Rreally we’ve had a nice day, but this seems to be all we have to show for it!
Right, so this is the bits of onion/nettle and berry dyed fabric. Fran and i spent quite a while arranging it into a pattern today; initially i did a pattern, then she got the idea and spent quite a while rearranging and photograghing, before suddenly deciding on a sequence (colour and tie-dye/plain) she liked. I really enjoyed watching her make the jump from participator to leader in the project. Then we trimmed the pieces together and pinned it all down. Tomorrow we plan to get colured wools and stitch designs over it, then we’ll mount it on MDF. We’re feeling quite proud of our inventiveness 🙂
The morning started with a shopping list and a trip to Sainsburys to get ingredients but in fact we didn’t get to any baking today; Auntie Kate was here, various children seemed highly over tired and lots of bits needed finishing off. Nice walk though and pleasant trip round the shop/gossip with Kate.
Kate tested Fran on her Collectors Badge and passed her fit, i took Amelie up to nursery where she was completely fine and rolled right in, then a parcel turned up from BONNERS MUSIC (plug, plug, shameless plug!!!!). The pink recorder was an instant hit and both girl set about trying to get a decent note out of it. So we spent a bit of time on that and managed to fend Maddy off the keyboard books for one day, with promises to look at it tonight. I am SO NOT musical, the extent of my ability is the recorder and the flute, so piano is a mystery to me. Like the look of the adult piano book in the parcel so will be attempting to learn alongside. Thanks very much Ros, will email you about it tonight 🙂
Girls have all played with Beanies a bit, talked to the builders about the hole (read 3 foot wide, 6 foot deep trench) they’ve dug in our drive (grumble!) and other stuff. fran and i finished off the day creating a quiz for her Stargazer Badge, which she has to do with her Six and learning the story of two constellations, Pegasus and Cassiopeia. She’s really stuck at her badge work this week, i’m proud of her. Going to look at her book with her tomorrow to decide what to do next.
Its probably obvious we’ve dumped normals this week. I’m planning on starting with Maddy next week and letting Fran do them on a more self-led basis for a little while but mainly i felt that we’ve got so much naturally occuring interest at the moment, plus those skills are more than up to scratch where a year ago they weren’t, that they aren’t worthwhile. Why waste time on maths when you want to be doing a Prehistoric timeline? 😉
IMO thats lovely, well done to your girls (and you, any chance of intructions for making the dyes?), I am having to do much ‘poo’ gazing today, as Jake has swallowed a piece of geomag!
Lol at the poo gazing !!!
I’ll write up what we did and put it on the sidebar till i get Mp sorted but really it consisted of boiling up as few onion skins!
Merry did you fix the dye at all? I was all set to do what you did and then a textile graduate friend put me off with tales of having to use salt as a fixative and then we didn’t have enough salt etc, etc….
I stuff some salt in the berry one but i didn’t bother with the others – we aren’t planning to wash it, so aside from fading, which i suppose might happen, who cares? Its the process that was interesting, i doubt the artwork will be with me in 50 years time!
So looks like the normals were an alround success, then. Glad they achieved what they set out to do.
(And the dying looks fab.)
Ugh – is that spelt right? I think I should go do some normals…
I dunno – i haven’t looked it up – but surely dying is being dead and dyeing is changing colours?
I thought you had taken up quilting when I looked at the picture – would make a lovely patchwork quilt 🙂 Talking about timlines has the sonlight order arrived yet Merry? Or does it take another few weeks yet? xx
It has Karen, i’ve just been snowed under and not quite got it parceled up and sent – but its on this weekends to do list!
No pressure at all Merry – Just curious. I know you are snowed under at the moment with BM LOL I’ve still got to plan out exactly how we are going to do everything to do with time at the moment. xx 🙂