F i E L D y

Magazine Giveaway

Better late than never!! This months Sew Hip goes to the lovely Isobel......again!!

Sew Hip Giveaway.

Almost forgot! Issue 6 of Sew Hip goes to Peitseoga.

Housekeeping - The Final Edition.

Don't know about you but I can't take much more housekeeping - it is only because it has taken up so much of my time recently that I have been banging on about it - usually it is the last thing on my mind!
Anyway, today I have finally got it together to post about the mini-refurb in the flat and to discuss the merits of various paints that are widely available now. I am a bit of a paint connoisseur having spent the first 8 years after graduating working as a Scenic Artist/Designer in the theatre industry. I have worked with every paint product imaginable, at one time I even used to make my own paint using size (animal glue), whiting and pigment - you can imagine the smell! That way of making scenic paint has been phased out as thankfully these days even the most basic Trade Emulsions are pretty good plus it was pretty unpleasant to work with all day long.
My favourite paints to use are these............

Farrow & Ball (now available at Homebase), Crown Trade Historic Colours Collection (Available at Crown Decorator Centres) and Craig & Rose 1829 (available at B&Q). All of these have a great range of colours to suit a period property and a lovely chalky matt finish. However, if I had to choose one paint above all others it would be the Craig & Rose. Not only is it locally produced I have found that it goes on much better and covers better than F&B. The only drawback with C&R is that the colour range is quite limited - luckily I like most of the colours and have managed to find colours within the range for all the other rooms in the flat. F&B paints are highly pigmented which give them a grainy texture when applying. This also means that it takes far more coats to cover. It is also £7.00 per 2.5litres more expensive than C&R. On the plus side the F&B colour range is extensive and there are a few colours that you just can't match elsewhere (believe me I have tried) and once you have applied several coats it has a wonderful rich depth of colour and a great matt finish. I have painted my hall in F&B 'Rectory Red' and the walls look like velvet! Both C&R and F&B paints are eco frindly which is also a plus.
Choices for the Kitchen and Bathroom were pretty straightforward. These for the Kitchen.............

Craig & Rose 1829 'Deep Sung Cream' and Farrow & Ball 'Brinjal' and for the Bathroom....

Craig & Rose 1829 'Eau de Nil' - all in chalky matt emulsion finish. The choice for the bedroom was much harder. I had originally painted it an orchid white colour but apart from the fact it was looking very tired it was also incredibly bland. I experimented with a few colours.............

before plumping for a Dulux Heritage colour 'Victorian Sage' in a matt emulsion. It is the pale green sample above the fireplace. I am embarrassed to admit that after mucking around with lots of different samples the final colour choice was made after a visit to one of my local deli/cafes 'Gusto & Relish'. I popped in for a coffee with my friend Anna and we both admired the wall colour. We asked to the waitress if she could find out what the colour was. She heaved a sigh and quoted "Dulux Heritage Victorian Sage". It appears alot of people ask for that information! I tried it and liked it so that was the choice finally made. If only I had gone in there sooner I would have saved a fortune on matchpots! To finish the fireplace I also needed to paint the tiles and fireplace recess so I used this...........

I wouldn't ordinarily use spray paint but I found this in a box the cupboard and thought it would be OK for such a small area. The tiles were painted with Craig & Rose 1829 'Grate Black' . It goes on like emulsion, is water soluble but because of its high PVA content it dries to a dull metallic finish which works well on tiles and metal and gives a good solid finish.
The painting went well, no mess or fuss as someone else was doing it! The only small bit of painting I actually did was the fireplace and that's when it all went horribly wrong. It seems my common sense desserts me when I get near that fireplace. I masked off the carpet area in front of the fireplace and sprayed the inset. Then I painted the tiles and went out for dinner. When I came back I removed the masking and found this..........

Yes I had f*****ed up my newly cleaned carpet. I tried to get it off with nailvarnish remover (acetone) but that just made it worse! The really stupid thing is that I knew at the time that I hadn't put enough paper down but I was in a hurry. The solution to the problem was radical but necessary - I cut the affected piece of carpet out......

