working on roses

I made rose petals a long time ago. Now that I bought some pink dye at Wollknoll on Wednesday I finally dyed the petals today and started working on the roses.

pink dye powder dissolved in hot water with some vinegar
in the little bucket are the wet withe petals

I dipped only the outside into the dye

then placed it on cling film in several layers, all with
more plastic between and fixed it in the microwave

a second batch with slightly darker pink

also wrapped in cling film and fixed in the micro wave

then assembled in 3 or 4 layers stitched together with some golden seed beads

dark and light mixed

in every layer a cut and twisted

added some leaves

Almost finished, still needs some more shaping and fulling

the best thing in the world

creating something, working with my hands, just concentrating on this one thing, this piece which slowly develops, never ever thinking how much money it could bring but how much joy to have it finished, to look at it, so much happiness to give it to somebody who likes it, directing my thoughts into work to leave something behind when I am gone

clematis paniculata

beads in the middle

the top of the green is just painted

I think that comes close enough to our native clematis

I have already done all the white and green bits, now I have to finish the centre and finally do the painting. After that its time for doing leaves and vines.

Rose

Finished a rose yesterday evening which looks more like a rose, made me pretty happy :)

some flower experiments

base for native clematis

needs more !

hmmm, they don't look like roses

first try, don't like it

that could be developed....

slightly better

getting closer

I am still not happy about the roses, will carry on trying out different things.

lazy time

Almost 4 weeks have gone here in Germany and I am feeling so lazy. I haven't done much creative work at all.
It is a strange feeling to be back where I was living for so many years. So many things have changed. During the last 6 month 3 of the neighbours have died, 2 of the houses are sold and the whole neighbourhood is in a state of hibernation/grief. I am grieving too, lots of the plants in the garden I loved and which had lots of memories for me are gone too. Well it is a normal process I guess, when young ones take over old properties. They have different preferences and don't want what their parents had. But it would have been nice to wait, until I am gone too.
When I am here old memories always catch up and not all of them are good, though things fade in time. Depression is always flaring up, old habits want to catch up too. Life is so different here.
I promised to make 3 wall-hangings for the Just Imagine Gallery in Russell until October and now I am a bit stuck, I just cannot get going. At least I started to make clematis flowers, one of the wall-hangings has a spring theme. In spring you see the white flowers of the native clematis high up on top of the bush.

But of course, now I am here in Germany and don`t have the right feeling for that.

I see here fields with poppies and corn flowers, a patchwork pattern of different greens, dark conifer forests, and roses and more roses....
I want to learn to felt roses, roses are everywhere here and my mind is full of them. Wouldn't it be great to felt roses in a way, that you can imagine the soft fragrance! White and soft pink.....

Morning walk in Neunkirchen

It was a week ago that we arrived in Germany after a long flight. The weather was nice the first day but then the New Zealand winter followed us with cold temperatures, rain and wind. What a nice surprise to wake up this morning with the sun shining in the bedroom! So we went for a lovely morning walk