Rework and Review.

'Nothing succeeds as planned'; one of my favourite quotations (from Joseph Heller).  You'll remember this piece...

It has been sitting on the back of the sofa, waiting for...actually, not sure what either of us is waiting for... but I noticed that some of the yarn was distinctly coming adrift.  This started up One Of Those Conversations in my head.  You know the sort, the apportioning blame sort... you aren't patient enough, you didn't do this well enough, you idiot...I'm sure you get the general drift.  Thoughts like that don't help.  Reader, I refelted it.  That helped. 

So...the review... because some of those thoughts, reformatted, are in fact quite useful.  Working out what the problem was, might help in the future.  It just doesn't need to be a judgemental, blaming process; rather, it should be a detached analysis of the piece and its problems.  So... what was the problem? 

Mostly, the thinner parts of the yarn weren't properly attached, so they pulled free of the backing.  The backing itself was difficult to felt through, partly because the cotton base was really quite tightly woven, and partly because there's a mixture of wool and silk fibres on the top.  And yes, partly because I didn't spend enough time on the felting process, so the thicker areas, which did felt reasonably well, were not as attached as they could have been.  The rework has solved all those problems, just by investing more time into the process.  I'm glad, because the fallback solution would have been to couch the yarn, and the problems I was having with the felting, would have been just the same with a conventional needle. 

We all need to rework, sometimes.  The trick is not to beat yourself up about it.  When you catch yourself doing that, switch to asking yourself questions.  Start with, what's the problem?  Stick with the facts, and the solutions, and get the work done.  And learn from it: I know I have.

Embrace The Unexpected.

On Friday, I got a call from my son, inviting me out to lunch with him and his daughter, Cara.  Never one to say no to a meal, and in such good company, off I went.  I came back with a couple of unexpected treasures.  They probably wouldn't qualify as treasures for anyone else, admittedly...but...
Here's the first :

Cara had a drink in a bottle; this is the lid.  It's textured; the ribs stick out.  I think it might well make a dinky little stamp.  Actually, scaled up and perhaps tinkered with a little, it would make an interesting lino cut.  A flower, maybe, or a sunburst.  Something to contemplate.

After the meal, we sat outside so that Cara could play on the equipment in the garden.  There was another family there, and a little girl gave Andrew and I each a pine cone.  Andrew was a bit bemused, I think, but I was pleased...

Not a great photograph, I'm afraid, but you get the drift... I love the way it resembles a rose.  The texture is amazing, partly its own, partly due to lichen growth.  It's one of these things that is perfect both of itself and in what it suggests. 

Where do I get my ideas from?  Absolutely everywhere.  All that is really necessary is to recognise things both for what they are, and for what they might become.

Prep And Play

It's not all stitch, you know... sometimes you have to do a bit of prep work.  Yesterday, I sat with one of the pieces I'm working with and selected the threads to use with it.  And then I wound the skeins into balls.  I never used to bother, but they get horrendously tangled, which is wasteful.  My grandmother was a knitter; I can remember sitting, arms outstretched, with a hank of wool wrapped around them, as she wound balls from it.  It's not so simple when it's small skeins of thread, and no human available to hold them.  The first two went fine, though... the third, not so good.

From this, to this.  It tangled from the very beginning, and got progressively worse.  Sigh.  My own incompetence, I'm sure.  I did consider ditching it, at one point, but remembered I might need more than the one skein, so persevered; it's ready to stitch with now, as are they all. 

I thought, after that, I deserved to play a bit.  In the UFOs there was something I'd prepared when I was still teaching, as a possible sample for a possible course on abstract work.  Three ovals, cut from Evolon, and then cut into randomly, like this. 

They're placed on grey hand dye, one of the few bits remaining to me (yes, I know, I've got a shelf full of fabric for dyeing' anyone want to come and play with me?).  Looking at this image, it strikes me that this would be a good way of making semi abstract flowers... but that wasn't my intention here.  I wanted to rearrange the cut pieces to make an interesting pattern.  The evolon has fusible on the back; it's a cross between Matisse papercuts and tweets quilts, now that I think about it.  There really is no idea that's completely new.