I was able to follow the line of the old hearthstone which I then painted with the same paint as the tiles. I think I have got away with it although there are still a few remnants of spray that I can't do anything about. Walls look nice though!
The Bathroom before and after....

I had the ceiling painted the same colour as the walls so it is like a cosy cocoon of creamy green when you are in there - very relaxing.
And the Kitchen ........

or rather a corner of it - a very tidy corner I might add, compared to how it was. My kitchen is not a fitted kitchen but a disparate variety of floor standing and wall hung cabinets. I had the flat valued a couple of years ago when I was thinking of moving and the estate agent walked in and said "Oh, it's very West End isn't it?"  What she meant I am not quite sure but I prefer to think she meant arty and bohemian. Delusion is my middle name.

The winner of this months Sew Hip is...........Debs.

Filling the Well.

I have been feeling a bit flat lately - distinctly lacking in motivation. I finished my last job about a month ago and promptly fell ill with a nasty virus which dragged on for quite some time, leaving me rather tired and listless, unable to do anything requiring focus and energy. However it is not all doom and gloom as I had rather a jolly time drinking coffee and watching too much TV namely 'Homes Under the Hammer' and 'The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes' which I absolutely LOVE! (Jeremy Brett is superb as Holmes) However, all this came to an untimely end when I embarked on some serious home improvements which saw me camping out in the living room surrounded by all the c**p from bathroom, kitchen and bedroom. I also set myself a stupid schedule of unrealistic targets (sound familiar) with regard to what I could get made for the upcoming Wee Green Market. For some reason I felt really resentful at the amount of work I was doing sewing wise, exacerbated by the withdrawel symptoms of trying to wean myself off the bloody TV!
Luckily I had arranged to go over to visit Caireen

Long Time No Blog.

Two posts in the whole of March - must try harder. Have just finished my latest contract so hoping that normal blogging will resume shortly but until then I have just popped by to say that the recipient of this months Sew Hip is Isobel (Bella Bheag)
Oh and I also wanted to show off the final addition to my home workshop................

I have wanted one of these for ages and finally got this on eBay. It holds 60 reels of thread which I thought would be plenty, but I still have a load of thread in the drawer!

Secret Lives!

For the past few weeks I have been visiting an Osteopath (recommended by a friend) in the hope that she will be able to rid me of the constant soreness in my knee and elbow tendons (old horseriding injuries that have been aggravated). She is a lovely person and obviously wants to help people but I have been rather perplexed as to why she apparently enjoys my cries of discomfort when she is manipulating my joints, saying such things as "If it doesn't hurt you are not getting your moneys worth!" whilst smiling cheerfully.
All became clear on my last visit when she revealed on my latest visit that she has just signed a deal with Penguin to publish 2 more of her books! "Books on Osteopathy?" I innocently asked. Oh no, nothing like that - it turns out that she writes crime thrillers in the same vein as Ian Rankin ! Grisly murder and psychopaths! Time to find a new Osteopath maybe!? She didn't tell me what her pen name was but did say that she had been nominated for a New Blood Dagger Award last year so, after a little detective work of my own (get it?), I discovered that my osteopath is also known as Caro Ramsay and this is her first book!!
On the subject of books I have recently immersed myself in 3 - yes 3 - of the latest books by Alexander McCall Smith. Two from the Isabel Dalhousie series ....

and the latest book in the 44 Scotland Street series.....

 I love these series - I find them very comforting to read, like dropping in on old friends. Their descriptions of Edinburgh life and characters are so well drawn you feel that you might well bump into these people whilst wandering around the city. Of course it helps knowing the city fairly well as he mentions specific locations and local characters but it is not absolutely necessary to in order to enjoy the books. If you are interested the first book in the 44 Scotland Street series is called , rather aptly, 44 Scotland Street and the first in the Isabel Dalhousie series is called The Sunday Philosophy Club.

