Swanage in Pictures

Hullo! 

The last few days I've been staying with Katie and my parents to help Mum with her own project, as well as share a few stolen moments with her sewing machine, and we've been busy bees in this hive-of-activity household. I'm still frantically trying to finish Emma's mum's cushion in time for her birthday, so instead of withdrawing for too long from this here cloud-blog, I'll share with you some photos from our day out on Sunday to the pretty seaside town of Swanage, Dorset.

We could see Old Harry Rocks (with a foggy smear of Bournemouth in the distance)...

...we meandered close to the edge of the world...

...and Katie played matchmaker to ladybirds. The other joined this one above for a...'piggy-back'...shortly after the photo was taken...

...the prettiest of wildflowers seem to exist in the most severe landscapes...

...and we walked alongside the fishermen's boats, near the waters where dolphins are said to be seen.

We also brought our finished owl along with us. Designed by Katie and hand-embroidered on the back by myself.

I will be writing the short story that the above poem (originally a haiku) was inspired by, soon. It is called 'Taxidermy', and it is about a girl who finds a pellet of bone, of the type regurgitated by owls, that keeps growing until it starts to take human form. She takes it to a taxidermist in the small market town where she lives, thinking this lady is the only one who could understand such a strange transformation, and the taxidermist helps aid the broken and deformed bones to take proper shape.

I will be uploading my novel and short stories, bit by bit, soon on figment, as it seems like a suitable home for my fiction. I will let you know as this occurs, but I'll still try and find the time to post extracts here.

It is midnight now; time for sleep...

x Nina x

J&B The Shop & Mollie Makes

I'd ordered a handmade booklet of J&B the shop during the week, and I'm pleased to say it arrived in the post a few days later, and was a joy to look at!

Yes, we love Jessie Chorley & Buddug The Shop, we do. I discovered them first in a way-back copy of Oh Comely magazine to learn that their shop in Columbia Rd, London, resided a mere 5 minute walk away from Big Sister's then flat down Hackney Rd. So we took a trip down Columbia Rd during our next stay with Lubix, and here is where we documented our adventures. 

Below is an image of a card I bought when inside the wonderfully whimsy J&B shop. I love Jessie's embroidery especially - as someone who loves embroidering my stories and poetry onto secondhand and vintage fabrics, I'm very inspired by her work. And I respect her make-do-and-mend ethic.

Ever since encountering their shop in Oh Comely Katie and I had been following their blog and admiring their creations. I entered a competition through said magazine to win a workshop date at the shop, as then my experience of embroidery and applique was titch; alas I did not win. But perhaps it was for the best - I found my own way to learn embroidery and tell my stories. 

Then, a few issues ago, I came upon them once more in Mollie Makes magazine (which we have been loyal to ever since issue eight :0, ) with lovely photos of their shop and the items they make and display. Big Sister might not be in London anymore, but we're looking forward to visiting again... 

seek them out online...

jessieandbuddugtheshop.blogspot.com

www.jessiechorley.com

www.buddug.com

or the link on the right-hand side here!

x Nina x

Ectopic Heartbeats

Nina and Katie have busy of late; busy sewing, dreaming, eating, watching too many episodes of The Mighty Boosh.. And also taking photo's of Nina wearing her Ectopic Heartbeats embroidered doilie. A butterfly or two managed to flutter into a few of the shots..

There are more photo shoots up and coming, that might have something to do with galaxies and Nebula's and a few shooting stars here and there.. So keep your telescope trained on this blog!

-Katie x

White Fox cushion

I've finally finished the White Fox cushion I've been making for, like, EVER!..it seems. But in truth I've been doing things in between. So it's nice to finally have it complete. The journey I made with this cushion began here.

*

A white fox roaming across the winter snows,

Dazzling Jack Frost melting upon his nose.

 Only the polar bears and seals 

understand where he goes

when stalking among the arctic snows.

*

All the material is upcycled - it came from a lovely lace dress of mine in which the zip broke, but the material was far too special to let it go to waste, so I wanted to make something with it that I would love and that is unique. The white satin came from Big Sister's scrap box :)

And here it sits, in my red-heart room upon my chair next to my beloved Angelica...

...with books inspired by ice and snow and wilderness...

I will be embroidering another ditty soon called 'The Thicket Dwellers,' an idea taken from the book I've written of the same name. I won't divulge it to you yet, I'm going to leave you to salivate like a starving wolf; but until then I'll give you a snippet of my story right down at the bottom of this post where I've taken the hoar frost theme from. It might be starting to warm up outside, but I'm still engulfed in snow...

back detail

That won't be for a few weeks yet, however. In the meantime I'm making a cushion for my friend's mum's birthday. My friend is called Emma Candy, and she's as sweet as her name suggests ;) The cushion will have butterflies and dandelion down, and words of course, because I like words the best. Here's another few things I've been working on between cushionry...

...and this, which is the back detail for Little Sister's owl she's making at mo. She's asked me to embroider it, and it's such lovely material that I couldn't resist! So I wrote a micro-ditty called 'Taxidermy,' based on an idea for a short story I want to write, and it goes like this...

*

I found a pellet of bone, 

of mice and of bird.

It grew into an angel.

*

*  *  *

Hoar frost is more brittle and unkind than snow...

'In February, Nature thought that spring had come early, and trustingly allowed her green foliage to stretch itself up unto the strengthening sun, and the mice to be enticed by a deceitful warmth in the air and surface from their burrows below. But weather is fickle and tricksy, and within days a perpetual hoar frost had set in overnight, petrifying the hearts of birds and other small beings, and freezing through the previous year’s unpicked rosehips that had begun to rot on the stems like blossoming blood clots. The New Forest dazzled in the dry white, drawing in many a photographer to the region to capture its supernature and Narnia-esque sentimentality; but otherwise the cold kept people in their homes, and only a solitary track of footprints was seldom seen to break the white.' 

Nina x

Inspired..

..by swans, galaxies, moonstone, skulls and dark poetry..

I completely savaged our dad's National Geographic magazine for these lovely photos, and my imagination's been sparked. Maybe later I'll post photos of future illustrations inspired by these things

Irene Grishin-Selzer- Winter Swan

 Toru Kamei- Timeless

Irene Grishin-Selzer- Can't tell the birds from the blossoms

***

Here's a little preview of an illustration that I'm currently remaking and making improvements to. I've always been inspired by butterflies, and I love reading old legends and folk-tales about them. People used to believe that white butterflies were the souls of dead children, which I find beautiful and sad at the same time. 

-Katie x