3 new species

On Saturday we went to the Forest of Dean again and had the excitement of seeing three new bird species. We went first to Nagshead nature reserve in the hope of spotting some Pied Flycatchers. Apparently quite a few people had been out looking for them and waiting a long time. We were strolling down a path through a bluebell spotted forest to the lower hide and there was one, just sitting on the fence wire!

It then spent a little while flitting about in the trees next to the path so we got a good look at him. He was very sweet, and fluffy like a long tailed tit.

We then went on to Cannop Ponds which are pretty much around the corner from Nagshead. There we saw a new tit, though we couldn't determine whether it was a marsh or willow tit. Apparently those are the two closest looking birds there are. We also had the pleasure of spotting a Redstart, high up in a tree.

Apparently Cannop is a good place to spot them! I stole those photos from Marno, he's the bird photographer, I just look through my binoculars, although this often results in me getting a better look at them in detail as I don't have to mess around with getting the right setting, I just look. Its funny, since becoming interested in birds, the more common species become less exciting. I used to get really excited if I saw a chaffinch, but now I want to see rare birds that are hard to spot. I still love the more common birds though. Tits and Robins are among my favourites.

Just a quick creative update. My cardigan is starting to take a little shape. I've nearly finished the border and the pattern is forming which is really exciting. I'd love to understand stitches to the point of being able to write my own patterns. I'm also making the binding for my quilt, which I'm going to continue with now. I hope you have a pleasant day x

Loads of things

For me, the weekend begins when my husband gets home from work on a Friday as he finishes early. This Friday he was home extra early and the first "first" of my weekend happened. He asked me if I wanted to go to the driving range. Haha yeah right, lets go, that'll be fun... NOT! Since we've known each other I've teased him about liking golf, that it's not a sport blah blah blah, but anyway I thought, "Its a nice evening, it'd be nice to try something different," so I said ok. I watched Marno for a bit than asked if I could have a go. Well I think I must have had a secret ability hidden inside me as my first ever golf swing sent the ball 100 yards, dead straight. And just to show it wasn't a fluke, so did the second one. Ok I hearly dislocated my shoulder on the third but once I'd recovered I was back on the little fake grass thing you stand on and hit many more great shots. Hmmm, what to do now? Ma has a set of clubs for me which she's been keeping for the day I have a go and realise that golf is actually amazing and tell her I would like to have them. I wonder if that day has come... though I'm certainly not at the amazing stage but think it could be fun to have a go.
The second first was getting up at 6am on Saturday to go to to Cosmeston to see what birds we could see. It would appear you actually have to be up at 4am for there to be any difference to going in the day time. There were hardly any birds except for the usual blue tits, robins and chaffinches, although we did see a male and female Reed Bunting actually on a reed! Pretty exciting! We just ended up freezing and ridiculously tired so we got home about 10 and slept for an hour.


I did get the chance to take photos of my dress, or rather Marno took the photos and I posed. Here is a selection.






I'm rather pleased that my new White Stuff cardigan goes so well. Mmmm my favourite shop. Talking of cardigans, heres a photo of the KSH I bought to make the mohair lace cardigan with the dress fabric.


A perfect match.
And finally here are some of the beautiful blossoms in the park at the end of our road. They are so beautiful at the moment. I think I've never noticed spring as much as I have this year.



And its another delightfully sunny day today. First flip flip day of the year! Hooray!

Some Little Guys

Its funny, since we've been interested in birds, we've taken to referring to them as "guys". I think its because when you start to look at them in more detail you realise they all have such personalities. My favourite personalities at the moment are Robins and Long Tailed Tits, which are just too sweet and are little balls of fluff. Anyway, here are my finished Blue Tit and Robin.



They probably don't look that different to the progress shots I've already posted about. This has led me to the (probable) decision that I'm no longer going to post photos of unfinished paintings, and has also reminded me that here is another thing that used to bug me about painting. I would put loads of detail in a certain part, usually the face, but other aspects I would give far less attention to. I am happy with these considering I haven't painted in four and a half years, but I think this needs work. I also remembered I used to really enjoy working in charcoal and pastels, so I think its another trip to the storage container to retrieve some more old art materials...

I've put these on a shelf on a bookcase for now, and couldn't resist taking a photo as there were a few interesting objects on display.