Looking at these, I decided the individual elements were too thick, and so cut into them again. 

That's better.  This, is better still...

I may fiddle with it a bit more, add some space between the individual elements, perhaps adjust one of them that's pulling my eye as an exception to the way the others have been cut (see if you notice it, a kind of textile Where's Wally?).  Or maybe I'll leave it as it is.  I like it. 

Finally...

...the sewing machine is set up.  The red box contains half a dozen UFOs waiting for this moment, on top of my DIL Tracey's sewing machine, which I have on long term loan.  The Bernina you see here is reserved for free machine work; it means that I don't have to fiddle about with tension and settings.  Of course, the first thing that happened when I started stitching was that the thread broke... predictable for metallic thread...sigh... 

I wanted something small to work on for the first piece, something that didn't matter if I ruined it.  This is one of Bertha's prints, on canvas.

Not entirely sure what kind of petal that was; might have been a tulip, but I'm pretty sure it's a magnolia, manipulated in Paint Shop Pro.  I love the way it's possible to change what's visible in a photograph by playing about with what's already there, rather than by painting over the top of what's there (if you see what I mean).  It gives a different perspective on the image, makes you look harder, and differently.  

This particular image is on canvas.  Not overly fond of canvas as a vehicle for stitch; this one is water resistant, which seemed like a good idea at the time.  It's hard and unforgiving, and shreds metallics like nobody's business.  I do like the effect of the metallics on this dark surface, though the image isn't ideal; I've muted the colour of the print to let you see the stitch fairly clearly.  The thread has a mixture of all the colours in this print, other than the brightest of the yellows, on a dark background.  Hopefully, when there's enough stitch, that'll show up well.  

It's a start, for this piece as well as for my creative life in this new house.  It may work, it may not.  Doesn't matter, really.  What matters is the process.  The journey, not the destination, and the learning that comes with it. 

Talking about learning... I went to visit a new fabric shop in Bo'ness, called Fabric And More; lovely owner, huge space with lots of potential.  They're running workshops, and there's a possibility that I'll be running one or two...watch this space...  

Taking A Break...

from sorting a box of feathers.  Although I'm sitting at the table, my arms get very tired, very quickly, and there's quite a lot of stretching involved in this exercise.  I didn't appreciate how many feathers I've accumulated...when I go for something, I really go for it, as it were.  Here's where I've got to...the remains of the box...

...and the sorted feathers...

Could really have done with another drawer...think I'll combine the red and the purple.  No, these aren't the only feathers in the collection; there's another large box and a couple of unopened bags (cough).  I have nothing to say in my defense...other than they take up a lot less room than fabric does... snigger...

As a child, I was profoundly allergic to feathers; no feather pillows, and the budgie my mother bought me for a birthday (who knows what she was thinking... maybe she got it for free...that was a recurring theme with her 'presents'...) had to go and live with my great aunt, as it made me really ill.  Just as well I grew out of it, really, or I'd have no cats, as well as no hat making.  I'm surprised by the number of orange feathers in this little lot...not sure that I have much orange sinamay...but hey.  I'm sure I'll think of something to do with them.  I usually do.

I guess I need to go through that other box, see what's in there.  And making a few hats might be in order too...with stitch, of course.

Gotcha!

Well... the studio is nearly finished (hurrah).  What I couldn't find, however, were my hat blocks.  Yes, the lovely wooden, heavy, expensive things.  Funny how the easy to replace, cheap stuff never goes missing, huh?  So Robin very kindly went out into the garage...and couldn't find them anywhere.  Until we looked inside the Baby Belling boiler... hurrah.  Gotcha.  This is an old image, from the Little Green Shed... wonder what happened to that painting, come to think of it.  Probably given away in The Great Purge.  Shame, really, it would have fitted in here really nicely....sigh. 

