What's in a name...

Over at Purple Podded Peas, Celia has been sharing the early Penguin and Pelican books she has recently found. When I was clearing some shelves yesterday in preparation for some decorating I came across this old copy of Tree Fruit Growing from the same sort of era. It was first published in 1943 and we must have bought it from a charity shop or somewhere to add to our gardening books collection.

Reading it is very enlightening. I found out that there was an apple with our name to it, the aptly named Crawley Beauty. It must be fashioned after me as it is ....'very fine with a very late season. Blooms very late (how true) , missing all the frosts, and should be put with another late-flowering variety (this has come to pass!) Makes a good size tree and fruit is medium to large and of good shape (I couldn't possibly comment....) Colour is green flushed and striped with red (well., given my time of life that's no wonder!)' Luckily I'm not much afflicted with scab and my season is Christmas to March and later so I've yet to peak for this year but am sure I will get there eventually!!

I'm very taken with the names of the apple varieties. I'm wondering how they came about and whether some of them are still around. My imagination went to town with some of them and I started to visualise the people they were named after... there was the upstanding Rev. W Wilks ; the doughty Arthur Turner and his pals, Charles Ross, James Grieve and George Neal ; the haughty Lady Sudeley and the aristocratic Lord Lambourne; the flirtatious Belle de Boskoop and her friend D'Arcy Spice, described as a 'little tart....'

I'm most enamoured with that sweet young man about town the Rt. Hon Allington Pippin. Word is he was set upon and beaten to a pulp by some lads who were under the influence of too much cider.... I know....perhaps I need to get out more.....

Less than positive

The video I posted last was one I found a few weeks ago. I wasn't going to do anything with it but I was struck by how many comments that were left on the seaside project pages posted by Chrissie, Cathy and myself were saying how people wanted to join in but didn't think they had the creativity needed. I guess I just wanted to somehow say that we can all do anything we want to and no-one is going to judge. After all, we are often our own harshest critics aren't we? I constantly judge what I do but I have learned to go with the flow and enjoy my experiments. This is how I am still approaching the cyanotypes and last week I gathered loads of seedheads from the garden and took a few photos. I love their structural shapes and outline.

After cropping them and sharpening the image I made a positive and a negative image of all of them. I then printed out the negative images on inkjet transparencies and now I have tried to make cyanotypes on small pieces of mountboard using them. As the substrate has to be rinsed in running water I didn't expect the mountboard to stand up to the treatment. In fact it didn't even take the solution very well. The coating puddled and dried in odd shapes on the pieces. Either it wasn't totally flat or the mountboard has its own particular coating which might have stopped the solution from permeating the surface well enough. I also have the added variable that the solution is now over ten days old and should really not be viable at all.... but I had some great results which I'm over the moon with.

I did these yesterday in between heavy rain showers so my timing went all over the place. Some are still drying out but you can see where the original solution dried in patches and stayed that way. I think I will utilise these experiments and make some small coptic stitch notebooks. I know I cannot replicate them again. The whole process keeps throwing up ideas and I will just see where they lead although that Indian Summer I was expecting seems to have evaporated. I hope I don't have to abandon my cyanotypes until next year as I want to do some work with images inspired by our bees. Over at Bee House Hives the lovely Sarah has said I can use a couple of her photos. Even if you're not interested in bees please go and take a look at her wonderful photos. They are stunning. She tells me it is snowing in Montana whereas it's just raining again here in soggy Wales. No cyanotyping today then!

Out of the mouths of babes....

The tag end of it

Thanks to everyone who read and commented on the posts that Chrissie, Cathy and I wrote about our seaside tag project. Those that did will remember that we had to finish the project by creating a container to house them all in, something I had had sort of pushed to the back of my mind.... I had actually made a start by trying to make a large tag shaped box from scratch but when my husband told me it looked like a large coffin ...well, something did die, namely inspiration...