As promised I have done a draw for Issue 1 of Sew Hip and the first out of the hat was Ambika. Second out was Caireen who will receive Janes' copy. Please email me your contact details and we will send the mags. Remember I have 2 copies of Issue 2 to giveaway at the end of Feb. I have just received Issue 4 and I have to say that I think that the magazine is getting better each month.

PS I am trying to sove a 'mystery' of my own - I seem to have lost my category cloud even though I have been to the content section and selected it etc etc and also cannot get my lists for albums to link to pictures on amazon automatically like it used to - any ideas????

Move it on.

A few years ago I was working on a film in Newcastle and had the good fortune to be lodging in a beautiful 3 storey victorian terraced house with a lovely woman called Kathleen who, although retired from teaching, still worked tirelessly for the local community, had her own organic allotment, was a master recycler and had a house full of the most lovely textiles. I was on the top floor next to her sewing room where she created patchworks from recycled fabrics bought from charity shops - in fact there were piles of fabric all over the house which the many rescued cats would nestle comfortably (please don't imagine that this house was in any way dirty or shabby - it wasn't) At the time I was staying there I had not rediscovered my love of making things and remember thinking that it was rather a waste of space to have a whole room devoted to sewing - obviously I was wrong ......
The job itself was very stressful but the saving grace was that at the end of the day I was able to come back to a beautiful house and a good chat with Kathleen. Alot of the fabrics she had 'rescued' ,as she put it, from the charity shops were earmarked for some project or other that she had in mind but the rest were just there waiting to be "moved on" to someone who would appreciate it.
I took on board alot of what I had learned whilst staying in Newcastle so when I returned to Glasgow I started to recycle properly and got a composter. I had a big clear out and "moved on" alot of things I no longer needed or wanted and I continue to do this on a regular basis. The satisfaction that can be gained from doing these small things is, for me at least, enormous.
I had a massive clearout on New Years Eve - every cupboard and drawer has been thoroughly cleared - I found things that I had no idea I had and have "moved them on" to various people who might have use for them. After the massive clearout I went around the whole flat with some burning Sage (compliments of Caireen- all the way from New Mexico) and 'smudged' the whole flat. I thoroughly recommend this as a way of invigorating the energy of your environment and reconnecting to your home and the things in it.
I started to think that it would be a good idea if, rather than wait for an annual clearout to 'move on' items no longer required it would be nice to try and make a habit of moving things on as I went along. I already have a couple of magazine subscriptions that I pass on to one of my friends as soon as I have read them and she in turn passes them on or recycles them. - likewise she passes on mags to me which I pass on or recycle. So finally I come to the point. Just before Xmas I treated myself to a subscription of this new magazine.......

I have now had 3 issues and realise that although I do enjoy it to a certain extent and it does have some useful information in it, it is not really 'for me' so I would not want to keep it for reference or anything like that so I am proposing to 'move on' every issue as new and intact with patterns etc (once I have read it) to a different person chosen at random from the comment section each month. This is not a cunning way to get more comments - you only have to leave one comment during the whole of each calender month to be eligable and it will not matter if you leave one or ten as each commenter will get one chance as I will be using the pick out of the hat method! By doing this I get to move on something useful to someone who will enjoy it and the recipient will get the chance to try out a new publication at no expense - if by some chance the chosen commenter already has a subscription or has bought that issue I will contact the second out of the hat to receive the mag. I will start with Issue 1 at the end of Jan (it was published in Dec) and continue through the year until October when my subscription will run out. Hope you want to join in - it's just a bit of fun for the start of the yearx

I am also thinking about starting a book swap (craft books) - would anyone be interested? If you are like me you probably have one or two books that you have bought without really looking at it properly and now realise it only has one or two projects in it that you really want to make or you have moved onto a different craft altogether or you would like to try something new but don't want the expense of buying a new book. Haven't worked out quite how it would work - suggestions welcome!

I was browsing yesterday and came across a link to a new online craft magazine called UKHandmade  on Middle of Nowhere - well worth a look, as is the blog! It's quite good this internet thingy.