun and woven into linen on a loom .  It was expensive then and expensive still now !

 We began looking at pictures of the Bayeux Tapestry , both on-line and in books from the library .
 We thought about choosing a nice bit of it to do .... except that , there aren't any "nice" bits  in it !
  This is the true story of a terrible and bloody battle ! The Duke of Normandy William and King Harold defending and fighting for the Crown of England .
It is an incredible embroidered documentation of what happened leading up to the battle .
 It is thought that Bishop Odo ordered the tapestry to be made not long after the event . That nuns in Canterbury embroidered it . It is thought that it was designed and drawn by someone who may have been there and witnessed the battle or things that were happening around the event .
 There is so much to see and learn of early medieval life in the tapestry . The clothes that they wore , the tools that they used in ship building and cooking , their beliefs in God and signs in the stars , Halley's comet .
 The Bayeux Tapestry will be coming over to England in 2022 it has been announced . It could be the British Museum or the V&A , they haven't decided this yet .

 All fired up and excited , I grabbed a couple of pieces of old cotton sheet  and began doodling some of the pictures from my books . I think I,m doing them quite a bit bigger than on the actual Bayeux Tapestry .
  I,m drawing them freehand with a pencil , so they might not be all that accurate , although I,m doing as best as I can !
 I thought it would be better to practice on cheap cotton or calico rather than ruin expensive linen .

 I matched up the colours as best as I could . There are a lot more subtle shades within  the tapestry . The closer I look  the more I see . There are more recent repair jobs that have been done on it here and there , not always too well done , in my opinion . I,ll show you why later on .

It will be easier to stitch on linen . My needle does not go through this tightly woven cotton very easily . Need to change my needle but too excited to stop right now .

                                         The "nice" bit we chose .
     So I have begun , at almost the end of the story actually .
" Hic Harold Rex interfectus est " which means  Here Harold King killed is .. or as we would say  " Here King Harold is killed "

               I feel myself getting more and more drawn in .......

Divine Love upon the Wheel -Hildegard von Bingen - Stormy Sacred Sunday

There is a wild storm raging here , it was a very windy night and forecast to be continuing on into much of today and tomorrow .
 Cosy and warm in my bed last night , listening to it howling away while I stitched away into the small hours .

 Yesterday morning was so beautiful calm and the sun was shining up in a beautiful blue sky .We took a walk down the lane to see the snowdrops and violets (see my other blog ) I brought in a pile of wood for the fire .
 We were glad to have made the most of such a lovely morning before the sky became dark and it all changed !

 So I took up that beautiful coral crewel wool and filled in the centre and the lines below God's hand .
                                          I knew it would make it sing !

                 I treated myself to some new gold-plated chenille needles !
Just because they are so beautiful and I need to feel like a Princess every now and then !

Divine Love upon the Wheel - A Little Lenten Project

                                   Choosing and matching up colours .
 I had this little piece of embroidery in mind , to work on over Lent , which will begin on Ash Wednesday 26th February this year.
               Easter being on Sunday April 12th.
But I changed my mind and decided to begin it now after hearing of the passing of a very dear friend Rev.Fr.James Courtney OSB . A monk from Buckfast Abbey who came to serve here , for a short while at Mullion . A  kind , generous and very holy man ....who will be sadly missed by all in the parish .
      He will be in my thoughts and prayers while I stitch this .
It is a small section of an illumination manuscript of St Hildegard von Bingen . From Part 3, Vision 5 of the " Book of Divine Works".
 It is a small section of a much larger picture/painting . I chose to do the hand of God pouring down His love and Peace on us all .
   It is called " Divine Love upon the Wheel ".
   

                      I have sketched it out in pencil on a scrap of linen .

      The Illuminations/paintings of St Hildegard of Bingen are just so beautiful and amazingly modern looking , the colours are incredible for the time that she lived between 1098 - 1179 .
     They all come from the visions that she had from the age of three , and on throughout her life .
 Nobody knows for sure if she painted them herself or just described what she saw to another nun or monk who painted them as she dictated . She wrote books on herbs , diet and medicine . She wrote beautiful music ..I have no doubt in my mind , that such a creative person could certainly have been an artist too !
     I have stitched many small pieces from these illuminations , you may remember when I was embroidering " medieval stars " in a post a little while ago . They were fun little things to stitch ! This illumination is from a copy done by the nuns in about 1230 called the Lucca manuscript .

  These are just simple guidelines done with a pencil , not especially accurate .

I am stitching over these guide lines , in the colours that I intend to embroider this little piece with .  These are also not meant to be especially accurate .
 This is no way meant to be a tutorial , but merely to show how I am doing it ....but if it inspires you then that is great !
    I am making decisions about colour and stitches as I go along and I like to see how it changes . Sometimes surprises , hopefully not too much unpicking .
                         A lovely way of meditation and prayer .
                                           Peace to you .

Sea Inspired Meditation Embroidery

After a clear cold night and a frosty early morning , which had all gone by sunrise , we set off for a walk along the cliffs .
 We didn't go too far , but we wanted to get out and enjoy the sunshine today !

We walked to the Marconi Monument , where we love to sit and just look out over the sparkling sea and blue sky and feel the warmth of the sun on our faces .

                                     Today you could see for miles !

This is looking towards St Michael's  Mount , where there are already daffodils in full bloom !

 I had brought along , a scrap of linen and a small selection of crewel wool in shades of blue , a chenille needle and my tiny scissors and began a simple " Sea Inspired " meditation embroidery .
  A more contemporary piece deliberately different from my usual style .
I'll show you my usual meditative stitching in my next post .

Just a calming little piece , just stitching as the mood takes me , going with the flow, enjoying the rhythm and the simplicity of little chain stitches .

                                       I,m in the mood for blue today .

                  The soft , blue wool , warm and soothing in my hands .

Not even the slightest breeze today , warm sunshine and so peaceful and quiet .
              Such a blessing after all the rain and gales last week !

 Soothing little stitches , tears of sadness, tears of joy , ripples on the sea , shoals of tiny fish , white sea foam .  Thoughts unfolding through my needle .
  Comforting rhythm as the needle passes through the linen cloth scrap .

                                      Gentle waves lapping the shore .

We sat and talked happy talk , reminiscing about when the children were small and of the dogs we'd walked along these cliffs   .

 We watched a little bird , who flew down quite close , flew off and came back again to the same spot over and over again .
  I found myself  looking closer at the seedpods of flowers from last summer , bleached in the sun , the wind and the rain .  So much inspiration  !

Simple Lazy Daisy stitches my mother taught me ! I looked it up and found that this is more properly known as detached chain stitch or sometimes known as isolated chain stitch .
                                No hoop ... my cloth just gently held in hand . Relax .

  Looking towards the cliffs , tin mines and engine houses along Rinsey , between Porthleven and Praa Sands . Memories of so many beautiful walks with our dogs along that stretch of the cliffs , with my dear friend Kath and her lovely old Labrador Elsa . My dear old friend knew where we could find four leaved clover leaves .......and took me there ..... and sure enough....we each found one !
 I still have mine in a little picture frame !
             She moved away ......

                                  The rugged cliffs and caves of Poldhu .
 I think we all need more days like this and to get out and make the most of these precious hours .
  I am enjoying this free and easy meditative embroidery , so very therapeutic .

                                      I don't feel that is is finished yet .