Raptor Eye metallic threads can give a lovely effect, but I hate sewing with them unless I've used a frame (which I don't for the bookmarks). Also I'm not sure what the heat of photocopying would do to them.
Lamb Chopped, that sounds like it could work and, even better, I have some thread that would suit. I'm trying to use up the thread I have as at 70 years old I don't think I have many years of stitching left in me and I don't know anyone who I could give the cotton to when I can't use it. I'm going to check with the library as they do lots of crafts for children.
Background is 14 count (that's 14 stitches to the inch) white evenweave cotton fabric (aida cloth).
At present I can't see well enough for a coloured background, nor a higher thread count, but I hope to get some hobby glasses that allow me to at least go back to sewing a higher thread count. I used to sew a fabric named Lugana which was 25 stitches to an inch. That, was my favourite fabric.
Woohoo! I've finished the photobook with a month to go before the dinner!
Now I just need to wait for an appropriate offer from the printer - annoyingly the current one is 70% off (never pay full price!), but only on a book over 60 pages.
I’m pleased that I committed to writing my ‘Stories of a Life’ in November - I would have kept putting it off otherwise. Most are now done, apart from proof-reading and tweaking.
How appropriate that this should surface again now. 11 people paid for copies and I handed most of them out at the annual dinner last night. Very well received, I think it's reached a format where I will struggle to improve it.
I did indeed do a camera repair afterwards, I need to double check I got the focussing set right (productive toast keeps suggesting I need to set the ficus, which is an interesting thought, but it looks as though another nice vintage camera will live to fight another day. https://flic.kr/p/2pdL7aA
My creative challenge is to finish the second half of my current novel.
It's pretty horrendous history and my main character is about to go through the grinder. I find it hard to write this sort of thing. Once this project is done, I am minded to turn to lighter themes.
My personal challenge is to write the book that I've been thinking about off and on for the past 15 years.
It's a biography of a woman (Isabella), born in 1845, who became a teacher, a headmistress, a campaigner for women's educational rights and a textbook writer. As well as a biography it's simultaneously a history of Scottish education 1851- 1920, written from the angle of those at the chalkface. And it's a social history, too. Isabella was the youngest of a large family, and her siblings had very different lives.
My draft has reached 1875, and I've written 20,000 words so far. I think I'm aiming for a first draft about 50,000 in length? And a finished length about 90,000 words?
I really admire books like Tomalin's The Invisible Woman which includes lots of background information about the theatre etc, or Flanders A Circle of Sisters which includes background information about lots of aspects of Victorian life. That's the sort of blend of biography and wider history I'd like to emulate.
There's no reason anyone should know anything about the lives of female Victorian Scottish schoolteachers (it's a niche subject!) but the thing is, most people think they know two or three things about them:
a) they were unmarried
b) they were poorly paid
c) their dream had been to find a man and get married, but they were teaching because their fond hopes of matrimonial bliss had failed to materialise.
a) is simply untrue. The Marriage Bar was introduced during / after the First World War, to create jobs for returning servicemen, especially men returning with a disability, such as lameness, which meant they couldn't return to their pre-war occupation. (That said, married women teachers were a small minority, but they did exist. Isabella married when she was 39, and it didn't affect her career in any way.)
b) is sort-of true. Women were paid 2/3 of the male wage (£66 compared to £100). However, unmarried male teachers seem to have lived alone with a housekeeper, whereas unmarried female teachers seem to have chosen to live with a sister, cousin or friend, often also a teacher. There were a lot of female teachers living in a household with a household income of £132, which compared very favourably with their male counterparts supporting a wife and five kids on a household income of £100. They had the original double-income, no-kids lifestyle.
c) aye, right. They'd spent at least 4 years as a pupil teacher, sat the entrance exam for training college, attended college for two years, done their post-training qualifying year, etc and were then dismayed to find themselves teachers? Ok, many / most may have hoped to teach for a few years then get married around the age of 30. But I suspect many felt their own income and freedom compensated somewhat for the lack of husband.
So my book is a biography of one woman who was living her best life, alongside many others doing likewise.
... unmarried female teachers seem to have chosen to live with a sister, cousin or friend, often also a teacher.
There were two lady teachers of my acquaintance in Orkney who did exactly that. One was an infant teacher (and by the time she retired, was head teacher of the biggest of the local primary schools); the other was head of modern languages in the grammar school.
