Dance With Me

Dance with me O lover of my soul To the song of all songs Romance me O lover of my soul To the song of all songs Behold You have come Over the hills Upon the mountains To You I have run My beloved You've captured my heart

With You I will go You are my love You are my fair one Winter is past And the springtime has come Dance with me

Lyrics by Chris Dupre

The words are not mine and neither is the music that it is set to, but the beat is 3/4, a glorious lilting waltz. And it is a favourite for me to dance to in worship.
Last night was a free service in Church on the Move. We are blessed with talented musicians in our group and they played their socks off last night. Old hymns, faithful words, glorious freedom in song, prayer and dance.
And dance! Did I!! Felt like I was flying, love it. I gave that silk banner a good work out I can tell you!

Woke this morning at 4 am thanks to a warm night, open windows and a peculiarly robotic sounding starling, trilling and popping away on the wires outside. The wind blew the breath of trees into the room and I had to go outside for a walk.

It was so peaceful. No traffic, rare even at that time of the morning on the travesty of a road that they have sliced through my valley. My robotic starling had gone back to bed and I was just beeped at by sparrows and a blackbird gave me a darned good telling off too. The nettles smelled warm, the rugosa roses smelled of heaven and Zac, who had kept me company, started mewing for breakfast.
Back to the house for shredded wheat and warm sweet milk(me) and crunchy fish biccies (Zac). I burned up a lot of calories last night. I bet I'll be wanting steak for lunch too. Perhaps we'll go out, save me cooking. I can't do steak very well.
Quiet day today I think. V will probably be visiting his Dad in hospital, but still back to church tonight. Just can't get enough of freedom.

Have a beautiful, song filled, rose scented day.

Even More Silk Painting

Are you bored yet? Well I'm not. These colours are just so gorgeous. Here is my horse banner painted up. I wanted the colours of the Welsh flag, the knots symbolise both the Celtic spirit, its fluidity and concept of eternity and the running horse just speaks to me of freedom and strength, something I am very conscious of when it comes to worship, dance in particular...but don't get me started. I think that is a whole different post.

And another banner that I did last night as a trial run to see how well I could control the run of colour with the gutta (the white stuff used on outlines).

Some comparisons

La Tea Da, over at Gracious Hospitality left a kind comment on my previous silk painting post and I would like to assure her that silk painting is not that delicate, well ... not the way I do it! The outlining is a bit fiddley, but the painting itself is a very hotch potch affair and great fun too. My kids really enjoy it.
I don't think I'm through with silk just yet so you'll see a few more pics before all's done and I've run out of silk tissue!

Have a colourful, silky day!

More Silk Painting

Streamers

Horse on paper

Horse traced onto silk

Celtic knots

As promised, here are some pics of my attempts at silk painting. The streamers were very easy, just potched about and the colours were so glowingly beautiful that even I could not go wrong. But I also want to make a banner for myself when I am dancing in church. A large semi circle with a dowelling rod to wave with. They are very effective and especially useful when you have run out of breath with more energetic moves. Banner waving looks very kinetic with little effort!

Also I've said before that I am not an artist and the horse, (inspired by Rohan horse art - LOTR) lacks some of the fluidity I was after, the feet are rather shaky but not a bad stab in all.
The celtic knots are traced, taken from a fantastic book called the Crafter's Design LibrarySeries - Celtic by Chris Down. A really excellent resourse for all sorts of crafting stuff.

I'll post up some more shots when I've got the nerve to paint it up. I'm thinking green background, metallic gold horse and knots. Possibly marble it through with some red. I shall experiment but would welcome feedback if you are so inclined as I'm not that confident with colour myself (unless I'm wearing it). Thanks

Additional
According to my 101 in1001 I joined the Chocolate Tasting Club again. As Oscar said, I can resist everything except temptation.

Painted Silk Banners

Lily and me (I'm tired by now) and the days labours behind us

Waiting to start the mayhem

Steph and Sara laying out the silk

Ness, the hero of the day

Today Vanessa earned herself a medal. Thirteen kids and their mums all congregated in the upper room and danced like lunatics. This is silk painting but not as we know it. Banners, dance and worship and children utterly unselfconscious in expression both in movement and colour. It was lovely to see.

Lovely too to see white habotai tissue fold into rainbow colours.

Colours galore

Inspired, I took some home myself. Will show you tomorrow with more pics