A little bit of Pyrography

A quick bit of personalisation, it has been  awhile since I had the tool out.  Kept waiting for the good weather so I could have the window open without freezing.

A question of colour

just what colour is something, is it like beauty in the eye of the beholder or perhaps in the mind of the the describer?

I am sure we have all had the kind of conversation were one person admires a blue dress, another points out it is turquoise and a third pipes in its green.  The ambient light can impact on what we see, I once bought a dark olive green coat, well that is the colour it appeared in the shop, when I got it home it was grey. This experience has resulted in my carrying scraps of any material I want to match in my pocket so I can compare  it with any potential match in the same light. (A picture on my phone distorting the shade).

My BFF in addition to liking rainbows is inordinately fond of purple, she stated stitching a nativity silhouette in a shade I would have called pink, she called it purple and on checking the thread colour the manufacturer termed plum.

Then there is that dress, you know the one with the question was it blue or gold?  With the difference in responses from the viewers having a scientific explanation that would support the "in the eye of" saying.

So it is hard enough trying to get an agreement on a shade when you are looking at the item at the same time.  Describing the colour of something to someone else who has not seen it is a step further and at that stage I try to refer to items we have in common.  So references to  a mutual friends car or a favorite dress even on occasion the thread number of DMC.

However, I have had a conversation which clearly demonstrated the difficulties of the nebulous concept of colour.

One of the ladies at Church mentioned she would like to attend the quilting night to make some cushion covers for her living room.  I asked if she had some material and she noted she was looking for some to match her couch.  The following Sunday with the quilting night imminent I asked her again if she had found some material. She advised me no, but one of the other ladies had some she could use.  Oh I asked what is it like, she did not know as she had not seen it.  Does it go with your couch. "Oh yes", was the answer, "my couch is orange and so is the material".  I paused for a moment and then said what shade of orange is your couch.  The reply, "it's orange." OK, orange like orange the fruit?  "Well, no, but it is orange". I tried again and eventually elicited the reply it was like salmon. 

A further pause and I tentatively suggested smoked salmon (that at least being orange and not venturing into the realms of red and pink) she agreed smoked salmon. Somewhat satisfied that we had established some parameters for the couch ( I will note that it had taken almost 15 minutes of conversation and some laughter to reach this point), I then asked if the lady with the material had ever seen the couch to know that the material she had would match.  

The reply, "no, I told her it is orange and she has orange material so it will match". Ever heard the team back to square one? My face must have done something strange at this point and there was more laughter from us both, for one reason or another.  I then tried to explain that the other lady may not have immediately had the same shade in her mind in response to the word orange.  We had just about agreed that if the material was orange like the fruit it was not going to go well with her orange like a salmon and we should check with the material doner what she had, I thought we had made progress.

A third lady walked into the room (not the one with the material) and my companion invited her into the conversation with the question, "you know orange"?

Before she could be drawn in to the alternate universe of this conversation I asked her two questions.

1 have you seen (name's) couch

2 have you seen the orange material (name) has.

The response to both was no, and I suggested she did not want to participate, with a rueful smile she agreed and walked away. Cushion maker and I had further laughter as I tried to explain that a third person without having seen both couch and material was not going to be able to establish ORANGE in this instance.

Fortuitously the owner of the material walked past at that moment and after some carefully structured questions confirmed her material was as the fruit and not the fish. Success, well sort of as now we had established that the material available was not suitable and material for cushions was still required with only four days before the quilting night.

The two ladies went shopping together and on the quilting night four cushions were successfully made.  The colour, well I would call it cream but at this stage who knows what colour it really is or what several other people might call it! Magnolia, ecru, ivory, champagne, linen, almond,off white....

Now any conversation that is having difficulty establishing a common ground or a single point of understanding and the phrase "you know orange" pops into my mind.

Sunday Stitching green shade two

and some stitches of grey as I spotted some missing stitches as I started filling in with the lighter green.  So less progress on the green than might have been but still moving on with hopes this second shade will be completed next time...I think yellow after that.

Sunday Stitching.

Sweet Pea Plus

This design was in an old magazine which had a mix of things, stories and patterns for different crafts.  Sadly  at this point I don't have the magazine to hand to tell you what it was.

I have always been fond of sweet peas, my grandfather grew them in the garden and I would "help" the shoots find the strings to cling to and grow.  Once there were flowers I was allowed to help pick them to make bouquets he would take to the over 60's club as a prize for the raffle.

We later grew them at home and took them to Church on a Sunday.

So they hold a special place in our family.  Add on the butterfly and  it was just perfect for a birthday card for my mother.  This is the only item I have sewn during my lunch break at work, time was a factor as I had started the project a bit too close to the day it needed to be finished by.

Sweet Pea and Butterfly

      

Sunday stitching into the green

and it looks much more shockingly "colour" in person than on the picture.  I am sure it is going to work out fine however, just now it looks too bright and jars my eye after all the subtle shades of weeks gone by.

Sunday Stitching more colour

All the shades of brown / terracotta are done.  Feels so fast moving from one to the next, although as you can see there is not a lot of each to be done.

There are still another four colours, a metallic and the backstitching to go however, I am starting to think what to do next for my Sunday Stitch.  Perhaps a cover kit or two from my stash unless another charity shop find presents itself.

A small finish

that makes me think of a big friendship and makes me contemplate the changing use of symbols.  The beginning of the film the Da Vinci Code (see my Da Vinci here) covers the changing meanings of symbols and how one that has meant one thing for centuries can become something else.

It is an issue that comes up with the quilting quite often, as certain arrangements of triangles in spirals can look like a symbol that was once considered lucky and  following WWII became an emblem for something utterly different and generally abhorrent.

OK musing over, here is the picture that makes me think of the colour my friend brings to my life and including one of her favorite things (when it was either just a weather phenomenon, something that lead to a pot of gold or a promise from God).

I used this as my entry in the Secret Sweetheart stitching blog, however as it is mine I thought I would share it here directly as well.

Thank you best friend for being my best friend.

Sunday stitchings a double delight

Two sessions of Conference and added to the delight of that I both finished the grey.....

Sunday Stitchings last of the grey

And finished the first of the colours

Sunday Stitchings the colour begins

Well brown may not be the most exciting of all the colours but after black and shades of grey if feels amazing! 

Jugs of Roses

In a previous post flat santa coned ,a Christmas item I had made was being displayed at work, sitting on some roses in a jug, you can see another behind it on the windowsill.  Our office was slowly and steadily inundated with these white enamel jugs, some decorated with green birds, some with red, all filled with artificial red roses.

They arrived, first the red, then the green, in twos and threes, where did they come from, why were they there?

We had a new senior manager, and he was bringing them in a few at a time on the bus to cheer up the office. As a few became many it cheered us up in more ways than one as jokes about jugs and roses abounded.

The proliferation of jugs has taken many months, the manager has been with us years, now sadly he is leaving us for pastures new.  A first question after the announcement "will you be taking the jugs with you?".  The answer, "no" so we have a permanent reminder but he moves on jugless and we hear that he will not have free reign to start a new jug collection in his new location.

So what else could I make him as a small leaving gift.......

Jug of Roses 

I expect that you guessed right.  The design is a modified version of one found in this book, although the original flowers were yellow and pink tulips.

So I guess this gift meets the unique criteria of this blogs theme.

Happily he liked it. 

And just had to add this Forestella link as there were times the title of this piece was how we thought the numbers of roses might reach.