I don't know that anyone really knew what their relationship was (they're both dead), but I know that one developed dementia and was nursed until her death by the other, who survived her by several years.
I don’t want to make too many assumptions here, but if you were a lesbian living with a partner in the 19th century you could not have said so. So I suspect some who lived with friends, were effectively in a Boston marriage.
My predecessor in one job trained me before she retired. She was an elderly lady who lived with another female colleague. I got the impression there it was simply that both of them had become friends years ago, neither could afford to buy a house outright and had teamed up together and stayed that way right into old age until death.
In this day and age it's hard to see friendship for what it is without reading some kind of erotic element into it, but that doesn't mean it isn't possible.
Indeed, I know some may have been in a relationship. But I think single-person households were generally more unusual then.
Isabella lodged with a married sister until, aged 33, she could afford to buy herself a house and employ a full time live-in domestic servant.
If and when I finish this book, my next will be a biography of an openly lesbian school teacher, born in 1863. There's a large gap, unfortunately, because I don't know the identity of the second woman she loved, and can hardly embark on a biography without knowing it. It's been suggested to me that I could simply write her story as a novel and invent the second woman. However, I think anyone buying a novel about a Victorian lesbian school teacher might reasonably expect sex scenes, which I don't think I could write. Whereas a proper biography can avoid all that!
Offering to do a bit of ghostwriting there, @Doublethink ?
More seriously, I do agree with NEQs point too. Invent all or none.
Post WW1 there would have been a big dent in one side of the demographic because of the number of men killed, so there were probably a lot of women who ended up living with another women simply for companionship's sake. Whether that made it easier to be a gay couple because such relationships were more common and more accepted I don't know, though.
My aunt (born in 1921) was a school teacher and was in a lesbian relationship with someone she met at college. I was the only family member she ever talked to about this, during a long drive across Dartmoor the year before she died. I have most of her photo albums and the ones from the 1950s are full of photos of her partner.
My predecessor in one job trained me before she retired. She was an elderly lady who lived with another female colleague. I got the impression there it was simply that both of them had become friends years ago, neither could afford to buy a house outright and had teamed up together and stayed that way right into old age until death.
In this day and age it's hard to see friendship for what it is without reading some kind of erotic element into it, but that doesn't mean it isn't possible.
Exactly. I’d a great-Aunt who I suspect fell into that category; her fiancé was killed during WWI and she wouldn’t have had the wherewithal to buy on her own, so she teamed up with a friend. Both much loved by friends and family.
Around 26 years ago I wrote a long alliterative epic poem for no good reason except I felt like it.
It got published in an obscure publication, Wiðowinde, the magazine of Tha Engliscan Gesithas
Bizarrely, I got a facebook message a couple of days ago asking for permission to republish in another magazine, dedicated to alliterative poetry. I made a few edits as there were one or two bits I wasn't entirely keen on, and sent it on.
Just so bizarre for something I'd all but forgotten about to resurface!
I’m making all my own Christmas cards. Simple designs with a very definite deadline!
As an Abstract Acrylic painter/mixed-media artist, I always harbor a fantasy about creating small cards for friends and family... but the spirit is definitely more into it, than the body! LOL.
And, since the onset of major medical maladies in November of 2023, the spirit has even thrown in the towel! I don't have enough physical energy to do much these days. Sigh. Good on you, Boogie!
I was rather put off doing any more art projects, because I had no way to frame them after Wilcos closed down. I mentioned this to someone the other day, and they suggested Hobbycraft. It's out of town, which is why I'd never known it was there, but it is just about walkable from the bus station in the town centre. So I've been able to frame all my previous projects, and have regained the enthusiasm to do some more.
I'm using old calendars with pictures of space as the backgrounds, for paper art of mostly Star Trek characters and starships so far.
Around 26 years ago I wrote a long alliterative epic poem for no good reason except I felt like it.
It got published in an obscure publication, Wiðowinde, the magazine of Tha Engliscan Gesithas
Bizarrely, I got a facebook message a couple of days ago asking for permission to republish in another magazine, dedicated to alliterative poetry. I made a few edits as there were one or two bits I wasn't entirely keen on, and sent it on.
Just so bizarre for something I'd all but forgotten about to resurface!
My latest maggot is to make a batch of straps for some of my antediluvian cameras. Thus far, because I am working out what I want as I go along, I suspect I've paid more in postage than I have in bits but hey ho.