I've found a couple of hats as I go along, including the little fascinator that I needlefelted with yellow yarn to look like a miniature cake; all it needs is a cherry to sit on the top, must try to find something appropriate.  I do have a red glass bead in the shape of a heart, which isn't quite what I had in mind, but in all else fails...  I really do want to get back to making hats, so watch this space.  Now that the room is nearly complete, I don't have much of an excuse.  It's been a while since I did make a hat, so it'll be interesting to see how well I remember the process.  Fortunately, I have a book or two...or six... to refer to.

The other thing Robin found was...yes, you've guessed it, my felting needles.  I now have enough felting needles to have a party with, anyone want to come round and felt...? 

Tulips.

One of my favourite flowers.  A couple of years ago, I wrote this haiku :

Vaseful of colour

An elegance of tulips

Brightens up the room

Those particular tulips exist only in the poem, of course, but these were on my kitchen windowsill last month... enjoy.

Oh, Wow!

It was just a plain brown envelope.  And then I opened it, and look what was inside...

Threads from Stef Francis...thank you, Stef, they're wonderful.  I really did look at them and say, 'oh wow'.  I bought them really to go with one of the pieces I showed you earlier, Borderlines, the piece with the textured paper.  That wasn't to hand, but these were.  Firstly, the piece I showed you yesterday:

The brown is really strong against that print, and I'll use it on the marks.  The orange, not so much...but it is a gorgeous thread.  And then there's this, which I wrote about here:

Now, I wasn't intending to put much in the way of stitch on here, but looking at the way that thread sits on this piece, I'm now not so sure... perhaps a stitched border round the very edges of the piece...perhaps more... I don't know, but I'll be having a good think about it.  I rather wish I had more of that coloured evolon; it would be interesting to make a pieced top from repetitions of this 'block'.  Life isn't like that, of course, but I may well follow through on this idea once the workroom has settled down a bit. 

And talking of the workroom...the shelves are now where they're meant to be, though I'm still working out what to keep, where.  I promised you a sneaky peek, and here we are...

Thread and fabric mostly along the long wall; paint, drawing materials, feathers and other embellishments tucked away in the corner.  The painting will go up in front of my sewing machine; it's a calming image called 'Goddess'.  My rulers will go up on the walls, too, and doubtless a couple of framed textiles, eventually.  What I don't have, is a design wall.  I had one in Norfolk, and rarely used it.  I did contemplate a blind on the front of one of the bookcases, but the boxes stick out too far.  Besides which, most of the work I'm likely to be doing in the future will be small scale, not much bigger than a napkin.  So I'll be doing what I advise my students to do:  stick it on the floor, and stand up...if you're careful, stand on a chair...just don't fall off.  Or, more likely, I'll take a photograph, and contemplate that.  Works every time: it's the distance that's important.

Things are coming together, finally, both with the work and the room.  If only I could find a new body...

Minor Adjustments...

...can make a big difference.  I love working with transparency, but sometimes it just feels a wee bit wishy washy...   I'm still working through those scraps, and came across this lino cut on bandage muslin, which had been rust dyed before I printed it.  I've frayed the edges a little, to add a bit of texture and visual interest, though it's not obvious in the image.

It fits a small piece of evolon like a dream...even if I have positioned it the wrong way round, sigh.  But you get the drift.  There's a piece of yarn running across the top and bottom of the piece, which I'll couch on with some hand dyed thread I found yesterday, while tidying up (handy, huh?).  But... I want to beef up the rust colour just a bit... so...I'm going to double up the muslin... clearly didn't print on all of it, fortunately. 

