Knowing When To Stop

When it comes to restoring old photos I don´t pretend to be an expert. For me it´s been – and still is – a learning process but one important thing I have learned is knowing when to stop. Now that´s the problem with being a perfectionist. I just can´t do things by halves. “Good enough” isn´t even half good enough for me. It´s got to be perfect. Or at least it used to be like that because I´ve learned that perfection can sometimes be not only inappropriate but even bland and boring. Take this photo of my aunt for example...

Its major flaws are obvious. There´s a huge white blotch on her sleeve and in several places like on her skirt and shoe there´s a sepia discolouration which is repeated in the bushes behind her. I managed, with some difficulty, to edit out the blotch by using a combination of the patch and the healing brush tools. Ditto those distracting white cracks on her right. The sepia stains on the skirt and shoe were more difficult until I came up with the idea of making a feathered selection around them, copying them and then adding a colour overlay sampled from the skirt and set to “color”. It took some trial and error to get the colour right but I think that worked out pretty well.

I deliberately left the sepia tinted bushes because I think they give an impression of sunlight which would be missing if I altered the colour. There was a time when I´d have cropped the photo and added a pristine white border but, as I said before, I´m gradually learning that perfection can sometimes be out of place and I think that the original imperfect border reflects the age of the photo. It´s not perfect but it´s good enough. Anyway, here´s the resultant scrapbook page.

As you can see, I´ve cropped the photo but the only further alteration I made to it was by using a warming filter on it to heighten its vintage look. Just one thing I wish I could alter is the coat she´s got bundled up beside her. Uh oh, I haven´t learned my lesson yet. Stop me someone before I reach for the cloning tool!

Making Assumptions

I´m sure that like me you sometimes come across old photos, turn them over and are disappointed to find little or no information about what I think of as the 3 Ws, namely who, where and when. Often we have to make informed guesses based on prior knowledge. For example if we know who the people are we can often guess when the photo was taken by their approximate age at the time or the style of their clothes. Where it was taken can be more difficult unless, for example, it´s on the beach and we know of a favourite family seaside resort. I recently found a photo on the back of which someone had simply written “Luss”. It may sound cryptic but it turned out to be the only clue I needed because from that place name I was able to fill in all of the gaps.

To begin at the beginning, my maternal grandfather started the first bus service in Glasgow driving day trippers from the city to Loch Lomond in the Trossachs, the region between the Scottish Lowlands and the Highlands.

As you can see by clicking on the map, the town of Luss is on the west bank of the loch. The fact that my grandpa is wearing a bus driver´s uniform in the photo tells me that this was obviously a business trip. Apart from that, the 5 people in the photo are split into 2 distinct groups with my grandparents and my mother on the right and an unknown lady and a girl on the left. I can assume from this that the 2 unknowns were passengers on the bus and the photo was very likely taken by the lady´s other companion, maybe her husband. Finally, from the approximate age of my mother, I can guess that the date was 1926.

I created this page using a background and some elements which may eventually morph into a kit. As you can see, the original photo, which I´ve tucked under the frame, is faded and rather blotchy. However, I did a little restoration work on the family group by removing the worst of the blots and scratches and I also heightened the contrast. I´m quite pleased with the way it looks now that I´ve cropped it...just as if it was meant to fit into that frame! I may also create a page sometime using the unknown lady and her daughter(?) She´s so stylishly dressed in the latest fashion - at a time when ladies thought nothing of hanging dead animals around their necks - and the girl is holding a doll which is also wearing a 1920s costume complete with a dropped waistline and a cloche hat. What a treasure this photo turned out to be!

Happy(?) Halloween

It´s that time again of “ghoulies and ghosties and long-legged beasties, and things that go bump in the night.” That quote is part of a Celtic prayer and is particularly suitable for Halloween, when according to ancient Celtic tradition, the dead walk again with malicious intent. Halloween originated in Scotland and we Scots still take our Halloween seriously. No friendly smiling ghosts and harmless leering pumpkins for us. After all, it was a grim festival with blood-curdling ceremonies. I won´t tell you what the “trick” was but leave it mercifully shrouded in the mists of time, and I certainly won´t divulge what the “treat” consisted of. I wouldn´t want to entirely spoil the day for you and make you shudder as you hand out the candy.

My husband just missed being born on Halloween by one day so I always include something slightly macabre among his presents. Yesterday he got a very trendy dog-walking jacket – nothing sinister about that - and a giant-sized lighter with this motif on it, the next best thing to having it tattooed on his biceps...