I'm currently waiting for a screw punch and bit set, that is taking an inordinate time to arrive, to allow me to make holes for the buckles so I can adjust the length. Once I have that I think I have all I need to make some nice straps.
I was particularly pleased when a supplier who supplied leather that was just a bit too wide for my needs (stop sniggering at the back) answered my query with "Just tell us how wide you want it when you order, and we'll cut to size. It's only not on the website because we rarely get asked for stuff c that narrow"
I've also fixed a viewfinder lens in one this evening that arrived in the post today. Say what you like about soshul meeja but back when I bought the camera as a potential fixer-upper you'd have been very hard pressed indeed to find spares.
I was rather put off doing any more art projects, because I had no way to frame them after Wilcos closed down. I mentioned this to someone the other day, and they suggested Hobbycraft. It's out of town, which is why I'd never known it was there, but it is just about walkable from the bus station in the town centre. So I've been able to frame all my previous projects, and have regained the enthusiasm to do some more.
I'm using old calendars with pictures of space as the backgrounds, for paper art of mostly Star Trek characters and starships so far.
I do miss Wilkos, sigh…
I’ve tried a fair few creative challenges in the past: ICAD (Index Card a Day), the now defunct Sketchbook Project from Brooklyn Art Library, some self-devised haiku challenges during Advent and these past few years: NaPoWriMo/GloPoWriMo poetry challenges each April. ICADS and some of the poems to be found in my blog. No - I’m not saying where to find my blog should you get the urge…far more fun for you to search for it. A challenge in itself!
Also contains more of my poems; NaPoWriMo at least puts paid to the impression that I can only manage poetic output when I’m on retreat. Even if it descended into doggerel last year. 😳
Though each time it’s coincided with a personal/family crisis; current one rumbling quietly away in the background. Go figure…😕.
I have finished my latest needlework challenge, and on time too.
(Happy Dance).
It is a gift for the next group of people who will be be doing the next Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction course that I did several years ago. At that time I stitched the word BREATHE in rainbow order down a bookmark for both women leading the group using purple for "B".
I knew I would never have the patience to stitch 16 of these, then I discovered how well backstitch photocopies, so I stitched 3 and stuck them to a piece of cardboard. I photocopied 18, stuck the paper copies to a piece of card and cut the card into individual bookmarks which I then had laminated. It worked well apart from the fact that my favourite purple photocopies as a nasty inky black, but the woman in the needlework shop found a lighter one that worked well.
Oddly enough, my new creative project seems to be setting a curriculum of sorts for a person contemplating grad school in a year or two, who has several areas that need improvement. I'm pretty stoked, I think great things could happen.
@la vie en rouge I hadn't looked at this thread for such a long time, your sweater photos came up first this morning. Gorgeous stranded work! Technical aspects are all great! Delicious color choices. And what a delightful pattern!
Really excellent work.
I am finishing a simple, toddler sized blanket today for a coworker's baby. It's all garter stitch and constructed as a single "log cabin" suqare would be done for a quilt,
Today I meet with my knitting group, and I will be focusing on weaving in the remaining ends. Maybe rewinding the remaining yarn into neater balls for storage,
Back to my sweater sleeves (Marian Isager's "Fan" sweater). Almost done.
Love coming here and hearing about everyone's achievements. Not currently working on any projects. I was cross stitching madly about 10 years ago, but can't seem to get back into the groove at present. Perhaps I'll just start something tiny!
I’ve started a private retreat of a few days to try and get a good start on my current artistic challenge. The church I grew up in is celebrating its sesquicentennial this year, and the planning committee asked me to write a hymn for the Big Occasion in the fall. Various ideas have flitted in (and out) of my head over the last few months, but I’m hoping that between now (Wednesday) and Friday inspiration takes hold and I make some real progress. I’d really like to have it done before summer starts.
I went back to more advanced study after being employed for 5 years. I was much more focussed and enjoyed it far more than I did my first degree.
@Cheery Gardener How about re-starting with some small projects like bookmarks or cards? I am limited now in what I can stitch due to my eyesight, though I did go to Specsavers and some more powerful glasses, which are OK as long as long as I take them off before I walk anywhere.
Comments
So much better to make a bookmark than to tidy a house - what an achievement.