...and then Chrissie sent an e mail last week saying she'd made hers and how were Cathy and I doing? Well, I went into rabbit in the headlights mode and cool Cathy said she'd better her skates on too. I was lost for an idea and then remembered this little suitcase that I'd bought earlier in the year. I'd been reading about a group of book artists in Scandinavia who were creating books in a box like these and had bought one when I'd seen it in a shop that sells all sorts. It was covered in lots of 1980's style shoe pictures and needed covering . There was no question that I was going to use a map. At last, a chance to get a map into the project! I picked a map of Scotland because it was all I had but also because I wanted large expanses of sea for the base of the case. I set about covering the lid and other side with the main map, using the sea to put a strip around the sides. I gessoed the inside and painted it with acrylic paint to hide all the illustrations inside. It took a few coats but it eventually worked.

I made a mess of getting around the handles but hey, this is for me so that's fine. I cut out lots of little line drawings from an old book that has been a good friend on this project and I stuck them all around the side . The map had not stuck well on the front of the case for some reason but a judicious byline from the Guardian came to my rescue and sort of acts as camouflage. I then painted some small wooden letters that I had and stuck them on the top as an instant reminder of what treasures lie in my box. Finally I printed a hard copy of the tag posts that the three of us did, complete with comments so that when I open my box I will be able to see and read everything to do with this great project.

All three of us are posting today about our containers so go and take a look at what Chrissie and Cathy have made. As ever we have all approached it quite differently yet in the same vein. All of us are missing the creativity, the sending of parcels and the communication so we are cracking on with discussing what we shall do next and when. All of you who said you'd like to join us are duly noted. If anyone else wants to add their name please do. If not, there will be 9 of us involved in the next idea. The thoughts of what creativity that could unleash is exciting. The thoughts of what creative friendships that could forge is even more exciting. Watch this space!

Regrets.... I've had a few....

I get such a kick out of things that go wrong as much as I do when they go right! Sometimes the 'happy accidents' yield things you love but can never replicate. This has proved to be the case with the cyanotypes I've been experimenting with this week. Up above are three pieces of watercolour paper that I cut last week with the intention of doing the photograms with the lace doilies on. Well, they dried a bit streaky so I discarded them, finding them two days later virtually black where they had reacted with the light. I never thought I'd get an image but I exposed two of them with some leaves from the garden and the third with a transparency I'd printed out from one of my photographs. When exposed and rinsed the images were a dark blue on a marginally lighter blue background so I painted them, whilst wet, with neat bleach and I really love the effect. Will I be able to do it again....mmmm.... doubtful, but I might give it a try!

Similarly, I thought I'd try the process on fabric again and grabbed a couple of pieces of what I thought were white cotton. By now my solution has been made about 3 days and it is only supposed to have a shelf life of 24 hours so I didn't expect much. The material above was painted and left to dry and then exposed. It's not a dark blue but it's getting there whilst the piece below was painted, covered while wet with an inkjet transparency from one of my moth photos and exposed for the same period of time. The colour difference is quite marked and I have to experiment more to find out why they are different. Is it because one fabic was exposed wet and the other was dry? Or, maybe I haven't even picked cotton fabrics? The process does not work on synthetics so is my moth printed on polyester cotton and therefore paler?

Every piece I produce makes me ask more questions. It is a fascinating process and I hope I make a few more mistakes today.....

Revival

Butterfly Conservation have just released the results of the Big Butterfly Count conducted at the end of July. Whilst the Cabbage White remains the most common butterfly recorded there has been a resurgance in the number of Small Tortoiseshells. Apparently this little beauty has declined in numbers by 50% in the past 30 years due to the invasion of a parasitic fly. This year though it has come in at number 9 in the top 10 butterflies recorded in people's garden during the 15 minute watch period of the survey.

