Wow life has kept me busy lately. So busy I have been building the site but not adding to my personal blog here.
This weekend was really exciting! My husband's boss has his own light aircraft and he invited us out for a trip. We flew out to the seaside, back over our village and then returned to the airfield. What an experience.
Of course I took my camera with me (I don't go anywhere without it, even walking the dogs) and took some photos. I thought I would share some with you, along with my thoughts on them.
England's landscape
I loved this shot of a group of ponds. Colour has always fascinated me and I was amazed at the different colours of the water. The layout of the ponds somehow reminds me of crazy patchwork with the trees inbetween adding texture. Just imagine silks and satins representing the water, with turkey work embroidery for the trees. Luscious!
Something else that came to mind was the Indian technique of Shisa embroidery where mirrors are attached to the fabric with straignt stitches that criss cross over it. Then more stitches are worked into these eventually forming an encrusted boundary to each piece of mirror or shisa. Wonderful.
Our village
Do you find that you are so used to seeing something familiar that you don't actually SEE it? I know I do. This was why it was so fascinating actually flying over our village. I know the road and buildings so well that it was really strange seeing them from above. With our village being mainly just one straight road it was quite easy to orient myself and pick out my house, the pub and the village hall. The chicken farm up at the end of the village was easy to spot. However I took another shot of the other end of the village and had more trouble working out what was what.
Someone told me that this picture reminded her of a Cezanne painting and I can see what she means.
I could see this photograph being used as the inspiration for a piece of needlepoint, with different textured stitches being used for each field. Perhaps the road could be a couched piece of metallic thread winding its way through the project.
Some things that did surprise me, flying over the East Anglian countryside, were that so many of the fields were rectangular with straight borders and hedges. And the rich dark black squares that depicted the earth in the fen fields.
If you ever get the chance to go up in light aircraft and see your suroundings from a different perspective (we were half a mile above) jump at it. I really enjoyed the experience. Well, to tell the truth, I did until I started to feel as green as some of the fields, but I won't elaborate on that one!
