fallow

i have decided that january can be my fallow month - no pressure to make anything in particular, no deadlines or rules, just playing.

i have made some modest progress with my socks - i decided to use miriam's razorshell sock pattern (i'll use the wendy dennis yarn i bought at the colac visitor information centre last week to make the broadripples i think. the broadripple pattern is for dk wool and the gorgeous uluru coloured wool is sock weight...) the colac visitor information centre is very good by the way - friendly but not overbearing volunteers, a good range of local products (such as wendy dennis yarn) and clean lavatories.

(this post may be a bit random as i have just consumed a small bottle of strongbow cider and am feeling a bit owlish. the alcohol is fuming woolly thoughts through my brain necessitating very careful typing {it feels rather like an internal angora beret}. and i promise i won't moan about how hot it is - 38 degrees and hot for the rest of the week. which reinforces what a daft idea colonialism was. my body was not meant for this climate)

i did have a go at some more washing machine felting - with rather mixed results. note to self: superwash roving will not felt, no matter how many trips it makes through the washing machine and dryer (with other stuff i hasten to add - i am not being reckless with water). my plan is make a few of these pieces and then do other stuff to them - embroidery, beads, embellishment, even the basis for a burnt quilt instead of blanketing or felted jumper.

tomorrow we are off to mallacoota for a few days (don't worry - my brother is moving in to look after billthedog, die katzendrei and the chooks while we're gone) a 6 hour drive east to stay in a mudbrick house with the rest of urbane scrumping's extended family. i have packed my crafting bag with The Sock, a felted piece that is destined to be the next in the alice quilt series and a small piece of raw silk that might or might not be used to practise on.

and in some exciting news, i am going to take some long service leave in july/august and we are going to go back to central australia for a couple of weeks! i am so looking forward to going back and just being in the desert. it is a magical, mystical place and i hope to come back with ideas for the next wave of alice quilts.

here is a picture of the current wip - in real life the colours are brighter and richer but photoshop is not to hand at the moment and i'm not sure if i could drive it even if it were (the cider is till seeping through the cortex) it's an alice quilt, felted onto silk and i am embroidering it with a range of silk, wool, rayon and cotton threads. i especially like the bumpy bits and will be stitching around them to emphasise the gibbery texture, so like the country around alice springs
(see bottom left 2 of the set of 6 aluminium spice tins i bought at 'know your product' in westgarth - fabulous shop, full of relics from the 60s and 70s)