I'm still alive. I have too much pressure at work which is stiffling my creativity, and generally numbing my brain. Tonight I found having a good scream in my car very theraputic... I just saw 6months work and possibily $7million worth of projects going down the drain.... I'm a bit melodramatic, but the shit really hit the fan tonight. I'm short staffed, inexperienced, stressed ... you get the story. This too shall pass. Back Soon PS Kiri is onto the 9th repeat of the 2nd chart, but I don't even feel like knitting in this state.

I love this colour. It is probably a bit lighter than shown in this scan.

Red merino plyed with some verigated mohair which was NOT fun to spin. It is a 'floppy' yarn with a slightly scratchy texture (if that makes any sense)

I felted this a bit to help increase the strength of the single yarn. I dyed the merino top in my microwave before spinning

I occasionally get the urge to buy art supplies. Last week I bought a pen nib and holder and some sepia ink. I wanted to practice drawing... something I'm not natural at, but I know I can improve with practice.

I also drew heaps of studies of the bottle of ink. I improved heaps even in just a few tries. The key here is to not expect perfection, just plunge in and try, learn from the bits that don't work and continue. I wish I could take my own advice LOL I framed up some of the little collagraphs (I spelt it wrong in the last post) and they are now hanging on a wall in our sitting room, pretty swish looking :-) I wish I had a frame which would accomodate the squashed cake tin print, but alas, I don't. The question is, where do I store these prints now? I think it will neccesitate buying a large portfolio folder thingy, so I can slip them in beside the shelves in my sewing room. Talking about sewing. I NEED to clean my sewing room out again, it is attracting clutter like you wouldn't believe and I haven't worked in there for months. We are just about to send our second Ipod back to Apple. It has the same problems as the first one they replaced. Very annoying!! Especially since the work I've been doing lately (at work) requires a fair level of concentration and piping music into my ears cuts out all those 'open plan' office distractions.

Ink Experimentation - not too bad for my first try. The thumb doesn't look quite right, but I'm reasonably happy with the outcome

The big printing weekend is finished and here are some of my results, click on the photo if you want to see a bigger view:

These were photograped as the ink isn't dry enough to put the prints in the scanner. I'll especially try and scan the collographs as they are quite delecate and the details would show up better. Kudos to Jenny Peterson for running such a great class, and thanks to my fellow participants who were a pleasure to work with (they wont read this as I forgot to tell them about my blog!!).