Dora, who plays absolutely no part in any of this foolishness, would be mad at me if she knew about the gruesome looking image below which shows her in an unusually unflattering light. She hates having her photo taken anyway but especially first thing in the morning before she´s fixed her face...but then don´t we all?

Having played such a nasty trick on her maybe I´d better get off now and give her a treat.

Happy(?) Halloween!

Hearse And Horses

You´ll probably have guessed by now that I love prowling around art galleries and museums. One of my favourites has always been The Transport Museum. It used to be situated directly across the road from the Glasgow Art Galleries but has recently been renamed The Riverside Museum and moved to a new and much grander building in Clydebank, an aptly named suburb of Glasgow situated on the banks of the River Clyde.

One of the new attractions isn´t in the museum itself but floating on the river right next to it. This is The Glenlee, the so-called Tall Ship, a sailing ship built in Port Glasgow in 1896 and restored over a 6 year period to its former glory. If you´re interested, you can read about it HERE.

My favourite attraction in the old museum was the indoor reconstruction of a 1930´s Glasgow street complete with a painted night sky which gave it an amazingly realistic appearance. Looking into the lighted shop windows was like stepping back in time. It also included a cinema where you could watch films about the town in that era, and when you walked past the old pub you could hear laughter and fragments of conversation from inside. The new museum also has a street from the same era but, unlike its predecessor, unfortunately it leaves very little to the imagination as you can actually enter the “buildings” and view all the goods on display inside. Gone is the painted sky along with the magic. The fact that it leads directly into a brightly lit exhibition hall destroys any sense of reality the street used to have. On the day Eileen and I visited it the street was absolutely packed with tourists and probably an entire bus party or two which made it incredibly difficult to take any photos which didn´t include someone wearing a tee shirt and jeans. However, I found this photo on the Web which shows it under ideal conditions. See what I mean about the sky? Or lack of it?

It may have lost a lot of its magic for those of us who used to love its former – and much less frequented - self. However, what it does now have is a variety of vehicles parked at its kerbs, including a baker´s van, a car which Al Capone would have been proud of...

...and, rather surprisingly, a horse drawn hearse.

Now this is just a little bit spooky but I´m sure you´ll agree that, with Halloween approaching, it´s quite appropriate. And how about that sinister headless dummy in the dress shop window behind it!

The photo really ought to speak for itself so I´ve just used a few elements from Golden Memories to pick out the gold in it.

And for those of you who missed the kit freebies first time around, you´ll find them HERE.

Which reminds me, I´ll soon - probably some time in November - be making some radical changes to my blog which I´m afraid will entail removing many of my out-of-date freebies to make way for something I´d rather surprise you with than divulge (!) so if there´s anything among them which you´d like to have, please take it now while it´s still available.

Machetes And Music

If I´ve been MIA for a while it´s because for the past week or so I´ve been hacking a path with my machete through the tangled undergrowth from the bottom of my garden to the house. Well, maybe that´s a slight exaggeration though it felt like it at the time. I´ve actually been taking advantage of a spell of bright autumn weather by trimming and pruning all the climbing plants which got madly out of control during the summer. The wild hops were the worst offenders. They´re very sociable plants and had visited all their more reserved and cultivated cousins like the clematis and the honeysuckle and had outstayed their welcome just about everywhere they went. Even the grapevine which lives some distance away wasn´t safe from them. Everyone, including me, was relieved once I´d cut them down to size. They won´t be encroaching on anyone´s territory again until next spring. It looks as if I won´t either as I managed to pull a muscle while trying to disentangle a particularly stubborn shoot just beyond my reach and I´ll probably spend most of my time indoors until I can move again without wincing.

With all that gardening activity I haven´t had the time or the inclination to sort out more than a few of the photos I took in Glasgow in September. One particularly memorable day I spent with my friend, Eileen, in the Kelvingrove Art Galleries, one of my favourite haunts. The building alone is a wonderful example of Victorian architecture, both outside....

...and inside.

This is a view of the minstrels´ gallery.

Every afternoon at 1 o’clock an organ recital is held there. It´s hard to imagine the grandeur of the occasion but this - ever so slightly embellished - page may at least give you an impression of the magnificence and scale of the minstrels´gallery.

I found this video at You Tube. It doesn´t do the music the justice it deserves – it´s something you have to hear live - but it does at least give an indication of the splendour of the main reception hall and I´m sure your imagination will fill in the gaps.

