Chance meeting today

I went to collect something I had ordered .....and the assistant said " I know you...you used live down...." I did....and she said I had helped her to breast feed her baby when she was finding it difficult....that  baby is now in his thirties .... I have no recollection of this but I was in the La leche league then and did go around encouraging mothers that wanted to breast feed.
 All my children were intolerant to lactose...and I breast fed up to the age of two yrs. as there wasn't an alternative then that they could have...unless you count driving too many miles to get goats milk to try...it was much easier to breast feed. The third one had Wysoy for a while.  I had so much milk that I expressed, bottled and froze it for the special baby unit.....
I am posting this because the lady had no need to say anything, but she did, in front of a long queue of people returning and collecting goods....gave me a little glow inside....it was a lifetime ago...I did have a life ! Even if I can't remember it !  Lol ....thank you Claire for telling me !

Gloves and Sarah Burgess

When the years list of speakers was revealed last September I was thrilled to bits to see something on gloves...I still have a pair I used to wear in the 1970s..old gold in colour...I only have them because my daughter gave them back to me after she had claimed them and had worn them for years... I have a collection of gloves....bought a carrier bag full from a charity garden party....some years ago. on the top were some long kid gloves which I wanted at the time for the dolls house club to make handbags and gloves in 1/12th scale....To think I cut them up....!!!!

Sarah came to talk to the Embroidery Society May 10th and I throughly enjoyed it..

This an embroidered story in her own words of a glove maker talking about the quality expected and the hard work. Sarah talked about the homeworkers and a major glove factory and the workers and the conditions.

Narked, annoyed, pissed off,

Firstly I have to accept cookies or I cannot add new posts to the blog.....second my followers list had gone...thirdly ....when I wanted to correct the spelling of a blog I couldn't as I could only get one tiny part of the post....and lastly the post is erased.....why does google want to fix what's not broke ?

bird chase

look carefully.................................................. above here  *  is the impact of a seagull being chased by a crow..There was a big bang and I jumped out my skin ! I ran to the window to see what was going on....the crow was taking avoiding action and the seagull flew off in the opposite direction.....................                  To the right is the flight feathers...and I can clearly see the beak and the head feathers radiating outwards with some body feathers to the left of the more obvious round shape. there are more impact marks to the left that are not showing up....anyone know how to lift the image off the window before I clean it? PS...both birds flew away in different directions.......apparently OK...

more Follow the Herring

Artlink have been running fishy Fridays... Octopuses constructed with willow withies, tissuepaper and PVA glue, lifesized crabs made from slab paper mache,

and today....sewn fishes...

I've been buzzing with an idea to make Herring dolls....I'm getting a bit narked * that the herring girls are being left out.....its all marine life so far........

So I designed this one....a  prototype and in my rush to create it....when I was stitching the face with one eye on the TV....I managed to do the face proportions upside down...so had to stitch a chin to reduce the biggest jaw you have ever seen !!!

Its based on a picture from Good Old Hessle Road by Alec Gill

The woman second from the right on the bottom row is definitely from Hull....her son recognised her when the book came out. 

This photo is at the front of the book... due to a clipping from a newspaper being sent to the daughter of the lady on the left.... they were reunited after 55years. They were travelling companions following the shoal of herrings down the east coast of Britain  in their younger days and they lost touch......It was a 76th birthday treat for Kitty on the left. (Cissie is on the right)

I would like to try to do this picture with organza and a soldering iron....cream black and grey.....layered up so that you would have to stand at the right distance to see a ghostly image emerge as the eye makes sense of the shapes.....don't think it will photograph well though....

* narked....means cross...annoyed....irritated....

torsos, dress forms for Sindys dress collection

one

used to make these out of toilet paper tubes when I was a young girl....only I used " stickylicky " gummed brown paper strips to hold them together and to cover them....I designed the dresses to accomodate the pattern on the scraps of fabric I'd acquired......I stuck a pencil in a cotton reel and pushed to pencil through the top of dress form....and displayed my dresses....faced outwards on the window ledge for the world to see ! Well...I didn't have a million dolls like they do today !

 A random one.....I have always loved sunrise and early morning light....early evening dusk as the night draws in .....sunsets.....and rainbows......the field was a shimmering golden colour and look at the tree...!! the colours of the rainbow became more intense ....like someone turned up the colour switch .....and a double rainbow became visible....two massive arcs.....MAGIC.... no wonder early man built their stone monuments.....never seen a rainbow like it before.....

allsorts...getting up to date...

can't remember if i put these up...they were showing at Artlink....in Hull...felt balls the size of mothballs...beautifully embroidered by Claire Molyihon (I think...) please click on picture to get bigger size...exquisite

I took these a while back...this is an art work in the stairwell of the new health centre on Hessle Road...the heart of the old fishing industry in Hull....It records the name of the terraced houses and who lived in them and their occupations around 1900. Occupations long since gone in most cases....a fascinating insight into a way of life of  people of my grandparents and great grandparents generations. These houses may not have had rear access and they may have had a communal toilet block serving the whole terrace....usually three to six toilets depending on the number of houses in the terrace... Or they may have had an outdoor toilet in a tiny enclosed yard...... containing the large tin bucket..... which  would be collected by the " night soil men" walking through the house, picking up the bucket and walking back through your house to empty it on a cart....!  The cart would go the outskirts of the city.....and the contents would be manure for the market gardeners !!!! lettuces...cucumbers...tomatoes anyone???