I’ve heard of those games but never played them, so didn’t recognise the boards. And I bet the actual boards aren’t always as pretty as your embroidered ones anyway!
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Another piece of work I’m very pleased with. The technique is called double knitting.
This is a link to a short video of the scarf.
https://photos.app.goo.gl/TD3vAPGYPhNVMHBV7.
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What exquisite work and wonderful pattern— demonstrating the amazing effects of different colour combination sampler effects, yet all capturing the dragon so beautifully. That must have taken many, many hours. Well done!
How beautiful and delicate an effect you have achieved with the sea-glass. It has a softness and translucence, yet made from a naturally hard material. You obviously have a great eye for how to piece this together to achieve this.
I wonder what the original glass was that you have used in the petals. The green leaves, presumably from… what? Beer bottles?
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I had no idea that such glass was naturally occurring, albeit from a catastrophic event generating high temperatures and pressure under the impact. When we see what folk produced millennia ago, it is both humbling, but cause for celebration because of what humans are capable of doing.
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You really have mastered this technique, which looks equally glorious on both sides, but then blended the colours of the rainbow into a gorgeous design. How do you display this?
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I wear it! It ought to be blocked, stretched so that it is more rectangular, but I’ve never blocked a piece of knitting in my life. Without the blocking it has a natural fold line down the middle, lengthwise. I have exhibited my work, along with some of my mother’s quilts, but I always talk about the pieces and I’m not precious about people touching things.
It was the first piece of double knitting I ever did and certainly learned a new set of swear words while doing so. The pattern is called Victorian Raffia and is by Alasdair Post Quinn and Keiran Foley.
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It’s difficult to say where the pink glass came from, it’s not one of the common colours (it took a few years to find that much of it!), but yes, the green is most likely beer bottles. Green is very common, as is white and brown. I also have quite a bit of what I would call ‘sea foam’, which is a slightly turquoise colour, and some dark blue, plus a few pieces of dark turquoise, grey, and varying shades of green and brown from almost-yellow through to almost-black.
That really is gorgeous, Margaret.
My nan and mum were very good knitters, so I appreciate how much work has gone into that.
Sadly, though they tried to teach me, I couldn’t get my head around it (too much counting for me!), so the only things I’ve ever knitted are plain stitch scarves using one fat needle and one slim needle to get a holey/lacy effect where mistakes are harder to spot and it ‘grows’ fast enough that I don’t get bored with it! 
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I restarted sketching a few months ago, and normally do pen and watercolour urban sketches. But this view of Castell Carreg Cennen came up on a weekly Instagram landscape challenge, so I couldn’t resist having a go!
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I used to do a lot of cross-stitch, but not so much now my eyesight has worsened.
Here’s my bodhran - it was very plain so I designed and stitched the band to go around the side (some 20 odd years ago!)
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And here’s a much more recent sculpture - it’s one of my favourite pieces, and is called Hwylio
Although the glass looks white in the photo, it’s actually pink, and I think the bendy bit must have been part of a handle once.
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This is gorgeous Siaron, I can well understand it being one of your favourites—the contrast in the materials works wonderfully, and shapes complement one another so well, they beling together. And, of course, title is perfect. Did the title inspire the piece while you were working with the glass shapes, or did they inspire the title?
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Absolutely brilliant! Did you design the pattern too? I love it and the way you have worked metallic thread into it—or I should check, is it metallic?
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The pen and ink seems perfectly suited to the subject, capturing the stonework of the ruined castle, but also works beautifully in giving form and structure ti the while landscape. Well done! Do you ever use different colour inks?
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Sometimes I’ll find something and think “that has to be…”, and sometimes the title comes later as I’m assembling and it inspires a word. in this case, it was only in finding the second, smaller, pink upright piece that it all came together to be a sail boat - up until then I hadn’t been sure what to do with the pink bend and had just been trying various combinations.
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Yes, I adapted it from a design I saw in a book, but had to work out the scaling to fit a cross-stitch grid, and of course make it a continuous pattern. And yes, that’s metallic gold thread picking out the outlines. I think it took about a year to complete.
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Thank you!
I’ve not tried coloured inks yet. Something I’d love to experiment with in future (maybe with dipping pens?)
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Great idea—you could vary the thickness of the line with a nib, so experiment with all kinds of effects. Sepia ink might be worth a try, and if you keep a brush and water handy to wash the ink while it is wet you could create beautiful shadows. Have fun.
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This is beautiful work @siaronjames . I’m not surprised it took you a year. Do you still play?
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