Not sure that it's showing up well in the image, but again, you probably get my drift.  It's a good way of working with lutradur and other patterned fabrics; the combinations can be really interesting.  Meanwhile, I need to think about stitching this...but that will have to wait until the arrival of the brown hand dyed perle I've ordered on line.  I'm just not set up for dyeing at present, unsurprisingly, though work on the studio is progressing; might show you that tomorrow.  The shelves are full, all except the one set that needs to be repositioned.  I've moved the cutting table to its proper place...just need to remove the empty boxes, shift and fill the shelves and move the work table.  Then I can get the machines out and we'll be pretty much good to go...hurrah!

Going To Pieces.

So...what do you do when you're too physically tired to do anything, much, but your mind is turning cartwheels?  Well... there's drawing, of course, and hand stitch...but I really like a jigsaw.  With two cats, however, that's really not advisable; they bat the pieces all over the floor, attempt to eat them... you get the picture (or rather, you don't, because at least one piece gets lost as a result).  Reader, I discovered online jigsaws, and I am hooked.  I've had a wonderful time on Jigsaw Planet reconstructing other peoples' paintings and photographs.  And then I thought.... maybe I could do this with my photographs... so I did.... and that was great fun, too.

So what's that got to do with the price of cheese?  Well... I've talked about it elsewhere on this blog, quite recently (not that I'm obsessed).  It gets more interesting when it's your own image, though.  I realised a number of things.... firstly, that I don't really think about my photography as being an end in itself.  I tend to take pictures either for reference, or to stitch into (see an example of my stitched work here, one of my personal favourites).  So it's useful to look at these images  as potential jigsaws, look at their construction, decide if they're interesting enough to use in this way. 

Secondly, I already knew that I'm mostly interested in detail, so most of my photos are macro.  I try to find details that might otherwise be missed.  The image at the top of the post is a Norfolk flint wall (I think, if I remember rightly, it was a church in Wymondham),  It makes a truly evil jigsaw; all those little stones... you have to observe carefully to fit the pieces together.  The jigsaw format helps you to look at each piece separately, to consider how it fits into the whole, to see even more of those tiny details that make up what I hope is a good image, at least for reference purposes...it might want cropping if I were to print it out for stitch.  Flaubert said that 'God is in the detail' (or the devil, depending on which of these similar sayings you ascribe to).  Looking at an image this way seems to take me past detail, and into nuance, which usually would be picked up by my unconscious mind, but I don't think it does me any harm to contemplate them in a more overt fashion.  Most of the nuances here are about texture and light; the direction of light, the way it hits a particular section of the flint, the way that flint responds.

Thirdly, I hadn't noticed until I made a couple of jigsaws that my colour palette in my photographs is very narrow, almost monochromatic.  The same cannot be said for most of my work, although the ME piece I wrote about here is moving in that direction; I now have a small bag of fabric in these subdued tones and colours to make more pieces in what I suspect will be a series.  I hadn't realised, though, that my photographs were leading me in that direction, probably long before I consciously chose to explore it.

Finally, the act of jigsaw assembly is not unlike the creative process.  Artists and writers both talk about the blank page... jigsaws, at least, give you a jumping off point, encourage you to look for the edge pieces and assemble them to create a framework.  I think we all need that in some way; my equivalent of edge pieces, in textile, is usually the creation of a small piece using whatever I have to hand (usually, up until now, from the bits lying on the floor).  In paint, it comes from the process of selecting colours for my palette, which I do intuitively.  I think that creating a starting ritual, and using it consistently,  is comforting, but it's also a springboard into creativity.

And then there's the point where you've got the edges more or less assembled (there's always one or two that I don't find til the end, but I don't let that get in the way of assembling the rest of the image).  And then I'm face to face with my own doubts; this is hard.  How will I ever manage?  Well... partly through intuition... that piece looks as if it should fit there... no... but it does fit two pieces along... and on I plod.  Emphasis on the plod; building jigsaws seem to go in fits and starts, depending on how easy it is to group colours together, to assemble little, but obvious, details so that they can then be fitted into the whole.  And there's something about perseverance, too, just keeping going, pushing through the problems (most of which are in my head) to create the image. 