As well as the paintings, there's the first "object" I knitted, a lavender filled heart with a pearlescent button and bobbles around it, a pair of tickets to go and see Lemar, which should be quite random as my husband bought them kind of on a whim. We have liked his singles but those are all we know so we can sing along to four songs at least! And there's the tree spirit from this most excellent film. But ignore the English as all anime has to be watched in Japanese (in my opinion). Its just so much better and more believable. We are anime lovers here, but kind of go in stages of watching it, and I wrote my dissertation on manga and anime, long ago that seems now. Talking of education, it occurred to me that I feel a bit like I'm at school at the moment. I'm taking A Level Art, Textiles and IT, spending all my free periods in the art department and making my friends faint with shock if I actually go into the library. Just like school! I didn't do A Level Textiles or IT but I'm doing lots of sewing at the moment and I am actually doing an IT course, which I guess is what I would use the library for. So as you can see, I'm not giving enough time to it. Its all online though so I am going to do some revision today...

...before I go to my friends house to quilt my... err... quilt! This is the actual one for Romania, although I've spoken to my friend John who's going and the children are ages five to 15. I've made this one a little bigger than Sue's (whose house I'm going to later). Its seven by 11 6" squares with a 2" border. I'm not going to show you til its finished but here's one of the fabrics I've used.
Somewhat more child friendly wouldn't you agree? In case you're interested, here's the link to the guys website and what they're doing on their trip.

I hope you have a most wonderful day x

A quick 10 minutes

...to tell you about what I finished on Friday. This knitting needle roll which I started about, hmm I can't actually remember now I come to think of it, but a couple of months ago anyway. I started it before I got a sewing machine so it's all hand sewn, except sewing the three layers together round the edge which I did at my class.




The hand sewing of the blocks wasn't actually that slow, the thing that took ages was the sewing of all the compartments for the needles to be held in , which you can get an idea of below. I also procrastinated because it was rather tedious.


All in all though, I'm very pleased with and and have designed another one which will be all machine made which I am hoping to make to sell on Etsy or Folksy. The thing I'm really interested in, as I think I've said somewhere before, is using really modern fabrics with traditional techniques. Ok so this fabric isn't particularly modern, but it is all done by hand. I think the ones I hope to produce will be in much more modern fabrics but I don't think I'll be able to use traditional quilt blocks due to the necessity of sewing it all on machine. A little too complicated to explain all the logistics so you'll have to take my word for it :)

Here's something else I did on Friday. I wanted to write this post on Friday evening but I haven't had time til now, early Monday afternoon! Its been another busy weekend! Anyway, this was meant to be my replacement baby quilt as I decided to keep the other one, which incidentally I'm hoping to machine quilt on Wednesday at a friend's house as I don't yet have a walking foot. But the fabrics are anything but babyish, so it looks like an "adult content" quilt in a baby size.


My husband said it could be a sleeping bag for his foot, and then proceeded to model it for me, as a blanket thats too small for an adult but pretty random for a baby!


I'm now having a third attempt with more child friendly fabric!

We had a busy Saturday helping some friends who are going to Nigeria on mission work prepare some things for Sunday school lessons they will be doing there. It was really lovely to be able to help in a small way. It mostly involved colouring in, cutting out and stapling things together. In the late afternoon we went to Kenfig Nature Reserve which was absolutely stunning. Loads of dunes and marshy areas, late afternoon sun plus several very grey clouds and some spitting rain. We didn't see many birds around apart from a female Bullfinch from a distance, but there were lots of dive bombing Meadow Pipets and some beautiful Stonechats, neither of which we've seen before. We also had the excitement of seeing two Great Spotted Woodpeckers chasing each other around the tops of the trees yesterday in Roath Park Woodland. Here's a photo stolen from my husband.


Well thanks for your patience if you've got ot the end of this mammoth post. I hope I've made someone smile. Love Sam x

Progress and ssergorP

Just a short post today to give an update on my painting progress. I'm curently working on four small bird paintings, two I'm more pleased with than the other two. Its funny because even though I haven't painted in about four years, as I've got back into it the old things I used to like and dislike have come flooding back. For example I always used to paint portraits and make the backgrounds very flat, usually one colour or perhaps a couple of subtle similar shades fading into each other. Even though the current paintings are kind of to get back into it, I didn't think properly about what I wanted to do in the backgrounds as the birds are against various backgrounds in the photos I'm using. I realised I needed to properly think about this as in the two first paintings I actually did some kind of background detail which I wasn't happy with, but with the later two I decided to use flat colour with just a very subtle amount of gradient, mostly around the subject to create a bit of an illusion of three dimension, but as I said, very subtle. I find I am still very much in favour of painting subtle and plain backgrounds to give the subject all the attention and to create some kind of atmosphere through the unrealism of it.
Here are the two I'm more pleased with after their first coat stage.



