Exciting Times

I've had a very exciting week of creativity and it's only Tuesday! It started off on Sunday night with a two hour mammoth session of chatting with fellow members of Etsy from around Scotland. We are reviving our Etsy group McEtsy with a fervent passion, so watch this space for our new adventures.

I have had my second glove commission order within the past month going to Australia, so I am desperately thinking of ways to promote my knitted wares to the good people of Oz....any ideas would be appreciated.
I have also posted some new items to my KnitTwits Etsy shop, my favourite being these cute pink chunky knit gloves with assorted buttons... cute as a button!

My lazy butt has also been motivated to pick up my paint brushes as I have two commission that have been hanging over my head since Christmas! I thought I would show you how I go about painting one of my paintings with Acrylic paint...
First of all I paint a monochromatic under painting with black, white and a brown (Raw Umber). This gives me my very darks and very lights and helps me plot where everything goes. This is the hardest part for me and the most frustrating...I just want to paint with the pretty colours! But the most valuable. I then do a wash of colour using different colours over different parts of the painting. Here I use the watered down colour straight out of the tube and nice bright colours. This acts as a another base to the paintings and makes sure I get some paint into all of the dips in the canvas. As it is watered down you can see the monochromatic under painting still. I love seeing some of these bright colours creep out when I put the next layer of paint on. These layers give the painting real depth and interest. I have just started adding the next layer of colour. As I have my under paintings it's almost like painting with numbers and is my favourite part. I love colour and will show you how I get on in the next few days.

Hope you all had a good weekend. Get up to anything nice? We went to have a nosy around the grounds of Glasgow University...i want to go back to Uni now! x

Music to my Ears

Hope you all had a spiffy weekend? It was a bank holiday here in the UK so hubby and I had a extra day off today which was lovely....though we spent half the day cleaning upstairs and the other half taking a trip into Glasgow to buy some holiday clothes for Miss G and I'm pooped!

I thought I would share the gig Mr Smith and I went to on Thursday which took us to King Tut's Wah Wah Hut for the first time (a long standing, and legend of a gig venue in Glasgow). It was like watching your favourite band in your living room! Lovely and intimate and made even better that we were standing on a bench in front of the sound dude...prime viewing. The band we went to see is BellX1....everyone say "who?" An Irish band that do really well in Ireland and rather well in the USA and have been on the soundtrack of The OC, Grey's Anatomy and One Tree Hill.



The lead singer has a truly amazing voice and great quirky lyrics....just fab. From the crowd at King Tut's who knew all the words to fantastic tunes such as Eve the Apple of My Eye, Bad Skin Day, I'll See your Heart (And Raise you Mine), Flame and Rocky Took a Lover, it's obvious there is a very strong fan base here in the UK. I have added some of their tunes to my Playlist at the bottom of my blog or you can go to their MySpace page. It has been three years since BellX1 last came to Glasgow...hopefully they won't take that long again!

You should also check out Prascilla Ahn. I saw her support Ray LaMontagne earlier this year and I loved her. Again there are some of her songs on my Playlist at the bottom of my page or her MySpace page. Happy listening x

Ramblings of a mad woman

My favourite ribbon shop (VVRouloux) closed in Glasgow a few months ago I thought "no problem I'll buy it online"...famous last words! I just spent a good part of the last hour trying to decide on which web site to buy from, trying to figure of the tones of the colours, crying at the cost of postage and packaging for a couple of metres of ribbon *sniff*. I don't like to buy whole spools of ribbon as I'm not making that many gloves at the moment and I don't have the money to spend. So I'm at a bit of a loss. All I want to do is go to a shop and have a feel and look at the ribbon... buying over the Internet just isn't the same. I bought some around Christmas time online and it is still sitting in the box it came in as it is much heavier, not as silky, as the ribbon I bought from my favourite shop. Well the up shot is I still haven't bought any ribbon! I think I'll just have to be brave and go for one of the shops I found and pay the minimum £10 order with postage grrrrrr.

The ribbon is for my first order of gloves from Australia! Very exciting the thought of my gloves going to the other side of the world!

There have been quite a few lovely things coming through the post in the past few weeks, one of which arrived this morning from Gorjuss.

This lovely keyring is going on my work keys...something handmade from Etsy to cheer me up on my working days. What makes this even better is that Suzanne Woolcott from Gorjuss lives in Glasgow, Scotland where she runs her business with her husband (read this lovely article from Etsy The Storque on Gorjuss and "Quit Your Day Job".

One of the lovely friends I have made in blogland is Kenneth Anderson who sent me these amazing postcards of his work with an extra special one especially for me. If only I could draw like that by freehand. It's a picture of Grace with her pet Stegosaurus.....when she draws our cat Gizmo they always look like little Stegosaurus cause he's very hairy and spiky! I'm so happy with them and they will be going up on Grace's wall pronto.

