Autumn Equinox Stitching

And a sketchbook adventure...

Hejsa!

It is the autumn equinox on Sunday. Although it doesn't feel terribly autumnal. Yesterday it was sunny and we had 24°C!

I have been working on the pages for my Wheel of The Year project. I wasn't 100% sure that the orange background was the right choice but I think it turned out really well! I love the richness of it. There is a lot of orange about in the autumn after all. And it's a nice contrast to the other colours. As usual I worry that the plants aren’t recognisable… Please tell me you recognised bramble, chicory, chestnut, and sloe? :-)

Just two more seasons to go in the Wheel and then another one starts.

I'm still taking daily pictures of the desk in my wee studio. Sometimes there is little change from day to day, sometimes there is a big change. It is an interesting record, probably mainly interesting to me. If you are using the Substack app, you can see the daily desk photos in my notes.

Yesterday, I took a picture of my homework for an online travel sketching course I'm taking. It is giving me some new techniques which I'm excited to try on my next trip. Well, my next trip into London, I haven't got any travel plans at the moment.

I'm using one of my regular sketchbooks for my exercises. This wasn't my original plan because I didn't want to waste pages on exercises. What if I messed them up? But, I want to make sketching a regular habit (again), and sketching practice is part of the habit. And it may be useful to have those exercise sketches as reference when I'm out and about...

I made a little day in the life video to celebrate the Equinox. You can watch it here. Blake is in it too! :-)

Happy autumn Equinox and have a lovely weekend!

x Carina

P.S. I may have decided on a new name for this Substack newsletter /blog /publication /notebook of nonsense… More about that next time.

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Some Things I Am Enjoying

Book: Empireland: How Imperialism Has Shaped Modern Britain* by Sathnam Sanghera. Very interesting book. Can highly recommend it.

Watching: In my last post I said that we were going to start watching Taskmaster but that was wrong! Because it started a week later than I thought! But now it has started and we can watch it and it is just good fun. :-)

Also watching: The new series of Only Murders in The Building. So good. The cast is always *chef’s kiss*

Music: The September playlist!

*bookshop.org affiliate link.

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Some Interesting Things on The Internet

The books by Joumana Medlej look very interesting. She is an artist-scholar who specialises in the scripts and art technology of the medieval Middle East.

Many Hands Make a Quilt: Short Histories of Radical Quilting by Jess Bailey.

Baked Tawa Pulao – Indian Spiced Rice Bake from Vegan Richa. I used the recipe as inspiration for something similar (I didn’t have all the ingredients in the recipe) and it was delicious.

Mauka to Makai: Hawaiian Quilts and the Ecology of the Islands edited by Marenka Thompson-Odlum.

Forgetting English words after studying another language? on YouTube. For me it’s more that I forget Danish words after living in the UK for so long. But it also happens with English when I have been in Denmark for an extended visit. And sometimes when I’m using one of my other languages things get mixed up.

The Fairy Tale Tree: The Vintage Czech Children’s Book that Inspired Nick Cave.

Map | Domesday Book. If you live in England, you can have a look at the Domesday Book entry for your location.

Speaking of sketching, here are a couple of quilting “sketches”. Not sure where this is going, if anywhere...

I'm not sure where the idea came from but I'm very much enjoying making these with no plan or end goal. I think it's important to do that sometimes. :-)

I was thinking of maybe making a short video tutorial for how to make something like this. Would you be interested in that?