An artist's canvas. Or a box of shreddies?

Uh-oh, I've been experimenting again. Like a mad creative scientist.
What usually happens is a kind of creative mania where I grab anything
and everything in the house to do with the particular idea and just
pile it up in the living room (where I do most work in the evenings)
and then sit with it. Or sit on it. (and eventually even work on it. ha!) Take this for
instance.

It's Frankencanvaswerk! Ooh I have grand plans for it. Trouble is, the grandiosity of the plan didn't quite match the nature of the fabric.

This
is 25 count evenweave, hand-dyed by yours truly. And then painstakingly
stitched on, for what seemed like hours (through the Friday Night Play,
and two episodes of Mark Steel's Solution no less) only to send me
spiralling into eyestrain and a humongous headache. Thanks, evenweave,
I love you too! I was a little over-ambitious, I think. I wanted to
create spirals as well as squares, you see, and I chose a teeny tiny
thread count so the spirals would be more, um, spirally when worked in
tent stitch. Mishtake! The sample below that looks like a box
of run-over shreddies, well, that's about a 10 count. Easier on the
eyes, anyway. But very very brown of background.

You see, I fell in love with these Ehrman kits  but I wanted to design my own (I
know! why choose the easy option marked 'add to basket' when you can
spend hours giving yourself a headache over 25 count evenweave?).
So I am really having a go, but haven't quite cracked it. I'm sure I'll
get there, and my wrapped-thread shreddie wallhanging will be ready for
the living room wall!

Having time to
experiment is such a luxury so I took full advantage of it and got the
Procion dyes out for some cottons and velvets:

I love the results. The velvet is cotton-based so not quite as shiny as I wanted it to be:

I
think I need viscose velvet for the shiny-shiny effect, but apart from
that I do love the other bits of cotton fabric I scrunched up and dyed.
(glamorously, in a plastic cup!)

I managed a (warning! lame pun alert!) stab at needle felting too :) An embellishing machine is just a distant dream for me, so I've been using a Clover Felting Tool which is surprisingly quick. And it's good therapy if you've had a bad day, all that punching ;)

Not a great pic but you get the idea (the problems of early afternoon darkness!!). This piece has a bit of gold free-machine embroidery on too. I didn't bother with the special Clover felting brush - I used an old nylon bristle hairbrush! One day I'll have saved up for a posh machine then I'll be felting everything in sight. I for one can't wait to see the results of that particular experiment... ;)