Here on Skye we escaped the snow that other parts of the UK suffered, but it was bitterly cold and windy. And, there was a fantastic bonus - natural ice sculptures!
Waterfalls froze solid. This is Eas a Bhadrain, just beside the main road between Broadford and Portree:
But best of all was Mealt Falls, up on the Trotternish peninsula. The water that normally drops straight off a steep cliff was blown back by the freezing wind, and coated the plants and fences with ice. A magical sight!
Not an easy subject to tackle in machine embroidery, but I did do a couple of little samples.
First grasses coated in ice, I loved how you could see the stem through the ice. I machine embroidered the stems on Lutradur 70 then cut round them by hand. Overlaying two layers gave depth.
I also had a go at a fence with ice covering every wire and dripping with icicles: FME on Aquasol with silver on the bobbin and shaded turquoise on top. I'm not trying to be realistic, I wanted a colour to contrast with a white background so I could also get shadows. Plus a bit of twinkle!
I'm still wondering how to interpret some of the other phenomena... but I can't improve on nature, so maybe I'll just be happy with memories of a rare and beautiful sight.
No comments:
Post a Comment