Lamb Chopped, that sounds like it could work and, even better, I have some thread that would suit. I'm trying to use up the thread I have as at 70 years old I don't think I have many years of stitching left in me and I don't know anyone who I could give the cotton to when I can't use it. I'm going to check with the library as they do lots of crafts for children.
At present I can't see well enough for a coloured background, nor a higher thread count, but I hope to get some hobby glasses that allow me to at least go back to sewing a higher thread count. I used to sew a fabric named Lugana which was 25 stitches to an inch. That, was my favourite fabric.
Now I just need to wait for an appropriate offer from the printer - annoyingly the current one is 70% off (never pay full price!), but only on a book over 60 pages.
Next... probably a camera repair job.
I’m pleased that I committed to writing my ‘Stories of a Life’ in November - I would have kept putting it off otherwise. Most are now done, apart from proof-reading and tweaking.
I did indeed do a camera repair afterwards, I need to double check I got the focussing set right (productive toast keeps suggesting I need to set the ficus, which is an interesting thought, but it looks as though another nice vintage camera will live to fight another day. https://flic.kr/p/2pdL7aA
I curse about it often enough on WhatsApp that if I type in "productive" it automatically suggests I follow it with "toast"!
Behold the fruits of my swearing!
I do however recognise the swearing when something I'm working on refuses to co-operate with my efforts.
You've made that?
You're a pro. If ever you fancy a career change you have a bright future ahead of you in creative knitwear.
It's pretty horrendous history and my main character is about to go through the grinder. I find it hard to write this sort of thing. Once this project is done, I am minded to turn to lighter themes.
I am in awe, as someone non-creative, of your achievement and that of @Sighthound
My personal challenge is to write the book that I've been thinking about off and on for the past 15 years.
It's a biography of a woman (Isabella), born in 1845, who became a teacher, a headmistress, a campaigner for women's educational rights and a textbook writer. As well as a biography it's simultaneously a history of Scottish education 1851- 1920, written from the angle of those at the chalkface. And it's a social history, too. Isabella was the youngest of a large family, and her siblings had very different lives.
My draft has reached 1875, and I've written 20,000 words so far. I think I'm aiming for a first draft about 50,000 in length? And a finished length about 90,000 words?
I really admire books like Tomalin's The Invisible Woman which includes lots of background information about the theatre etc, or Flanders A Circle of Sisters which includes background information about lots of aspects of Victorian life. That's the sort of blend of biography and wider history I'd like to emulate.
There's no reason anyone should know anything about the lives of female Victorian Scottish schoolteachers (it's a niche subject!) but the thing is, most people think they know two or three things about them:
a) they were unmarried
b) they were poorly paid
c) their dream had been to find a man and get married, but they were teaching because their fond hopes of matrimonial bliss had failed to materialise.
a) is simply untrue. The Marriage Bar was introduced during / after the First World War, to create jobs for returning servicemen, especially men returning with a disability, such as lameness, which meant they couldn't return to their pre-war occupation. (That said, married women teachers were a small minority, but they did exist. Isabella married when she was 39, and it didn't affect her career in any way.)
b) is sort-of true. Women were paid 2/3 of the male wage (£66 compared to £100). However, unmarried male teachers seem to have lived alone with a housekeeper, whereas unmarried female teachers seem to have chosen to live with a sister, cousin or friend, often also a teacher. There were a lot of female teachers living in a household with a household income of £132, which compared very favourably with their male counterparts supporting a wife and five kids on a household income of £100. They had the original double-income, no-kids lifestyle.
c) aye, right. They'd spent at least 4 years as a pupil teacher, sat the entrance exam for training college, attended college for two years, done their post-training qualifying year, etc and were then dismayed to find themselves teachers? Ok, many / most may have hoped to teach for a few years then get married around the age of 30. But I suspect many felt their own income and freedom compensated somewhat for the lack of husband.
So my book is a biography of one woman who was living her best life, alongside many others doing likewise.
I don't know that anyone really knew what their relationship was (they're both dead), but I know that one developed dementia and was nursed until her death by the other, who survived her by several years.
In this day and age it's hard to see friendship for what it is without reading some kind of erotic element into it, but that doesn't mean it isn't possible.
Isabella lodged with a married sister until, aged 33, she could afford to buy herself a house and employ a full time live-in domestic servant.
