Week Of Colours, Frustration

I've been struggling with muscle weakness.  Losing the "pinch grip" in your thumb and forefinger makes making hard, and not being able to ride my bike is driving me crazy.. So I went to see the rheumatologist, and he referred me to the physiotherapist, and I went to see the latter yesterday morning.. Now, you can't park at the surgery, because they are digging up the car park, so I walked, up, back to the library, down to the Post Office, back to the supermarket.  On the way I saw this glorious pink-against-blue, but I must have covered about 3 miles in total.  So the rest of the day was blasted by exhaustion. And I couldn't blog last night as I was too tired to go and find the camera..
Now I have some exercises for my neck, and a possible 13-week wait to be seen again.  Then I went looking for my blood-test results, only to be told that the 146 tests taken last time did not include the relevant one.. So, more needles on Monday. 

Meanwhile, the coffee at Baileys is as good as ever, and the flowers on the table are charming.

So, I did make a couple of small pieces, and I finished quilting yesterday's gree and red tree, did all the machine quilting on the big hedge piece and took it home to hand-stitch, and made a really good attempt at classifying a huge box of odd sewing-machine needles for my Old Sewing Machine Parts website

Green / Best-laid Plans

Of mice and men..

Got up very late, as not feeling well, and had bad dreams.. Nothing to do with the colour thing, which is proving pretty satisfying so far.  Not quite as good as my Week Of Trees last year, but still worthwhile.
Went shopping, and found these lovely plants in Morrison's car-park. Note the touches of red, which are inspiring, and thought-provoking.

Someone's tastes have changed

So, two more postcards of a recycled persuasion (green!).  Painted patchwork which I note has old pink blanket as batting..

By this time it was lunchtime, and I had my usual salad (note the red bits again, a theme emerges).
(I have much the same salad every day, but the cunning arrangement of the camera and the cropping of the image leads to an exposition of the colour theme.  Blue is going to be tricky) Note the 60s plate, rescued from the dump (green!)

Over lunch I finished reading this book, by Janet Twinn, which arrived on Monday from the Library in utterly timely fashion. It's an interesting book, and like all good books, much too short.  There are the usual "colour wheel" parts which I skim, and quite nice explanations of various printing, dyeing, and painting techniques, but the most interesting parts for me are the images of the work and the close-ups of technique and stitch.  The book itself is nice, too, having a solid feel, a rather nice cloth cover and good print quality.  I may actually buy it..

Back to the Best-Laid Plans.. I was intending to make small pieces of a saleable quality, several, green, maybe with a touch of red.. But when I got in to the workshop, the chaos was unfeasibly bad, so I had to tidy up, answer the phone a lot (sales, though..) and find a space to work in.  This took half the afternoon, so by the time I started I'd lost the thread, so to speak.. And I'd found this piece of printed fabric that is everything I had in mind except it's not small.  So I layered it anyway and started quilting it with lines in a smudgy green thread.. I have some ideas for more detail on this, more later.  I have decided that I'm not done with Green, so I'm extending it to tomorrow.

 Quilting in progress

 This small piece of screen-printed fabric qualified as a failure the first time around.  Interesting technique, which unfortunately isn't terribly nice when it's done.. Then over-printed with the moon and sky, which is better, but not quite...

Definitely improved by the addition of some sewing.  It will have more quilting and a red binding tomorrow.  It does have the merit of being small.. The little red tabs are a new idea.. I like them a lot.

Last of the day, some City Lights blocks

And a perfect beetroot leaf.
Oh, and John fixed the gas struts on the car, so no more stick-to-prop the boot.. Yippee!
Sleep well, more tomorrow