At the risk of being called Pinocchio I have just counted 15 of them on a large white buddleia we have in the garden. I counted about 26 butterflies in total including the tortoiseshells. They were joined by Peacocks and Red Admirals. Elsewhere in the garden I've seen loads of Speckled Woods and Meadow Browns this year. Also in evidence, although in much smaller numbers are Small Coppers and Commas, even a Small Blue but what I have not seen at all is a Painted Lady. Given the swarms of them we enjoyed last year it struck me last week that I hadn't seen a single one at all to date this summer. Anyone else noticed the same?

If you've seen one please let me know roughly where. Perhaps they've not managed to fly this far west this year because of the wet weather. I'm intrigued by their absence and would love to know if it is widespread. I hope not. It's good news for the Small Tortoiseshell but I don't want to see one make a revival while another one disappears.

Feeling Blue

I first came across cyanotypes about ten years ago when I was on a feltmaking summer school. We were trying out lots of different dyeing and printing methods on felt but the cyanotypes had to be done with other fabrics as it did not work on wool. It was not a great success so I never thought about it again until a few years ago when I started to get into printing with a lot more enthusiasm. This is a process dicovered in Victorian times and it is recognised mainly as an alternative photographic process but many textile artists have used it because it works on cotton, linen, canvas or silk as well as paper.

When I experimented again a few years ago I was determined to see if I could find a way to use felt for cyanotypes but I hit failure at every turn. The process works by the combination of two chemicals - ferric ammonium citrate and potassium ferricyanide. You make them up in two separate solutions with distilled water and then combine them. All the time this is happening you have to keep the containers away from the light. Once the solution is mixed it is painted onto your substrate which is then left to dry. After exposure to the sun for a given time the substrate is rinsed out under running water and this is where the felt fails. The solution just washes away as it will not hold in the wool.

I finally cracked it when I combined the felt with silk via the nuno process. I managed to get the solution into the nuno fabric and it worked on the silk. When I washed it out the solution it still washed out of the felt base to this piece but it stayed in the silk layer. If I were to turn this fabric over you would see a white background. I love the texture of it and if you look closely at the surface the wool can clearly be seen where it has migrated through the silk.

Anyway, you know from my last post that Anna has inspired me to experiment with cyanotypes again so I ordered some more chemicals and on Friday the sun came out! Hooray! It was forecast for the whole weekend so I set to. The first experiment was using small pieces of Khadi cotton rag paper and some buttons. Now, once you're ready to expose the paper to the sun it's a good idea to place it on a board with either a piece of glass or perspex on top to anchor it down. That's fine for paper and flat objects but not buttons! All I did was leave them exposed for about 15 minutes. You can tell by the colour of the paper whether you've exposed it long enough. Then you take it to the sink and rinse under running water for what seems like ages. The Khadi paper held up well to the water but I did not get very clear impressions with these buttons. I don't know yet whether to do something else with them or just bind them into a stab bound book and chalk it up to experience. There are lots of choices as I could bleach the cyanotype and take the blue away, changing the colour with tea to brown or I could paint them again and cyanotype over them....

Whatever I do with those pieces, I have managed to complete one book project from this weekend's cyanotypes though. I cut these 4.5 inch squares of Bockingford 140lb Hot Pressed watercolour paper and coated them with the solution. I think it had started to weaken by this point as it wasn't brilliant but I was still quite happy with the results. I used a selection of little doilies that I buy obsessively (why?) from charity shops for pence and laid them one by one on the papers and exposed them in sunlight for 15 minutes minimum.

There were a couple of grand failures but I utilised them for the covers for this little book that I then made by folding five of the squares into lotus folds. I then glued them together and attached a piece of narrow ribbon to the stack of folded pieces before attaching the cover pieces which I mounted onto thicker board first.

This is a great little book structure and I always think what a great idea it makes for Christmas decorations (I'm sorry for mentioning the C word in August....) I am very pleased with my little book of lace doily samples but I am at an impasse as the sun has deserted us today despite the forecast - well it is a Bank Holiday in the UK so what do I expect?

I have some fabric pieces and some nuno felt that are ready to do something with. Fingers crossed for sun tomorrow and more experiments!