Yes, it's harder for artists; they don't always have a clear idea of what the end goal is, making deciding what the end product actually is, quite challenging.  Fortunately, we don't have to limit ourselves to Just One Ending or Just One Process; that's what working in series is about.

If you'd like to do the stone jigsaw, here's the link; if that doesn't work, look for artmixter...I only have three images up, this one and a couple of floral ones.  There are a surprising number of quilt images available as jigsaws, but I'm not sure that my work would lend itself to that kind of treatment.  Above all, in jigsaws as in art, have fun.,,that's a significant part of the process.

Overturning Those Decisions.

You might remember this post, where I talked about using a wee bit of linen that I'd found in the scrap.  Well...I sat down to work with it this morning, while waiting for the mannie to arrive to service my mobility scooter (he's still not here, so much for 'late morning'; it's 12.30pm and not a peep out of him...

I decided that the brown bit was altogether too brown... so I added some frothy white plastic netting, and some stitch to hold it down;

And then more stitch to hold it on the Lutradur XL:

And then, it all went to hell in a handcart.  Putting the lutradur in front of it Just Didn't work.  So I tried other bits of lutradur; worse.  Then I took the long vertical stitches out, removed the brown bit, put the coloured lutradur underneath... nope.  And just as I was about to give up, I tried this:

Yes.  I thought.  Right balance, right texture (it's evolon, coloured with Brusho); could do with being a bit bigger, but hey...  So I tried it against some white evolon:

So what I want to find now, is a piece of textured linen to mount this piece on.  I know I don't have such a thing, so I may settle for cotton, but it does need to be a woven fabric, just to add a bit more texture.  Natural coloured, rather than white, might be better, but it'll all depend on what I find.  Come to think of it, I need to trim the blue; those lines aren't straight, or parallel, for that matter...but it has the distinct feeling of a well conceived piece.  Finally. 

PS The scooter mannie says my scooter is immaculate... so I must be doing something right... or maybe it's just that I don't go out much...sigh.

The Road To Hell...

...is supposedly paved with good intentions; in my case, and maybe yours, too, it's also littered with random materials that we hoarded, thinking, 'I could do something with that'...and then never actually getting round to doing anything at all.  Most of that sort of material got given away during The Great Purge; it is truly interesting to see what I kept.  Working my way through the odds and sods I've been talking about over the past week or so, I came across some hand made paper.  I vaguely remember buying it in Norfolk, quite early on in our residence there, which makes it about ten years old, anyway... good grief...   It's highly textured; I have no idea what it is made from, but it feels fairly fragile.  It appealed, yesterday, so I took it as a starting point...

It's teamed, here, with a piece of transfer dyed lutradur 30, secured with large stitches using hand dyed perle.  It feels like a field, to me... I combined it with another piece of paper, this time a scrunched-up piece of brown paper.  I started working with brown paper (or rather, thinking about working with brown paper) when we were in the Highlands, but it took a workshop in Norfolk, roughly twelve or thirteen years later, to get me to Actually Do It. 

Again, these are stitched together using the same perle thread, in random stitches that reflect the construction of the light-coloured paper.  So far, so good.  It feels like a strong motif; but what to do with it?  Well... I have the habit of buying vintage napkins whenever I see them in charity shops; they tend to be very reasonably priced, and are an ideal size for me to work with.  So, I went for a rake about in my box and found several, but only one that was large enough to work with these bits. 

Hmm.  Needs an iron.  But it has potential...needs something else...

No, not Merlin's tail...but the circle, also from crunched up brown paper, seems to be the right way to go.  Now, where's that iron... ?

And here it is, ready for stitch.  I've pinned the napkin to some white felt, to stabilise it, and give the stitch a bit of depth when I eventually work out what to do with it.  I don't often use pins, preferring to work with fusible, but ironing is exhausting, while pinning requires minimal effort.  ME has forced me to adapt my practice to work round my lack of energy.  Things will be easier, I hope, when my studio is properly set up, but I haven't been well enough to do anything with it yet, other than put a couple of boxes on the new shelves.  Sofa sewing is all I can manage at the moment.

