Some days..

Imagine, himself is away from home doing something very important so I have the house to myself. I am sitting in my comfy chair, feet on desk, morning cappacino in my hand, reading e-mail and surfing the net when I hear a scritchy scratchy sound coming from the ceiling. I had left the bathroom window wide open and a bird must have gotten in. So I run upstairs and check. No sign of any bird, must have flown out again. Close window. Go back to my comfy position. scritchy scratchy sound coming from the ceiling! I checked outside to see if there was any way a bird could get into the house, but can’t see anything. Or was it a mouse scuttling about between the floor upstairs and the ceiling downstairs, in which case I don’t really want to know. Whatever, the sound stopped so I decide I must be imagining it.

5 am next day, I wake up to the sound of our neighbourhood pigeon coo-cooing at the top of his voice from the tv ariel. Turn over to go back to sleep and hear scritchy scratchy sound coming from the ceiling. I tried to go back to sleep but the thought of a poor little bird trapped in the attic was too much for me. So I got up – yes me, at 5am!!
I checked outside to see if I could see anywhere a bird might be getting inside. I go into the loft to see if I could see any sign of a bird. Not a thing. However there is something looking suspiciously like a feather floating just above the guttering. There is an air vent in the roof just above the feather so although there is no sign of breakage I decide to use mesh to cover it anyway. Drive to diy store, buy plastic mesh.
I climb back up the ladder into the loft with the mesh, staple gun and scissors. Think “if there is a bird flying around in here, how will I catch it”? Need something to catch bird with. Back down ladder to look for the large piece of fine black net which we used to use to keep flies out of the back door. Find net in kitchen drawer and put it into back pocket of jeans.
Back up ladder to loft. I clear a few cartons so that I can climb though the gap to get to the vent. This is at the lowest point in the roofline in the part of the loft we didn’t bother to board out as it was so shallow we knew we would never use it. Realise I will have to very carefully crawl along the joists to get to the vent. Back down the ladder to find a box to put the mesh, staple gun, scissors etc in so that I don’t have to carry them. Be brave and go into shed for large cardboard box, hoping the giant spider that lives in there is asleep and doesn’t get me. Saw friendly mouse trap on shelf and got that too. Baited that with caramel and sesame covered peanuts and a piece of chocolate (if a mouse has to be trapped in a can, he may as well eat nice things).
I climb the ladder again. Push the box with my tools in it through the gap, then decide I need to go to the loo. Down the ladder. Do the stuff and turn to flush toilet, Yikes! There is something huge and black in loo. It’s the bloody net that was in my back pocket, must have fallen in when I sat down. Of course I had peed on it. Fish net out of loo and put into sink, wash hands. Go and search for something else to catch the bird with.
Back up ladder. Did I mention that it has been rather warm here recently? I don’t know what the temperature was in my attic, but it is a well insulated enclosed space and it was like a blooming sauna up there. Anyway, I push my cardboard box through the small gap I had made in the stacked cartons and climb through. The ceiling is so low I have to somehow crawl along the rafters, which are around two feet apart, with only fibre glass insulation covering the plasterboard ceiling. I manage to get to the part of the roof with the vent, cut the plastic mesh and by laying on my back, at a very strange angle and trying to keep my weight on the joists, cover the air gap with mesh. I found a small tear in the roofing felt so stapled gunned that to fix it. Then to be extra sure I covered the whole area with mesh. I slithered back across the insulation, through the gap in the stored cartons, put everything back. Climbed back down ladder. I was dripping, smelly, had splinters in my knees, was itching everywhere from the fibreglass, when the phone rang. It was himself, he was having a bad day…


p.s. I did ring back and apologise for swearing at him once I had had a shower. The net washed in the washing machine and so far the trap is still empty. I guess the bird got out the way he got in when he heard me coming.

Paddy Killer machine embroidery workshop

Lincoln Bailgate Guild had Paddy Killer come and teach a one day workshop. Paddy's stuff is awesome and I just had to take the class. http://www.paddykillerart.co.uk/
Anyway this is what I produced in one day. We had lots of tuition in the morning with slides etc, then we traced part of a design and drew it onto antung silk fabric using a pigment drawing pen. (The silk had been sprayed with starch on the reverse of the fabric.) I lightly shaded in the areas that I wanted to fill using stitch. We could have painted the design with textile paint at this stage. The piece of silk was layered with cotton batting and had cotton organdie as the base. We used a very fine thread both in the bobbin and through the needle - I found it so much harder to sew with this thread, every tiny wobble showed. I did start to sew around the edge again but ran out of time. As I was using Paddy's thread I won't be finishing the started sample! The pen worked really well with no smudging or bleeding and I would use one again but I think I need lots more practice before I use expensive silk and organdie again.

Dyeing day

I followed the instructions from 'Dyeing in plastic bags' by Hazel Deighan. I don't usually bother with following instructions and when I did this batch I was convinced I wouldn't get nice fabric. There seemed to be far too much fluid in the bags. The duff pieces are definately due to my bad scrunching, the recipe worked just fine. I may even follow it again :)

Some of the pieces will need over dyeing or maybe printing over, but I don't mind that. They do look nice and bright drying on my washing line. The one story building in the background is my studio, now finished and a joy to work in. Having this super space hasn't made me a better artist though. Shame about that...

