Our First Crop of Borlotti Beans.

Aren't these beans pretty? The actual bean seeds are spotted with pink and purple too, but sadly when cooked, they're all just pale green. Fabulous taste though.

I have no idea what this flower is, just as I had no idea what the tree is that had the gorgeous red bark on it in yesterday's post.

Swan Plant.

You can see why this is sometimes called the Swan plant, other wise known as Milkweed. It's the food plant for the Wanderer butterfly, but sadly those lovely orange and black beauties aren't seen around here.

Miniature Dutchman's Pipe Vine.

Egyptian Piece Finished.

This probably doesn't look any different to the photo that I posted a few days ago, but I can asure you that it has had a lot of hand stitching done to it since then. Perhaps by clicking on it and enlarging it you might be able to see the stitching.

The end result is a bit of a 3D effect made by the light padding underneath the stitching.

Mud Wasp Nest.

The mud wasp's nest is jam packed with tiny green spiders, food for the baby wasps.

Unknown Insect with a Spectacular Abdomen!

Sponge-like Fungus.

Native Wildflowers.

Hyacinth Orchid.

The beautiful Fringed Lily.

Part of a Neighbour's Front gtae.

Spider in the Garden.

I really don't mind spiders, so this one in the garden caught my eye. I was amazed that my little Panasonic Lumix could do such a good job with the macro function. The spider is only about 1cm long, so the camera did well. By the next morning the spider and web had gone.

Egypt.

A group of 7 textile artists have been meeting almost every month for the last 13 years, and apart from holding an exhibition every second year, we set ourselves a monthly 'challenge' based on a different theme each year. The theme this year is architecture representing different countries, with the first country being Egypt. I have chosen to design my piece on the computer and will work back into it with thread after it is printed out onto fabric. It is basically a combination of 2 of my photos taken at the Temple of Karnak, with some added features.

Variegated Threads.

Not a total mess of threads. I have just upended my variegated thread box looking for just the right thread to use on my current project.

I don't think much of the old doll, but her clothes are beautiful. I just love the back of the dress with its bow and mini train. I'm sure that it has a proper name, but I'm afraid I don't know what it is. Her flower trimmed hat is a wonderful creation!

The fallen blossoms make drifts of red on the footpath.

The Flowering Gums are indeed flowering, and don't the bees love them!

This old seat in a neighbour's garden caught my eye. No sitting and enjoying the garden from this seat!

A Nice use of Colour.

These reddish succulants look wonderful against the rusted posts, with the contrasting grey foliage behind.

Paintshop Pro v Photoshop CS5

I decided to try adjusting the colours of the image in Paintshop Pro.
Until now I had tried everything that I could think of in Photoshop CS5.
What a difference! This is still not quite right, but a lot closer than the colours in yesterday's picture.

A bit more stitching

These greens are not at all the shades of the original, imagine olive green and you'll be closer to the correct hue.

Sunnymeade 3.

I've never seen a Dahlia quite like this one, it's more like something marine!

Another corner of the Persian garden.

Sunnymeade Garden 2.

A corner of the Persian Garden.

Sunnymeade Garden.

The Egyptian garden, just heady with the perfume of the huge lilies.

The walled garden, usually a mass of roses in Spring.

The sunken 'hot' garden'

I have just had a few days away, and one of the reasons was to visit this wonderful garden called Sunnymeade. It's in the north east of Victoria and is the concept and work of one extraordinary young man. He does everything, from the design, the planting, the stonework, the propogating, the shaping, trimming, weeding and just everything, the only help he receives is from his parents.

I have visited this garden on many occassions, but never in the Summer before. It's usually been too dry for the garden to warrant being open to the public at this time of the year, but the rains have been excellent and the garden is just bursting with colour and perfume.

I thought that I'd share a few glimpses of Sunnymeade with you.

The garden is designed with many different 'rooms', and here are 3 of them.

Now that's a potato.

Look what I found in our potato patch!

South American Machine Embroidered Souveniers.

I will keep this little change purse though, it might just come in handy one day.

While doing a spot of tidying up and throwing out I came across these machine embroidered pot holders that I bought somewhere in South America. Whilst the designs are fun, the fabric is very shiny synthetic and totally unsuited for picking up hot pots and pans. I decided to keep the designs on the computer for future reference and to throw out the originals.

I'm not sure where this is going, or if indeed it's going anywhere! Time will tell.

I was going to hand stitch on this piece of fabric, but after having sorted out the threads, I decided I would do a bit of background stitching by machine first.

Using up the Dyes.

The greens all look off in this picture, but they do in fact tone together quite well.
Do you see the little owl at the bottom right of this piece?

Rather than waste the left over dyes, I over-dyed bits and pieces of already decorated fabric. Bits from screen printing classes and so on. Some of the results have great potential I think, like this one.

More Dyeing.

I'm always too impatient to see the results, so leaving the covered bundles batching in the sun for 4 - 5 hours is hard. Must get on and do something else while I wait.

I don't think that I've got the bands tight enough, but we'll see!

All tied up and ready for some carefully placed dye.

Some of the dyed fabrics have possibilities, but a lot are very uninspiring. I think I'll over-dye the boring ones, being a bit more careful about colour placement and fabric manipulation.

First project for the New Year.

Batching the dyes in warm sunshine.

Dyeing in my laundry, no studio unfortunately.

None of these fabrics are quite right. I feel a dyeing session coming on!

Starting the research and ideas for a new project.