Settling In

The piece above is the first new piece I have made  at the new house- temporarily dubbed Morwellia Textilia. I love pomegranates so it seemed right to make a pomegranate piece to christen my work room ( which now is full of boxes and plastic tubs as all my belongings arrived last week) The leaves and pomegranates have been appliqued with Aurifil 30 weight Mako cotton.  The gold paint for the seeds was painted on after the pomegranates were stitched.

I have been doing a little hand stitching but nowhere near as much as I would like, simply because my hands have been abraded and cut from all the cleaning and  renovating. All of the furniture and kitchen things have had to be washed as the shed was very dusty and I found the odd bush rat deposits in some of the boxes/containers I had not opened whilst living in the shed- it seems they left no box uninspected! I do wear gloves but my skin has been much drier since radiotherapy finished and the gloves feel like sandpaper almost- tried a few different kinds. I managed to get quite deep cuts on both thumbs so my phone  does not recognise me and I have to  use the password, ahh the 21st century!.

 I have been working on the sea scene linocut print which measures 9 " x 11.5 " ( 23 cm x 29 cm )- which I intend to expand into a series of linocut prints once  my work room is a little more organised and quite probably organise another travelling exhibition. Have used just two stitches on this- backstitch and colonial knots and now the background needs doing. This print is available for sale @$25 inclusive of postage and I have a good selection of colours available.

As I mentioned all my belongings arrived last week, the move out of storage cost more than what I had budgeted- too many books and fabrics I guess, so I won't be moving for awhile that is for sure!. I am trialing different coverings for some second hand chairs I bought for the lounge room to try and subdue the carpet- and there is still a lot of tweaking to  do, but it is slowly getting there. I need to  create a hanging system as there are no picture rails in the loungeroom and I don't want to be banging in nails  quite yet after all the effort of filling holes and painting. I also want to be able to move things around when the mood takes me. That ugly air conditioner needs to be disappeared somehow- have quilts that can do the job lol!

I was very relieved that my depression era stained glass cupboard actually fits in the kitchen ( i had hoped it would and dare I say it it was one of the reasons I chose this house???). It needs a good oiling- now that I have discovered that linseed oil and mineral turpentine makes the best wood rejuvenator! It is starting to feel like home, but there is still quite a way to go before things will be finished. At the moment I am covering some items that were affected by the very harsh light and heat from the sky lights in the shed with chalk paint in a colour called provence.