A Fanfare Of Trumpets

When I bought my angel´s trumpet plant last summer it was only about 12” tall and had 5 leaves which it shed during its winter hibernation on my bedroom window sill and regained in the spring. This summer, after having been transplanted into a larger pot, it grew to an amazing 8 feet and produced masses of leaves but only 2 flowers. That was in mid-September and so late in the flowering season that I assumed that this was its swan song before dying back for the winter. When I got back from Scotland I was astonished to see that it was laden down with flowers and courgette-like buds which you can see in the larger photo. In the smaller one you can see a bud which is just about to open.

Click on image to enlarge

Today on a damp, dark and dreary October morning, when I look out onto my rain-washed patio and see those bright splashes of colour, I can almost hear a fanfare of trumpets.

The Time Warp AGAIN!

Well, I´m back and I had a really great trip – I´ll post some pics sometime to prove it - though memories of sublime Scotland have been superseded by the ridiculous, outrageous and thoroughly entertaining madness of the

Since we last saw it in 2009 both the choreography and most of the cast have changed but I´m glad to say that Rob Fowler is still playing the part of Frank N Furter as magnificently as ever. Here´s a video of his 2009 performance of Sweet Transvestite which I downloaded from You Tube. You´ll have to excuse the quality. I´ve never even attempted to make a video of the show myself but I can imagine how difficult it must be. Still, even the most professional video couldn´t begin to compare with the atmosphere of the live show.

This is a collage (more HERE ) I put together using images from the new version of the show we saw at the weekend. It includes cry-baby Columbia, test tube Rocky, the larger than life Frank N Furter and the completely out of their depth Brad and Janet. The most difficult part of this was literally giving Rocky a hand, his right hand to be exact, which in the original photo was hidden behind a curtain. Either that or Frank N Furter designed a man with a missing part...but we won´t go into that!

Click on image to enlarge

And finally, no performance of The Rocky Horror Show would be complete without its most famous number so let´s turn the music up deafeningly loud, get on those ripped fishnet stockings and do The Time Warp again.

Off On Monday

Well, I´ve just about finished packing. At least with the baggage restrictions I won´t have to even consider taking the kitchen sink with me this time. With the 20 kilo allowance it´s difficult enough already to decide what´s essential and what I can reluctantly leave behind.

I´m really looking forward to being in Scotland again for a few weeks and visiting all my old haunts in Glasgow, or at least those that still remain. I know the art school is still standing and our beautiful Kelvingrove Park with its Victorian museum and art galleries hasn´t changed much. Neither has Sauchiehall Street, my favourite shopping centre. With all the places I have to revisit I´ll need to have my shoes resoled when I get back.

And that reminds me that I have something else to look forward to shortly after my return which will take the edge off my homesickness.

Here´s a clue.

I won´t have to take much with me for THAT. Just my camera and maybe a pair of ripped fishnet stockings...for my husband.

See you soon.

Words Of Wisdom...And Otherwise

I don´t know about you but I can relate to many of these:

Before you marry Mr Right be sure that his first name isn´t Always.

If at first you don´t succeed, do it the way your wife told you to.

Men are like chocolates. Wait too long and only the weird or nutty ones are left.

A balanced diet is a cookie in each hand.

Chocolate will make your clothes shrink.

If God had wanted me to touch my toes, he´d have put them on my knees.

If crafts became illegal my house would be the tidiest in the world.

See any dust? Then I´ll give you a duster.

Never make the same mistake twice or you´ll never get round to all of them.

Of course I don´t look busy. I did it right first time.

A perfect summer day is when the sun´s shining, the birds are singing and the lawnmower is broken.

And finally...

The above is a picture I stitched for a friend. If you´d like the rusty clip I used, you´ll find it and some other pretty shabby freebies HERE.

PS This is more a definition than a saying but I couldn´t resist including it: onomatopoeia – first sign of a weak bladder.

Paisley Doodles

All the doodling that´s been going on around the blogs lately, initiated by Deb and continued by Jean, reminded me that I used to do quite a bit of doodling myself a while ago. Not in pen and ink and not on paper but in embroidery thread and on canvas. It wasn´t random doodling but was restricted to variations on the Paisley pattern. I didn´t exactly make it up as I went along but drew out rough guides to follow – or not as the mood took me – as you can see from the main photo, well, scan actually. That one is in cross stitch and is unfinished and still without the backstitched details but the one on the left hand page of the book is a part of an embroidered cushion I completed.

I created this page using Pretty Shabby which includes its own little Paisley doodle. For those of you who missed the freebies first time around, I´ll be posting them before I leave for Scotland later this month. One of my friends lives in Paisley. Maybe I´ll drop by and get enough inspiration from the town the pattern was named after to actually complete my picture.