Scavenging...

is difficult when you can't walk far.  Beachcombing is out of the question, and a deliberate walk anywhere just isn't going to happen.  Leaning out of wheelchairs to pick things up is a dodgy thing to do; you risk an inelegant three point landing on your nose.  However...we were in the park with Cara on Saturday, when we spotted a bouncy castle.  When you're four and a half, a bouncy castle is the epitome of play, so we bought a ticket.  There were plastic chairs for people who were too large to fit on said bouncy castle, so I transferred to one of those.  And after a while, I reverted to type, and scanned the grass.  I found this.

Yeah, okay, there's not much of a difference between the two sides, but I'm nothing if not thorough. What caught my attention?  Firstly, the colour, that beautiful transition from green to yellow to blush pink into salmon.  And the form, also, these beautiful curves.  It made me wonder about how I could use that shape, that form, in a piece of work.  Possibly in three dimensions.  Nature is such a clever designer, with an eye for aesthetics.  Things work perfectly, and look good, to boot: this acer seed is a tiny piece of perfection.  My art work won't meet those standards, but that won't stop me trying.

Picasso said 'Inspiration exists, but it must find you working'.  Increasingly, I realise that I don't ever stop working. My eye and my unconscious mind work together to find things that my curiosity can't resist.  As I keep saying, ideas are ten a penny; you just have to look.  Not as elegantly expressed as Picasso's sentiment, but along the same lines.  Try it: you won't be sorry.

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.

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...  

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.

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.

Seeing Things

Pondering what to do with this piece of dye painted cloth, which I found in the wooden chest upstairs.  Not long before I moved, I did some dyeing with my friend Clare Hedges; she dyed some warps for her loom, I stuck to cloth.  She wrote about her day, and what she did with the warps,  here; I love the braid she made from them.

But I digress (so what's new, huh?). Like the photograph I showed you on Monday, it made my heart sing when I found it, a combination of the brightness of the colours and the movement in the piece.  I'm not sure about the orientation, though... this feels 'right', but landscape is not an orientation I usually use.  So there's this...

..which looks to me to be promising, too, but with a different feel to it altogether...it feels as if all the marks are trying to escape out of the right hand side of the cloth.  Turning it over, as we did above, somehow grounds the movement, almost literally.... it becomes an abstract landscape of sorts, in my head, at least, albeit with a lot of sky, while the top piece feels as if things are completely air borne.  I wonder how many of you can see what I see...or indeed if you see anything at all.  You can let me know; that's what the comments are for!

It's tempting to simply iron the cloth, and leave it as it is, as a painting.  I won't, though, because I think it needs texture, and leaving it flat just isn't going to work for me, whichever orientation I end up choosing.  That said, if I ever get a painting studio, this will be used as the basis for a painting or two on canvas, complete with texture.  So...stitch it is.  I think.  The other option, of course, is to cut it up and reassemble it... not really an option I want to take with this piece, because it feels like either way, it has a coherence, a meaning, that I don't particularly want to disrupt.  There is, I think, another similar piece in my stash, however, which would let me explore that particular avenue.  And if there isn't, I can always create one....eventually.  It's an avenue that would let me have lots of small pieces, or a couple of medium sized pieces, with the chopped up bits reassembled, either on their own or with other fabrics.  As squares or rectangles, they could become the heart of a log cabin type construction.  Really, the permutations are endless.

Which is why the post got the name it did.  I see things in this cloth.  I see meanings, and I see opportunities.  So far, I've described at least six different ways of approaching this cloth... as two different types of painting, two different types of stitched piece, as two or three different types of pieced work (okay make that at least seven).  Picasso said, 'Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working'.  I believe that the process I've just described, is more or less what he meant.  So the next time you 'just don't feel like working', or 'aren't in the mood for working', or however you describe procrastination to yourself, just go look at a piece of cloth, or a painting, or a photograph.  Challenge yourself to find as many options as possible in it.  And then...just do it.

Breaking It Up?

Isn't she beautiful?  Femme En Blanc, by Van Gogh, painted in 1890; that's all I know about her, factually at least.  However... I've recently discovered online jigsaw puzzles.  Yes, I know, it's taken me a while... but it's a lot easier doing jigsaws online, than it is to spend time and energy trying to persuade the cats not to bat pieces all over the kitchen floor, or across the table, or, indeed, to sit square in the area I'm trying to complete.  This way, Mollie simply sits on my knee and goes to sleep...

I've been mostly making up jigsaws of landscapes (there doesn't seem to be a verb to denote this...to jigsaw?  to piece?  to assemble?), but this lady caught my eye.  Harmless piece of entertainment, I thought.  Wrongly, as it turned out.  This particular jigsaw was quite difficult to assemble; all the bits looked the same.  What I discovered, though, was that assembling it taught me a great deal about Van Gogh and how he used paint.  Yeah, okay, I knew that already, intellectually.  I've stood in front of several of his paintings, and thought about how he moved paint around, how he added marks to the canvas.  Somehow, though, piecing together disassembled brush marks really made me think about them, almost to experience them, though without the mess of actually painting (we're in a new house, of which more another time, and I have no painting studio as yet...hell, I have no studio set up at all so far).  It also allowed me to appreciate the tonal subtleties of the piece.  Tonal subtlety isn't really something I've associated with Van Gogh... I was wrong. 