And as for the backwards progress, I went to our little craft group lastnight where my friend Sally had made the most lovely quilt, her first one (and I forgot to take my camera so will have to try and get a shot of it next time) and I had planned to make some real progress on my MIL's socks... I'd done seven rounds after picking up the stitches down the sides of the heel and then realised I had one two many stitches on one side. I knew they had been right in the rifst place so ended spending the whole evening unknitting my sock. Grrrr I need them finished soon :( I hope to finish at least one WIP by the end of next week.

Goodbye xxx

Some Little Birdies

I've been sketching a little yesterday and today, some birds in preparation for starting to paint. Here's what I've produced so far.

Female Chaffinch with a sunflower seed in her beak

Robin


Male Chaffinch

I've made them a bit darker in photoshop so you can see them better. I'm really looking forward to getting into this project. I've also primed my boards for painting today. They're a mixture of sizes but all quite small, smaller than A4, which will be good for me as I usually paint on a large scale. Its reallt been interesting doing these drawings as its really made me look in detail at the, construction, if you like, of the bird, particularly the way the feathers are laid one on top of the other on the wings. You can see that in the Robin.

I went to the National Museum and Art Gallery in town today but it wasn't very impressive really. There were only two painting areas open and the rest was all being changed around so I'll have to go back another time. Going to a clothes swap tonight with some friends from church which should be fun. I'm hoping to find some nice stuff as being... ahem..."independent means" means I can't really buy any clothes.

Have a fun evening whatever you're doing, if anyone's there x

Weekends...

Wow, what a weekend. It feels like we've crammed so much in. We went for an all you can eat chinese on Friday night in Cardiff Bay, followed by cinema - we watched Marley and Me and I can highly recommend it. It was really lovely, not crude, and a sweet but also believable story.
Went to Cosmeston Lakes on Saturday morning... well actually from about 10am til 2pm so a bit longer than just the morning. Goodness, trying to sketch birds is pretty much impossible! There's a nice picnic table situated in a little clearing bit where there are loads of birdies and if you put seed down they'll come and get it although some are pretty timid. Oh and there are fat pie squirrels too who also like some seeds! But when you're trying to sketch you realise that they never actually sit still, so I kind of gave up and let Marno carry on taking photos. I usually paint from photos anyway so not too bothered. We saw a few new species (for us) - Reed Buntings, Great Crested Grebes, Mistle Thrush, Fieldfares, as well as lots of little long tailed tits, a goldfinch, chaffinches, lots of robins and blue and great tits and many more. We're not so interested in the ducks it has to be said.
On Saturday evening we went into Bristol to a very old friend's birthday party. I hadn't seen her since my wedding two years ago, and also a few of my other old school friends. It was so lovely to see them. One of my friends was freaking out about the fact that three of us have known each other for 20 years, which is quite a long time when you're only 27!


After going to the meeting on Sunday morning (our church - we're Christadelphians), we went for a little walk in the park by our house and straight away saw a goldcrest, which is Britain's tiniest bird, really high up in a tree. Marno bought me binoculars the other week as a present, and they've been brilliant. I don't really care what people think about us liking watching birds, like if they think its a bit geeky, because they are the ones missing out. Ok its not everyone's cup of tea but it really is fascinating. I love walking too so it adds interest to walks. We also saw some grenfinch, a treecreeper, which I had seen the other day and I think Marno was a bit dubious as to whether I had actually seen it, so I was glad it was there again! There were some Jays having a shouting match with a cat, and lots of naturey things going on.

(Goldfinch in Roath Mill Gardens)

Ohh and to finish off we had a mocha frap in Starbucks! Yum :)
I would put more bird photos up but they're my husbands and I want to concentrate on the painting side as I'm not really interested in photography, though I have tried to force myself into it several times during my art education! So my birds will be purely paintings.
Felt a bit down about various things on Sunday night. Its funny because I'm doing so many exciting things at the moment and I really feel as if I'm starting to realise what I want to do, but other things going on at the same time are there in the background. Anyway, thats enough of that. Everything will be ok.