Category: Uncategorized

Sunday Sevens 2019 #35

On By Dartmoor YarnsIn Uncategorized14 Comments

Welcome to my Sunday Sevens – a post where I share seven (or so) photos of my week away from the blog.

Finally we’ve had a mostly dry week; a whole five days in a row without rain! You can tell I’m getting old, because the thing that mostly excited me was that I could put the washing out on the line…

20191118_12161800We could also get on with the gardening. Lovely Hubby finished cutting the hedges…

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… and Harry helped me prune the fuschias…

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Having regular dry dog walks was also very welcome…

20191010_102159As well as being dry it’s also sometimes been very windy. Unfortunately the wind blew down one of our bird boxes – glad it wasn’t nesting time of year…

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In other news, we attended a golden retriever meetup at Perranporth last Sunday…

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Although this time we bucked the system by taking Harry’s chum with us…

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On Friday it was my lovely neighbour’s birthday. Lovely Husband usually draws a cartoon in our neighbours’ cards, but now I’m the artist in the house I got to do the drawing…

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And finally, because I know you’re enjoying them so much, here’s another Where’s Harry photo…

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What do you mean they’re getting easier?

Hope you’ve had a great week.

Until next time,

Bekki x

Learning to Draw #5

On By Dartmoor YarnsIn Drawing, Sketching, Uncategorized18 Comments

We’ve had such miserable weather over the last week even the daylight hours haven’t offered much in the way of decent light to draw in. And even when it has been reasonably bright, it’s rarely been when I’ve time to draw.

On the positive I’ve found time to draw every day – although I haven’t managed an hour’s worth every day, which is my goal. Here’s what I’ve drawn…

Quite pleased with this one – especially as I was battling fading light at the end – apart from the thickness of the veins on the bottom leaf…

Anyone remember Ugly Mugs? BTW the light was coming from the other direction to the photo when I drew it.

Again the light is different in the sketch to the photo – still, allowing for that I’m not too pleased about this one…

Big mistake with this one. I should have concentrated on the bridge, but got distracted by the details in the background and ended up hurrying the bridge as I was running out of time. The massive shadow on the left – which I ignored –  also made this hard to see sufficient detail. I’ll draw this again I’m more proficient and when I’ve taken a better photo…

5-10 minute sketches…

 

And finally, the pine cone hubby brought home for me…

This was hard! And looks more like a pineapple. Another one I’ll be returning to when I’m more proficient.

Until next time,

Bekki x

 

 

Learning to Draw – Perspective

On By Dartmoor YarnsIn Drawing, Uncategorized4 Comments

Saturday before last I had a good chunk of time to myself. I was getting a bit bored working on shading, so decided to learn about perspective.

I started by watching a few YouTube videos and reading a few tutorials about one point perspective. I then worked on the exercises from this tutorial.

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I then looked through some of my photos and chose some suitable for drawing in one point perspective. I started with this tunnel…

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It seemed like a nice simple drawing and the construction meant I didn’t even need to rub out my construction lines apart from at the entrance…

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I didn’t shade fully as it seem a waste of time and graphite.

Next day I attempted a sketch of one of the streets I took a picture of when we visited the Netherlands…

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I simplified it a little by removing the bikes

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At the end of the week I had a go at working on two point point perspective. I chose this picture…

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Having drawn a fair amount of detail I realised I’d drawn one line going back to the wrong vanishing point and ended up rubbing most of my sketch out. I then realised that although the door looks as if it comes out of the wall at the bottom left of the door, the pub sign runs flat along the wall above it! Knowing this was impossible, I put the sketch on hold until I pass the pub again and can see what the heck’s going on…

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I’ve also been doing some more sketching this week

 

Ten minute sketches…

Until next time,

Bekki x

Thursday Doors- First and Last Time

On By Dartmoor YarnsIn Uncategorized26 Comments

I’ve never taken part in Thursday Doors and I suspect I never will again, but I couldn’t resist taking a pic and sharing this one I spotted in Utrecht at the weekend…

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Apologies for not having a better shot, but there was a railing in front that obliterated it if I stood any further back.

If you want to see more doors, Thursday Doors is hosted by Norm 2.0

Until next time,

Bekki x

Prescription Crochet #3 WIP

On By Dartmoor YarnsIn Uncategorized16 Comments

Having posted a lot of catch up finishes, I thought it was high time I showed you something I was actually working on. This is my third crochet project since I was told by the physio to crochet to make my thumb better.

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When I learnt to crochet – several years ago – I went straight to working on garments and have never crochet a granny square before, so feeling very cuffed I’ve finally made some.

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These are the centre of the Charlotte square. It’s quite a big square and I only liked the centre, so have only done the first 18 rows. As you can see, so far I have six squares completed. I’m aiming for 20.

I may be a while yet.

Until next time,

Bekki x

 

The Curtain Rail Mystery

On By Dartmoor YarnsIn Uncategorized18 Comments

Several weeks ago I asked the question, can anyone offer an explanation why the curtain at the physiotherapist is hung like this?

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Having unavoidably cancelled my next physio appoint a couple of times, I finally went back a couple of weeks ago and plucked up the courage to ask. I’m afraid its a very dull answer…

Apparently it’s a bit of an optical illusion: the room has a flat roof that slopes, downward, so the rail is parallel with the floor. Presumably the window is therefore parallel with the roof. Although it looked like it was parallel with the floor to me!

Anyway, if you were wondering – and you probably weren’t – that’s the answer.

Until next time,

Bekki

 

The Elephants in the Room.

On By Dartmoor YarnsIn patchwork, Quilting, Quilts, Sewing, Uncategorized39 Comments

When we moved into our house six years ago our old lounge suite was both exhausted and the wrong shape to fit our new lounge. The chairs went to chair heaven and the settee to the kitchen for HRH…

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However the footstool still had plenty of life in it – clearly we don’t have very heavy feet. It also fitted nicely into a corner of our new lounge – well, apart from the colour.

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I planned to make a cover, but you know how it goes… Six years later the red footstool was still sitting in the corner and we’d been ignoring the colour clash for years.  Then Harry arrived rather suddenly and boring plain throws were immediately cast over my beautiful Laura Ashley settees.

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As I began to plot and scheme how to improve the look of the throw covered settees, my thoughts turned to the foot stall and, when I discovered some elephant Clarke and Clarke fabric, a plan emerged.

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Making a footstool cover from this fabric would leave me with an unused long thin strip of fabric – not very economical. But if cut the strip into near squares four elephants long by three wide I could made a fake patchwork quilt with them for one of my very bland looking settees.

So that’s what I did: I made a simple footstool cover….

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…and a rather less simple quilt….

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….which incidentally won second prize at the produce show…

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until next time.

Bekki x