CHICKPEA SEWING STUDIO

I would like to first thank the readers who took the time to leave me comments this week or sent me an email. I really would have responded in normal times but the long hours spent between the school and taking care of Finn while finding out that this horrible cough is in fact bronchitis... well you get the idea! Thank you enormously for making the effort though, it really doesn't go unnoticed. In these times of Pinterest when most blog traffic comes from pattern links and random pins it is wonderful to feel that someone actually read and enjoyed what I am doing now!

The bronchitis has really hindered all things sewn and I find myself mostly sitting there trying to learn how to draw again. The idea of hand printed christmas wrapping paper sounds appealing right now, the mistletoe bellow might be a bit time consuming but nice.

I am thinking of changing how I stamp the berries by reversing the pattern. On a darker paper I could stamp them in white or convert the entire design to silver or gold. Time will tell. A glimpse of my new feather and tools bellow. The Kraft vintage tray has been uber convenient to keep all the carving equipment corraled neatly and ready to go.

The days of carving erasers might come to an end soon, even though I have a massive stash of unused little white rectangles now. With a little more practice I stated needing more space for larger designs and ended up procuring several sizes of speedy carve white carving block and opening Geninne's book with intent. I carved the large mushroom first, the larger the object the easier the details are to carve, then came two more mushrooms, a feather, a difficult book plate and an ampersand from another source.

The problem with merely copying out design is that you will run out of material pretty quick. This made me anxious to create some drawings of my own. I should say that as a child I loved to draw with my friend Lenaig. We did it furiously, even had our little magazine stapled together but there is no doubt that she was the both the brains and the crayon of this operation. I aspired to draw like her but never got there. In fact I would be happy to draw as well as she did when we were 10! 

Despite the obvious handicap that is lack of innate talent I am giving it a try anyway, first with the "pumpkin thingy" as a friend put it and then with the dark green mushroom. But then yesterday after a frustrating time wrestling through Finn's homework I went to collect all the green tomatoes from the garden to ripen them in a paper bag. Handling their firm flesh, comparing their shades of green I got so inspired that I decided to take the next step and draw from a model. Be it a tomato. I made two fruit stamps and a leaf, the largest to date:

I found out the hard way that when carving stems it is preferable to leave a sustantial amount of carving material around the narrow design or the stamp will break. It happened with one of the mushrooms and again with the large leaf. Carve and Learn I suppose!