Alcazar

We had a couple of hours to wait for the Cathedral to open so walked across the square to the Alcazar Palace. Typical huge stone walls but as we walked through the entrance there was a hint of what was inside. I started to perk up a bit when I saw this.

The orange tree planted right up against the stone wall was lovely, loads of ripe oranges too. Hmm, but Seville oranges are used to make marmalade so they weren't for eating.





The detail on the stone wall in the garden was great too.









Then we went inside












There were many amazing archways like this one, check out the detail and the colours
























The doors had texture and colour and pattern too.

















This is a detail from the door on the right




Did I mention the floors and the ceilings













I turned 360 degrees, looked up at the ceiling and down at the floor and was sure I had died and gone to design heaven.

There was far too much to see in one visit, I want to go back for a week with a pile of sketchbooks and pens and paper and crayons to do rubbings and and









If anyone is inclined to look at more photos from the places I visited you can go to http://www.flickr.com/photos/emmaemmeline/ and while away an hour or two :)

Seville

We docked at Cadiz and had a coach drive to get to Seville, which wasn't the top of my list of places to go, after Rome I thought it might be a bit of a letdown. The guide gave us a map and information about a couple of places we could visit. Because it was sunday the Cathedral was closed until 2.30 but was pretty spectacular both outside and in and well worth the wait. This view is by the entrance, zoom in to see the amazing carved patterns.



I have to share a picture of the tomb of Christopher Columbus.






The Green Man image is reasonably common in Britain but I also saw similar carved images all over Europe.




The cathedral has a gazillion wondrous things, many carved angels and an amazing gold wall behind the main altar which hurt your eyes it shone so much. If you look closely though, you will see the heavy layer of dust on the tableau, I don't know how often this is cleaned but it must be due any time soon :)







Sometimes you have to look in unusual places to find the best stuff and look what I found hidden behind a locked iron gate. The arm of each seat had a different image.







I was so frustrated to not be able to close up to these, I would have loved to take a picture of each one. You have to love those artisans who carved these.

If it is thursday we must be in Rome

Yep, we went to the colusseum. Outside men wearing gladiator outfits were available for photos, I think this one must have wandered off somewhere.

The Colusseum is awesome. Huge, bigger than even I anticipated, and so atmospheric. I could have spent all day wandering around letting my imagination run riot. In this photo you can see the area which would have been below the arena floor. Those were the rooms where the gladiators and the animals and the christians were kept before the big show. See the little arches at the outer rim, they were the entrances to the elevators (a bit like dumb waitors, using a pulley system). The animals would come out of these straight onto the floor of the arena, via the square entrances on the left of the pic. There were over 50 of these. Part of the arena floor has been re-constructed so that we can make sense of the space. Over 55,000 spectators would come to enjoy the entertainment. The tourists help to make sense of the sheer size of this place.

This isn't a view you often see of the building, it shows how it was built, there were 76 entrances to allow the excited hoardes in.

Stand with your back to the (back of the) colusseum and this is the view. Incredible columns and archways.

Another view taken with my back to the Colusseum. It is like a church chopped in half, see the dome?

I have to share a couple of pics I took of rather odd stone carvings.

This one was one of many in a typical Roman courtyard. I wouldn't want to meet him on a dark night :

This quartet were on a plynth in the Vatican.

We visited the Trevi Fountain and threw a couple of coins in, in the hope that we can go back again one day. The Vatican was amazing, with inspiration everywhere and the Sistine Chapel is everything that I expected it to be. I have few pics from inside the Vatican as our guide whisked us through and there were too many people around to get good pics.

Naples, Herculaneum and Vesuvius

Most people who go to Naples will head for Pompeii, but we went there a few years ago so this time we headed off to Herculaneum. Most of the inhabitants escaped but the city was buried under mud when Vesuvius exploded. The city was much smaller than Pompeii but there are lots of interesting buildings and some magnificent plaster work still exists.

This was the grandest doorway.

I loved the windows that had the mud still in place.

This was a shop which sold wine, the urns are where they were the day the mud covered them.

Would you look at this wall - zoom in to see the carved head, it looks at bit like my dh :)

The guide told us that the people who painted the frescos on the walls were often slaves who were hired out. This sort of work wasn't considered art, more like wallpapering would be today. I was really interested in the colours used, mostly red and blue with some aquamarine but no green.

I asked the guide why they didn't use green but she didn't know the answer, if anyone knows please tell me. I like the Romans colour scheme very much :)

I loved roaming around this site and soaking up the atmosphere. I am always amazed at places like this, over 2000 years ago we had these wonderful buildings and art with baths and sanitation and drains etc, but just a few years later we went back to living in caves and wooden huts. Why?

After lunch we drove to Mount Vesuvius. It was a sunny day but the mountain had a cloud covering the summit. Our guide told us that no matter how sunny it is, Mount Vesuvius always has a cloud on top of it. She also told us that the path to the top was an easy slope and 300 metres. She fibbed about that! I never knew I had muscles in my buttocks until I walked up that path. It was cold and blooming windy too, those wisps are not smoke, it is the cloud we walked through. The white dots at the bottom of the hill are buses, ours was 500 metres further down the mountain.

About halfway up I turned around and took this picture, I don't think I captured the amazing colours though.

I was oh so glad we had a bath in our room, my poor legs and bum needed a good soak that night.