I'm going to let this piece sit for a while, to see what it needs in the way of stitch.  I'd like to add some machine stitch to that circle, nice clear dark line.  Well, ok, curves. There again, more of that random stitch by hand, in a darker colour, might well be better.  We'll see.  Meantime...I found a couple of small, identical napkins while looking for something suitable; wonder if there's anything in the paper stash that would work on them...or the rust stash...or both...   hmmm.  Yes, I did purge dramatically, but I still have choices, albeit on a much smaller scale than before...and that's proving to be A Good Thing.

Oops, I Did It Again....

I jumped to a conclusion, too quickly.  Or rather, I was lazy.  I thought there was something not quite right about the spear/tree piece, but I ignored myself.  And then my friend, writer and fellow textile peep Ann Rawson piped up on FB... 'not so sure about the bottom leaf shape, she said.  Damn.  So...
being lazy, again, I didn't want to detach the leaf, because I'd never get that stitching again...but I did want to have some sort of extra space in that shape...so, reader, I cut into the leaf.  And not happy with just that, I cut into the rectangle, too...

On reflection, should have left that rectangle alone....but the leaf is right.  And it's finished now.
Unless I stitch into that rectangle, where I cut it... but I might not.  And no, I'm not doing *another* blog post if I do... so you may never know.  Ann's a crime writer; I'm sure she'll appreciate the suspense.  And thank you, Ann, for the gentle nudge.  I needed it today.

Changing My Mind, or Stitch Changes Everything.

So... remember that red velvet piece?  Yes, this one...

Remember I said that this was it?  Reader, I was wrong.  And why was that?  Well... it was stitch.  Stitch changes everything.  I started to assemble the piece, as you do, with that top left lutradur element.  It said, I want irregular stitches....and that's what it got...

And what's more, I liked it.  Most of the other elements, however, Just Didn't Fit.  Sigh.  So... I came up with this. 

I'm still using some of the elements from the last version, but somewhat adjusted, with that leaf or blade type motif added at the top of the long vertical, one of the shorter verticals removed, and a second, larger blade or leaf on the bottom left.  It now has a completely different feel.  And then I added stitch, which was the point at which I contemplated giving up...

...more random stitch, including a couple of renegade French Knots.  I always struggle with them, and whilst I think they add something, I'm not sure why I bothered, given the fuss and the time it took to do what really ought to be a totally simple stitch.  I'm contemplating some beads in that upper section, but that may continue to be a contemplation...not sure if I know where my beads actually are at present...sigh.

This looks better in real life, I have to say, but I'm still not convinced that it's anything more than a sketch.  Not a bad sketch, you understand; I feel that the tree/spear thing (I'm pretty sure it's a tree, in my head, but there is a definite reference to spears going on in there somewhere) is worth developing further.  I've always had a thing about trees...but that's another conversation entirely. 

So...what do you think?  Was it worth the effort? 

Decisions, Decisions...

Back to the bags of scrap; one bag, in particular, offering two options for elements I have paired.  Sadly, the images don't do this justice...but bear with me.

I've got a lovely rectangle of hand dyed linen, which is frayed on all four sides.  Firstly, I've paired it with a roughly postcard sized piece of Lutradur XL:

I love the texture of the frayed edges, but it looks pretty boring by itself.  What I wanted was something that made the eye travel across the piece, and I came across this piece of lutradur 30, which I think fits the bill...

I think it has been the last of several prints; I like the eye to the far right.  It doesn't show well, here, but there is also pale green in the mix.  Combining the two gives this...