If and when I finish this book, my next will be a biography of an openly lesbian school teacher, born in 1863. There's a large gap, unfortunately, because I don't know the identity of the second woman she loved, and can hardly embark on a biography without knowing it. It's been suggested to me that I could simply write her story as a novel and invent the second woman. However, I think anyone buying a novel about a Victorian lesbian school teacher might reasonably expect sex scenes, which I don't think I could write. Whereas a proper biography can avoid all that!
More seriously, I do agree with NEQs point too. Invent all or none.
Post WW1 there would have been a big dent in one side of the demographic because of the number of men killed, so there were probably a lot of women who ended up living with another women simply for companionship's sake. Whether that made it easier to be a gay couple because such relationships were more common and more accepted I don't know, though.
Exactly. I’d a great-Aunt who I suspect fell into that category; her fiancé was killed during WWI and she wouldn’t have had the wherewithal to buy on her own, so she teamed up with a friend. Both much loved by friends and family.
It got published in an obscure publication, Wiðowinde, the magazine of Tha Engliscan Gesithas
Bizarrely, I got a facebook message a couple of days ago asking for permission to republish in another magazine, dedicated to alliterative poetry. I made a few edits as there were one or two bits I wasn't entirely keen on, and sent it on.
Just so bizarre for something I'd all but forgotten about to resurface!
As an Abstract Acrylic painter/mixed-media artist, I always harbor a fantasy about creating small cards for friends and family... but the spirit is definitely more into it, than the body! LOL.
And, since the onset of major medical maladies in November of 2023, the spirit has even thrown in the towel! I don't have enough physical energy to do much these days. Sigh. Good on you, Boogie!
I'm using old calendars with pictures of space as the backgrounds, for paper art of mostly Star Trek characters and starships so far.
I'd read it.
I'm currently waiting for a screw punch and bit set, that is taking an inordinate time to arrive, to allow me to make holes for the buckles so I can adjust the length. Once I have that I think I have all I need to make some nice straps.
I was particularly pleased when a supplier who supplied leather that was just a bit too wide for my needs (stop sniggering at the back) answered my query with "Just tell us how wide you want it when you order, and we'll cut to size. It's only not on the website because we rarely get asked for stuff c that narrow"
I've also fixed a viewfinder lens in one this evening that arrived in the post today. Say what you like about soshul meeja but back when I bought the camera as a potential fixer-upper you'd have been very hard pressed indeed to find spares.
I do miss Wilkos, sigh…
I’ve tried a fair few creative challenges in the past: ICAD (Index Card a Day), the now defunct Sketchbook Project from Brooklyn Art Library, some self-devised haiku challenges during Advent and these past few years: NaPoWriMo/GloPoWriMo poetry challenges each April. ICADS and some of the poems to be found in my blog. No - I’m not saying where to find my blog should you get the urge…far more fun for you to search for it. A challenge in itself!
Also contains more of my poems; NaPoWriMo at least puts paid to the impression that I can only manage poetic output when I’m on retreat. Even if it descended into doggerel last year. 😳
Though each time it’s coincided with a personal/family crisis; current one rumbling quietly away in the background. Go figure…😕.
(Happy Dance).
It is a gift for the next group of people who will be be doing the next Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction course that I did several years ago. At that time I stitched the word BREATHE in rainbow order down a bookmark for both women leading the group using purple for "B".
I knew I would never have the patience to stitch 16 of these, then I discovered how well backstitch photocopies, so I stitched 3 and stuck them to a piece of cardboard. I photocopied 18, stuck the paper copies to a piece of card and cut the card into individual bookmarks which I then had laminated. It worked well apart from the fact that my favourite purple photocopies as a nasty inky black, but the woman in the needlework shop found a lighter one that worked well.
Really excellent work.
I am finishing a simple, toddler sized blanket today for a coworker's baby. It's all garter stitch and constructed as a single "log cabin" suqare would be done for a quilt,
Today I meet with my knitting group, and I will be focusing on weaving in the remaining ends. Maybe rewinding the remaining yarn into neater balls for storage,
Back to my sweater sleeves (Marian Isager's "Fan" sweater). Almost done.
I went back to more advanced study after being employed for 5 years. I was much more focussed and enjoyed it far more than I did my first degree.
@Cheery Gardener How about re-starting with some small projects like bookmarks or cards? I am limited now in what I can stitch due to my eyesight, though I did go to Specsavers and some more powerful glasses, which are OK as long as long as I take them off before I walk anywhere.
@Nick Tamen Wow, that's an interesting challenge.