Mad As A...

well, yes.  I'm back onto hats.  It has been a while, what with the flu and one thing and another.  I've been playing about with roses for a while, but this is my best rose fascinator so far, made from stitched sinamay.  I think I'll make some in other colours, too, just to see what they look like, a yellow one, for instance...  I'm interested in making hats for people who don't wear hats...usually...  Small and unscary, my hats are, I think.  I hope!

I've created a new shape, and am about to wire it, and put its bias binding on.  These things are becoming second nature now, a learned process.  It's interesting to watch myself learn, as it were...and to see how much easier I find the process as I do it more and more.  My next step has to be to buy blocks so that I can make more felt hats, I love making those.  Meanwhile, I'll stay with fascinators and small hats on bands or elastic.  Like the rose, and  this flower one, below.   Poppy, do we think?  I'm definitely on a floral kick!

Making Space.

I'm finally recovered from the flu, and starting to make space around myself for creative things to happen.  My upstairs studios have had stuff dumped in them, as I work my way through the house, decluttering and muttering...  Now, it's time to get that sorted out.  I spent half a day this weekend, just sifting through one of the rooms, and found a remarkable amount of unfinished work.  I've been beating myself up for not making much in the past two years, only to find that I've got plenty to be working with for the meantime, thanks. 

I've gone back into therapy, the demon depression has been biting again.  The major focus of that is to help me to get out of my own way; there is a whole tangle of 'stuff', a bit like the thorny forest surrounding Sleeping Beauty's castle, that needs to be pruned back and sorted.  It's hard, painful work; those thorns scratch!  Part of what I'm learning is that I seem to have moved away from the work I do best, the work 'about' depression and mental health issues, the work about feelings.  Instead, I've been chasing the elusive 'sellable' work, that seems to be indefinable, at least for me.  Nobody seems to want to buy my work; that's not a complaint, it's a fact.  So I may as well please myself, and make the strong depression work, the work about feelings, and starve happy!

cough, cough,,,

...yes, the lurgy is still here, but I'm up and dressed...it must mean improvement!  This is a truly vicious flu; I haven't been as ill as this in a long time.  But I'm well enough to start thinking about things... which is a distinct improvement over lying around like a wet dish rag!

Hats, as you know, are my current fascination, and a workshop with lovely Louise has introduced me to working with felt.  I do make wet felt, but have to say that this is much faster... you take a 'hood' of felt, and stretch it over a hat block.  Which, I suppose, is pretty much what you do when you make your own felt... must try it.  As you can see, you get amazingly sculptural shapes, depending on which kind of block you use. I particularly like this one, because I have found I can wear it in two different ways...two hats for the price of one!

 We met Louise through attending a workshop organised by the equally lovely James at Hat Blocks Direct; check out his site to see all the amazing possibilities for hats...he makes the blocks by hand, and they are truly lovely; these are the blocks I've bought so far from him.  The head is known as a 'dolly'; the blocks are for making small hats, such as pill boxes.  At first glance, they all look the same, but there are distinct differences in the way they are finished; in combination, they produce a number of different styles.  I'm having fun just working out all the different ways in which I can use them!

Now, of course, I'm trying to work out which hat blocks I need to get to make Even More Hats... watch this space!