Maybe getting some inspiration.

 I went to the AQC today, haven't been for a few years. 

It was busy around all the stalls, lots of lovely things I could have bought. I was relatively restrained but did buy a few little things - no fabric though, I have quite a good stash as it is. 

But I saw a couple of quilts that spoke to me. There were many beautiful and amazing quilts but these ones may be able to get me going again. One hopes. 

These will hopefully inspire me to do (and use) some more sun dyeing and eco-dyeing. I loved them!

  This was an amazing piece with free motion machine drawing!!

I liked this one because I like using scrim. And one of the members of our free motion machine embroidery group happened to bring a whole lot along last weekend - of course I took some, not knowing what I might use it for - now I am getting some ideas. 

All in all, a good day out!

February 2019

I used to aim for a post a week. Now I am for one a month! I want to continue because this really is my visual diary, I often come back to it to find out things. I think that is because the blog is searchable, which my actual, physical, visual diaries are not!
Also, as I change themes in my musing, I find that I will take things from an old visual diary, on a totally different topic, and reuse them. That is definitely not searchable in the hardcopy version.

So I will continue with the occasional post, which is mostly for me.

My tree is finally finished and mounted. I went to my tapestry weaving group today and finished sewing the back on (no relation to tapestry weaving whatsoever, but we do talk tapestry, tapestry exhibitions, themes, etc. while doing knitting, sewing, etc. - looms are a bother to take with you unless you are doing a very small, portable tapestry).

I took a couple of pictures when I got home, in two different locations. The difference in lighting is quite marked.  

This is the tree, after the acorn has sprouted (not really, of course, I couldn't wait the 100 years or so.  It is actually the tree and the acorn grew under it.)

It has been a hottish summer, not as bad as other parts of Victoria, and other parts of Australia, but I have found the weather challenging enough anyway.  So it has been a bit hard to be motivated. But I was with some young relatives recently and one of them remembered that I had taken a book about how to draw with me last year (Drawing for Mixed Media Artists by Carla Sonheim). One of the suggestions was to draw with your eyes closed. Another was to draw with your non-dominant hand. She combined these and drew a picture left-handed and with her eyes closed. Unfortunately it was on a whiteboard and she rubbed it off before I could take a photo. But she did do a couple of others. I managed to get a quick photo of them before she rubbed them out.

This inspired me to have a go myself! This is partly because there is a challenge for the AQC, due at on February 21st. I am not necessarily going to make it for that (it is a short time frame) but it is a theme to get me going. I think I need themes to motivate me, at least at present.

Part of the reason why I am thinking that my drawing is ok is that I was visiting a friend who lives in New York (lucky me) and went to a restaurant at Colombus Circle that had a whole lot of wire art, portraits. So the current thinking is to try to use that idea with the abstract drawing I have done and see what develops.

I haven't worked out quite how I will do it but the idea is giving me something to think about.