I took the plunge the other week and ordered my first set of business cards for my KnitTwits shop from moo.com and I am so so chuffed with them. I think they look fab....what do you think?


I also ordered some labels for my knitted items but they are a bit bigger than I expected (I should have read the size print!!) so I'll keep them for my larger items such as this scarflette I knitted for Grace.

Oh Crumbs!

Miss G has been watching old kids cartoons on DVD recently and there are two firm favourites coming out tops. No.1 is Sooty and No2. is Dangermouse. Now for my American friends who haven't heard of either of these you can probably watch clips of both of these on YouTube. Grace is loving Dangermouse so much she's asking to dress up as Dangermouse for Halloween (a while to go yet so she'll probably change her mind), but I'm getting all excited at the prospect of making a Dangermouse costume. This brings me to draw up my own 80's retro top 10 favourite kids programmes. What's your favourite programme of your childhood?

1. The Flumps









2. Mr Benn















3. Banana Man









4. Bagpuss















5. Trumpton












6. Fraggle Rock















7. The Wombles












8. The Raccoons


















9. Pigeon Street

10. Button Moon


























Happy days xxx

Getting all Arty Farty

I was speaking to someone today at work (I promised you an image of the gallery I work at so here you go) who has just finished her degree in Art History at Glasgow University. She asked my what my dissertation was about, which was turn of the 20th century Scandinavian Impressionist art. I loved doing my dissertation so i thought I would share some of the paintings that I enjoy. Another reason this came to mind today was I came across the paintings and prints by Janet Hill. Janet's interior paintings remind me of the interior paintings that the Scandinavian artists, such as Anna Ancher, Peter Ilsted and Vilhelm Hammershoi loved to paint. It also reminds me of the work by one of my dear friends Caroline Walker, who is currently in London finishing off her MA in painting at the Royal College of Art, London.

"Tea Service" by Janet Hill

Peter Ilsted
Vilhelm Hammershoi
Anna Ancher"Frognal Lane 9.30am" by Caroline Walker

"Frognal Lane 2pm" by Caroline Walker

I have a very special charcoal drawing by Caroline in my hallway and I would love a oil painting to go with it, but I think she has hit the big time now and is destined for great things... keep you eye out for her name in the bright lights!

Easter Madness

Hope you all had a fantastic Easter and ate a huge amount of chocolate? I know I did and I then spent the rest of the day (and the next day) telling Grace 'NO' to any more chocolate!

My Hubby likes to do treasure hunts (see the post for Grace's birthday in November) and this Easter he didn't let us down. Grace, me, sis and Granny all had to go from room to room finding colour coded cardboard egg parts, until all our parts made four eggs in total. I think my sister enjoyed it a bit too much and beat us all (including Grace) to finding all the parts! Great fun though and Grace loved helping Granny who couldn't find any of the parts!I've been trying to make pouches for the summer months to sell in my Etsy shop and here is my first one and I'm rather pleased with it.

I also knitted these dark gray gloves with a touch of cashmere embellished with a light silver satin ribbon....lovely, soft and cosy.


It's my Hubby's birthday today....32 and still looking fab! So this is a birthday post dedicated to the birthday boy. Grace and I are off to meet him for lunch, then I'm cooking a birthday dinner, followed by a game or two on the Wii I think. HAPPY BIRTHDAY J xxx

The Comeback Kid

Well after much deliberation and procrastination I have decided to post on my blog again. I think I had a touch of writers block because of course I write so much text on my blog! I've left my memory card with all of my photos on it at work so not many photos to show and tell today.

Talking about work, one of the reasons I haven't been blogging lately is due to the relocation of the art gallery that I work at 4 days a week. For the past 10 years scotlandart.com has been in the southside of Glasgow...tucked away in the a suburb of Glasgow, with regular customers and sales, but not much passing trade. So, a week past Wednesday the gallery finally, after much blood sweat and tears, moved to a very swanky new space right in the heart of Glasgow. The day after we moved we had our first exhibition opening at the new address. Very exciting with lots of people...I even got my hair done for the event! We plan on having a lot more exhibition openings and cocktail evenings. I have been working at the gallery three years this month and it's taking me a while to get used to my new surroundings and my new customers coming through the doors, but I'm getting there. If you are ever in Glasgow come and see me (I'm part of the furniture!).

I have still been knitting and once I have my memory card back I'll post some images of what I have been up to. I have also just come off Etsy where I have been featured on the front page which was a lovely surprise...just the kick up the butt I needed. Thank you Penny Glass Girl.

I'm off to say hello to everyone. It's nice to be back...maybe this will stop me watching too many cop programmes (the real life ones) and Girls of the Playboy Mansion! what am I like. L x