On the streets

Yesterday as I was driving down into London in the morning around 9 O'clock I was struck by the fact that there was hardly any traffic on some of the busiest streets of London at peak hours. I completed my journey in an hour which is very good. I can only put it down to fact that either it is because of the recession or the holiday season or because it was such a beautiful day that everyone decided to go away instead of driving into London.

Bad hair day

LOL! I don't think my doll thinks this is funny as I have her twisting turning and sitting upside down to get her hair done. Whew! at last I got it all done. She did have me in a twist there lol!

While the weather lasts....

I love Clemetis so I went and bought this one which I have seen for the first time in the shops. It is called Princess Diana. It has a lovely delicate looking pink flower. This is the first one that bloomed. But I have been having bit of a problem with it. I think all the bugs and slugs and snails on earth love it as I find the plant disappearing bit by bit every morning. I have tried spraying it and putting slug pellets etc and still something is eating it up. It is sad as I love those lovely flowers. I have increased the amount of slug pellets so hope it will do the trick and let the plant survive. I don't usually like to put slug pellets because of the birds. I bought some that says they are bird and pet friendly so lets see if it works. We have been having some nice weather lately so I am hoping the flowers will bloom quickly. The Japanese anemones at least that is what I think they are always give a lovely display in the late summer.

This is a close up of the flowers of the plant below. The plant is call Thalcium I think. I love the delicate light shade of lavender flowers. They almost look like Gypsophillia which are white in colour.

Finally I am off for lunch now, that pie in the oven is calling me lol!.

Actually I tell a lie. I have still some time to go for lunch hour but I am now off to put some hair on my dolly. I hate that part of dollmaking.

Back from mini holiday

Just got back from a mini holiday in Verona. The weather was lovely and so was Verona. Did the usual touristisy stuff and visited some lovely places. Like many cities in Italy Verona is also steeped in history.Below as you can guess by the picture, is the so called Julliet's balcony. Don't how much of it is true but it was fun anyway.

I wish I could have got an uninterrupted view of the Arena but the Opera Festival was on so they had loads of stage settings stacked outside it somehow spoilt the view. Here is some of the the stage settings. I did however go for one of the opera shows "Aida". Now I am not a great fan of opera and was wondering if I would be able to last all the 3hrs on a not so comfortable seat until midnight after a long hot day wandering the streets of Verona.

I needn't have feared as from the moment the opera started I was spell bound. It was wonderful the atmosphere was amazing. I have never seen people so relaxed and yet so very attentive whenever the opera was on. There was a 10-15 mins interval after every 45 mins or so which made it all so less formal. The singing and the music and the acting was wonderful . Even though I didn't understand the language I would recommend anyone who goes to Verona not to miss the Opera show it is fantastic. Below is the picture of the Amphitheater just before the show began

Some of the huge stage settings outside the Amphitheater

Below is Piazza della Erbe by the way that couple were not posing for me lol!

Inside the bridge of Castle Vecchio

This is the bridge from the outside over the river Adige

The old stone bridge over river Adige The Amphitheater from inside Some lovely frescos on the walls of buildings in the Piazza della Erbe

Enterance to some flats I think. The courtyard looks so magical.

Lake Garda Finally just a little clip from the Opera Aida. Sorry my camera ran out of battery I would have loved to have taken whole dance scene.

Its a nightmare lol!

I am wondering why did I even think of using this trim for this fabric. It is a nightmare fixing it to such sheer fabric. Oh well I shall keep plodding on now that I have started.

Fruits from the garden

I seemed to have fallen by the way side with the photo of the week challenge. The weather has not been very good to go out and take photos and then I thought since you all have seen every nook and corner of my garden I had better not bore you to death with more pictures of my garden. However this morning when I took a stroll in my garden I spotted these grapes in the grape wine. I didn't think we would get any but lo and behold there were at least 3 bunches that I could spot how exciting! Lol! I am sure they won't last long there as the birds will get them sooner or later. I have seen the blackbird disappear into the branches so we shall see how long before they go. We get quite a few apples in this vine every year. There are 2 varieties there Golden delicious and Granny Smiths.

I have noticed this patch of leaves from my window so I had a look They look very pretty although that is not the colour they should be at this time of the year. Do they know something that we don't I wonder? They have very pretty lavender colour flowers which have not bloomed yet. I shall take a picture when they do.

Just a cute little bird house that I found in a shop recently.

Ok the reason that I have been rather silent is I am trying to finish a doll for a challenge. I am sorry I cannot show it yet because it is for a challenge.

So I have been pulling out fabrics from this box....

and this box...

and ending up with this chaos!

Canvas completed

I have completed my canvas and here she is. I purposely made her neck very long and her face is also a bit on the long side not very pretty either. I am not sure if I like it very much , but it is done and I hope my friend will like it. The colours are a bit brighter than what has come out in the photograph. I created the textures with modelling paste and bubble wrap which I am sure you all know how. I spread the modelling paste on to the canvas where I wanted it and then pressed a piece of bubble wrap over it to create the impression simple. I also made a crude stamp with cardboard by drawing on it some shapes and cutting it out then applying paint to the cardboard and stamping it on the canvas. The shapes didn't come out well in the canvas but I like the hint of the shape on the canvas effect so I left it. I think if the shapes had shown up it might not have looked as nice.

New Canvas

I have started a new canvas. Another gift for a friend and this is how far I have got with it. So far so good. But as usual I didn't start out with any theme in mind. I am just going to go with the flow.

Today

Today I met up with some wonderful like minded ladies. We met up with the hope of forming a doll club. Now we have decided that we definitely will meet up again and have even chosen a name for our club. We are going to call it Fancyful figures. It is all very exciting. We had a lovely time chatting and exchanging views and also made a pin doll. Well none of us completed it so I shall post a picture when I do complete mine. However here are some pictures of the dolls some of the ladies brought along to show. Yet again I have to apologise for not taking my camera with me so the pictures that I took with my phone are not brilliant. The ladies are all very talented even though some of them have only started making dolls recently. I am looking forward to meeting up with them all again in October.

Last day of water colour painting.

Friday was my last day of water colour painting for this term. We were asked to do an abstract of all the studies we did. So here is what I did. I am not good at abstract so this is not so nice as I would have liked it to be. We did lot of our studies at Somerset House. In the winter the courtyard of Somerset House turns into an ice rink

After the class I walked to Waterloo Station as it was so very pleasant.

The river Thames looked beautiful so I decided to take a photo with my phone and as usual the photo does not do justice to the scene. Seeing me several people decided to stop and do the same with their phones. I wonder how many showed up in blogs lol!

Weekend was spent at a friends house in the courntry. Needless to say their garden is lovely and they get so many different birds and animals visit their garden.

A pheasant has adopted their garden so I saw him early in the morning strolling around. I managed to get a shot from inside with my phone. A pity I didn't have my camera to zoom in.

While I was sitting and having tea the wood pecker made an appearance. I had to keep extremely still to get this shot of him. You can just about see him near that chair. He does blend in with the background a bit as he is green too.

So this is how my weekend went. How did yours go?