This isn't working at all... I wanted to show you that positioning in this kind of work is everything.... if you move the print across, though, you get this :

This suggests that the dark brown of the cloth is travelling across via the lutradur.  I rather like it, but I do want to be sure.  So I tried it on a larger square of Evolon :

That changes the balance of the piece, but not my intentions; I still want that idea of brown travelling across to the other side of the piece, so that lutradur needs to come into play again.

This time, you see much more of the lutradur and that elusive eye print... and it's decision time.
For me, though, it's a no brainer; the first one wins.  Why?  Because of what I said my original intention was; to have the brown travel into the right hand side of the cloth.  Yes, it does do that in both pieces, but in the second piece, I feel that what ought to be a detail, a suggestion, is in fact dominating the piece. 

So, we're back to this :

I quite like this: it's a sketch, admittedly, not an important piece, but it will be interesting to see what happens when I add stitch to it.  Looking at the image again, I think that the very long bits of thread hanging from it are a distraction, so they will go.   Then a lot will depend on the choice of thread and the type of stitching.  I'm not going to stitch through the XL, however, as I'm likely to use hand stitch, rather than machine, and stitching through a heavy backing is tiring...so I'll use a lighter lutradur, and fuse it to the backing later.  Given that the stitching is likely to be intense, I'll probably make it a bit bigger than the backing, to allow for shrinkage. 

So...what would you have chosen? 

Settling In.

My mother-in-law asked, a couple of weekends ago, if we had settled in properly.  Not really, I said, my studio is still a mess, and there are no paintings up.  Over the last couple of days, though, we've put shelves in the studio, as you know, and today, Robin put up a good percentage of the paintings, too.  And I got something of a surprise.  Here's a couple of images of my living room, complete with Mollie, and the cushion that looks remarkably like Advo.

Both of these images, the first a painting, the second, a textile.  Both of them sat very comfortably in our living room in Norfolk, with its exposed terracotta brickwork and dark blue suite.  As you can see, the colours and light in this room are completely different; lilac suite, gentle colours....   And yet... I think they sit very comfortably in this space, with these colours.  I think the difference is that the dark colours pulled out the reds, blues and greens in both images, while the lilacs pull out  pinks, lilacs and pale blues.  With the drawing of Advo on the wall, comfortable cushions everywhere, and tranquil colours, suddenly, I feel more at home. 

Which just goes to show, assumptions are not always correct, and taking risks pays off sometimes.

Overdoing Things...

...has a whole different meaning when you have ME.  Usually it condemns you to several days in bed; this time, two days on the sofa, and counting.  Having gone out on Friday night with my son and husband, to see Jethro Tull, I then compounded it all by going out on Sunday for a coffee.  We did a little essential shopping, and then had a chat with our neighbours.  And now it's Tuesday, and I won't be doing anything about this little lot...

The black shelves  were originally bought to use as larder shelves, as we have a large walk in cupboard in our (badly designed) kitchen.  Turns out they're too wide (thanks to the skirting boards; I ask you, who puts skirting boards in a cupboard?), so I have inherited them.  My fabric will sit on the pine shelves; my CD player (yes, it's old fashioned, no, I don't care) on the black ones, somewhere in the middle, surrounded by hat paraphernalia, such as feathers and hat blocks.  The tiny rattan drawers hold lace and other bits and pieces for hat making, too, such as combs and headbands. The smaller pine shelves won't stay in that corner, but will move to the other side of the room, and will likely hold paints and the like, though I hope to build a summer house for painting.  Given that we're in dispute with the builder about the garden, though, I'll be lucky to get that this year, I suspect.  Dammit. 

The real challenge is where to keep the rolls of sinamay and other fabrics.  Some of them will lie on the top of the shelves, as they're not terribly wide, things like printouts from Bertha.  The rest, I'm not so sure.  Probably in a box, where the short pine shelves are at present.  Things are coming together, slowly, but I doubt there'll be any progress this week, as I recover from the excesses (hah) of the weekend.  Rest and more rest.  And a lot of muttering under my breath.