Trees 'darned' trees

Came back from 3 days in Aberdeen and had a fairly peaceful weekend. Then last Sunday night it was a wee bit windy. Alas one of the venerable trees decided to shed some branches and took out the phone line - third time in the past 6 months. Its amazing how frustrating it can get with no phones (we can't even get a mobile signal here!) and an internet connection which only popped up now and then and was really slow. The wee man in the call centre in India took a while to believe that he couldn't phone me back because I was ringing him on the mobile in a layby up the road and didn't want to hang around there for an hour or so!! By the time it was repaired on Friday I had a long list of calls to make and emails to reply.

It meant I couldn't update you all on progress. This photo was taken last week but I'll share it now and then take another tomorrow. In this one I was making a tree using a pile stitch.

It looks shaggy but will be much neater when its trimmed. You can see the grass and hedge are working better too.

Grass can be too green !

Despite some windy and cold weather I have managed to get in quite a few hours on the weaving thanks to my trusty gas heater.

Progress started slowly but steadily with lots of sampling along the way.

This is one of two sampling strips completed so far. I think by the time I get finished I may have enough to make a wee bag!

Progressing nicely .....on the right anyway.

Alas my attempts with the grass on the left of the weaving were not so good. You would think it would be easier as its just plain green grass but alas it has caused me several hours of frustration.

After several samples I actually wove about 2 inches but the colour just wasn't right. The problem was all my grass green colours were coming out just too green and bright.

I looked at the photo again and also at some others and eventually decided that part of the problem is the perspective. Photos are seeing things in 3 dimensions but I am weaving flat so the effect of light is different.

So I have stripped it out, remixed, resampled and started to weave it again.

Managed to get the sky showing through the foliage on the tree quite well and some texture in the bush. I'm not using texture in the reflection and all the reflection mixes have some biege or grey added to suitably dull the colour.

Working the weaving on its side is really making me think about techniques such as eccentric weaving. That's one I have used a lot in my landscapes but it's effect can be very different this way
round.