Ernest Wright Scissors

Many years ago I learned about Ernest Wright, the last hand made scissor artisans in the world. They are located in Sheffield, England. I bought two pairs of dressmaking shears before they went out of business. A few years later they we bought and re-opened by a German man who valued hand craftsmanship. He has really brought the company into the 21st century.

They came across of half century old steel blanks and decided to make them into functioning scissors. There were general purpose scissors and quilting and embroidery scissors.

 General purpose scissors

Quilting and embroidery scissors and 10" shears

A gift from Jean

Jean brought this fabulous Crow (does it ever get better) printed cloth. I am guessing it is a dish towel but who could actually use this beauty !!

Rail fence moving toward completion

The finished garden bed

Getting a flat foundation for the bird bath was actually the driving force behind sodding the area. I used cement blocks and a level. Job done.

I used the lawn edger at the bottom to cut the sod into 8-10" wide rows for easing removal. I did end up really hurting my foot on the shovel. I did the remaining 2/3rds of the sodding myseld because Todd was busy.

I added plants to the front 1/3 while continuing to sod.

 The entire bed done and now adding mulch.

More mulch please!

All done.

More Kakishibu

Jean couldn't make it today so Marcela and I dyed a bunch of stuff with Nutmeg MX dye. Next week we will get together and make marks with thickened black dye. Hopefully by the time this post publishes We will have cool stuff to show you.

Sorted

All the the 144 squares have been sorted by hue and value. I will be arranging them in a diagonal wave 5 feet X 7 feet. I will have to dye some additional fabric for a border and binding.

And now a cautionary tale

I bought 6 spools of "Essential Pro" thread from Connecting Threads. It looks great doesn't it? Well, it was total rubbish. The thread width varied regular to thin, broke while sewing and had slubs so big I was actually shocked they made it through the eye of the needle.

I went on to the website and it said NO RETURNS. I wrote them an email and expressed my shock about the poor quality - total lack of quality - of their Essential Pro thread. I never even received the courtesy of a return email. These were over $40. On top of that it took weeks for it to get here. I followed up a few days later with a phone call and they said they would send a return label and my money would be refunded. Never again.

I immediately went to Wawak, selected 8 spools of top quality Gutermann thread and it cost over a dollar LESS a (over 1000yds) spool. Super high quality. I'm just sayin'. DO NOT buy anything from Connecting Threads.

Fun with Marcella and Jean

Marcella and Jean came over yesterday and we had a great play date. We took a sheet of A2 paper and used blue painters tape to tape it to the table and to divide the sheet into six sections. We used ALL KINDS of media to make marks including ink, watercolors, acrylic paint, posca pens, charcoal, hairspray, oil pastels and much, much more. The main thing is that we painted the entire sheet as though there was no tape on it then when done, removed the tape. Now we had six discrete pictures. 

When I took off the tape it was so interesting I taped it into my sketchbook and added a few marks. What a fun day.