So, what's next?

There are now only 3 full days left before we leave Taiwan and you should see our living room! It's absolutely covered in things waiting to be packed into the 2 big, strong packing boxes I got from the Post Office. Looks like we're going to need a third really, but we'll take that as it comes tomorrow, when I/we plan to try and get the stuff into them.

We've had a number of invitations to farewell dinners for this week etc, so I've not had to worry much about cooking, but the friends who came to our little 'open house' do on Sunday brought so many goodies, that we sent the last few away with a good number of slices of cake etc and are still giving stuff away now after off-loading all the pop (soda) etc onto Sir's old teacher who hosted a lunch for her students yesterday!

I've saved the goldwork viola, the narrowboat cross-stitch and this new project on the right for the journey home. I don't expect to get a great amount of any of them done, but at least I have some variety in there. Hmm, looks like including my hardanger scissors might be a good move too. Best not put those in a box! Anyway, this is one of the Cross'n'Patch designs that I'm planning to stitch up for my mum - the green version of what you can see in the photo here.

Below are the paper things I got in Japan - a few origami papers in delightful designs and a set of bookmarks, which I daresay will provide inspiration for some future projects. I really like Japanese art much better than Chinese and am looking forward to seeing what Korea has to offer next weekend whilst we're there.=)


More soon, but I can't say whether it will be from here (should be as I need to get the fieldmice cushion finished up - planned for tomorrow, if poss), from Seoul or from Germany...

High School Art

Not been up to much worth reporting of late. I have been shopping a lot though, so here are some of the things I've been treating myself to.

First off, 3 vegan cookery books. I want to get started on making some of the goodies from the small baking one at the front and will have to get a couple of specialist ingredients from shops in town later on today first. Yesterday's Tesco trip was mostly for baking goodies!! There are 2 excuses to bake as well (normally I can't much as Sir is weight conscious and I tend to get blebbier than I'd like too.....), so I'm looking forward to trying out the coconut lime cakes and the chocolate mint ones as well as some strawberry and/or mandarin orange tarts. Yum!

Been getting art things too. Here are the colour swatches from the pastel/drawing paper pads I've been coveting for a while!! I got the cool shades (blues) a little while ago, before Taiwan, and managed to get the warms and neutrals over the last few days on E-bay. A £5 voucher from E-bay Extra helped get one!=) I've also bought some new paints, but I'll show those off when the last lot arrive.

I got this landscapes book out of the library and loved it, so spent part of a 25% off at Borders voucher on that, (and the vegan cupcake book). The flowers one is a library book, but I know I want that one too. I love her style and the fact that she uses the same media and brands as me, so here are some tips etc on using all those fab pencils I got a few months ago, esp the Inktense and Graphitints, which are relatively new on the art scene and so material on using them is quite scarce.

Looking through old art pads I found some art from high school. Here are the Garfield characters, which I copied from a Garfield book, but didn't trace:

This is a cartoon collection of some of my high school chums:

And this is an old pencil case that I drew. I love this 'flash of colour' idea and the 'Landscapes' book has a couple of pieces in the same style. I'll be having more of a go at that soon. You can see my old name here in the signature and the date - 1987!! More than 20 years ago - eeek!

Here are some sketches that I did in the Department of East Asian studies 3 years ago - you might be able to make out the date there too. I did the pen sketch first and that seemed to work well for me as my pencil sketches are often very hesitant indeed, but with pen you have to 'commit' to your mark-making and that seemed to do me good as I did a decent pencil drawing immediately afterwards!

So, what does this tell me? That I probably can do well with art if I only get on with it. When I was 16, I'd been doing art classes at least once a week since I'd been about 5, so I was in better practise. I think, somewhere in my mum's attic, I may have my display pieces from my GCSE, the art exam I did when I was 16. If I find them when we clear her attic out for her this summer, then I'll showcase a few pieces and start to make a scrapbook out of them. And the post's just arrived with more stuff in: A rotary cutter for when I can start the C&G level 1 Patchwork and Quilting course and some watercolour paints. Will post pics tomorrow or so, this is enough for now!!!