There's also something about looking, and looking carefully.  There's nothing like a jigsaw to make you really look at what you have in front of you, and reach an understanding of it.  No, that bit doesn't fit there, but it does match the colours... not there, either...but  there, it fits.  No matter how good we think we are at observation, a jigsaw makes us better.

This exercise in proxy creativity also made me think about my own painting, and drawing.  I make marks similar to those black, semi abstract heart shapes at the bottom of the canvas, in paint, dye and stitch.  Mine tend to be rune-inspired, or Celtic in origin.  Maybe it's time I did more of that kind of loose work.  And those are important thoughts, at a time when I'm really not sure where I'm going, what I'm going to do next, at a time when I have to recognise, once and for all, that my energy is severely limited, as is my space, so even the huge cull I had before we moved here from Norfolk was not severe enough.  I feel I need to get this last cull right, even although I know that getting rid of things is not the end of the world, as things can be replaced at the right time, the time when you actually need them, instead of hoarding them against a future that probably won't ever arrive, certainly not in the form you expected.

So, there you are.  Creativity, learning and reflection encouraged by the simple act of making a jigsaw.  Which artist will I study next...?

Funny...

...how things change.  And quite quickly, too, even though it doesn't feel that way at the time.  My last blog was in January this year, and said that I wouldn't be making, or blogging, for a full year.  Wrong...or at least, wrong-ish.  I have been making...textiles, changes and a new workshop...but more of that later.

I'd like to say I'd come to terms with the ME which has changed my life so dramatically, but I'd be lying if I said I had.  It would me more truthful to say that I am going through a great deal of grief... coming to terms with ones limitations will do that to one.  My old life has died, my new life is a work in process... emotionally, that's a lot to process.  Interestingly, I'm not depressed...which for a life long depressive, is, well, quite surprising, really.  In a good way.

I have been spring cleaning my creative life... instead of a room full of fabric, I now have a couple of boxes.  About ten carloads of materials have made their way to new homes, with a bit more still to go.  I'm debating what to do with Big Bertha, my large scale printer, because I am not physically able to work on large pieces, so she seems a bit surplus to requirements (contact me if you're interested... she will be priced Very Attractively).

It's probably easier to tell you what's left.  What's left, is materials for drawing, print making, hat making, felting and hand stitching on a small scale...think the size of a napkin (a vintage napkin).  Embellishments, and some beads.  Two sewing machines and an embellisher.   And that's pretty much it.  When you consider the range of things I used to do, that's pretty narrow.  Felt making is way down the list at present, because I don't have the energy.  Hand stitching is it...that and thinking.   And looking.  Of course, I haven't forgotten the skills and techniques I have used, which is just as well, given my next project...

I recently met Anita O'Neill, the owner of Eaubrink Studios, near Kings Lynn.  The location is fabulous... really spacious, well equipped studios in an amazing location, a lake, sheep, chickens, a lovely garden... what's not to like... and the last piece of my personal jigsaw fitted into place.  I miss teaching... particularly working with people on creativity...so I offered to run a six week series of workshops for Eaubrink on just that topic.  Starting on the 18th October, the course is called 'Finding Your Voice'.  The blurb says; "This is a series of six weekly workshops lasting four hours each time, which encourage you to look closely at the world around you, record what you’ve seen (in a variety of different ways) and then turn your findings into creative projects. Although the focus of these six weeks will be working in textile, the workshops are suitable for anyone who wants to learn how to turn ideas into finished art works, including painting, printmaking, photography and writing; opportunities to try all of these things will be available during the six weeks."  And the gem at the end, is a reunion after six months, to review the work that has come out of the workshops, with the intention of creating an exhibition.  

If it's something you fancy doing, please contact Anita at Eaubrink.  This will be the last time I teach in Norfolk; we will be moving in the Spring, heading further north to be closer to our family. There are two places left...so run, don't walk, if you're interested.  More about it in my next post.

The work... the piece on the top is napkin sized... a monoprint, which was hand stitched using two different hand dyed threads, with the gold circle in a metallic thread...which doesn't gleam in the photograph, but does in real life.  The middle piece is a wet felted base, with skeleton leaf inclusions, and couched yarn on top of the leaves.  The one below is another felt piece, heavily stitched, with yarn felted on top as a feature.  All three pieces were WIPs from before I became ill, finished off in the last few weeks.

Writing...

is something I have felt I ought to be able to do, but somehow couldn't.  I trained as a linguist; if anyone could write, you would think that I would be able to. I thought that I was condemned to translating other peoples' work, other peoples' ideas...that I had none of my own.  Recently, though, I've been writing a lot, mainly haiku, but some poems, and the tentative beginnings of a novel.  Very tentative.

I've been quite disturbed by the way in which the recent suicide of the truly gifted Robin Williams has been reported, so I wanted to share this.  Those of you who have followed the blog for a while, know that I suffer from chronic depression, and that some of my work is around that.  This is by way of an attempt to explain to people who just don't 'get it' for one reason or another, just what depression is like.

To Those Who Don't Believe In Depression.
I know you don’t believe that we’re in pain. Mostly because you cannot see we’re broken, The things that we keep hidden because we feelAshamed, inadequate, insufficient, lostIn a darkness you don’t seem to see,Mostly because you don’t know how to look.Or perhaps, you’ve never thought that it was possibleTo seem to be one thing, yet feel another,Both at the same time. And yet, it is.We can’t explain it to you; hell, we can’t explain it to ourselves.But it is as real as you are, to us, and though our bodiesAre not broken, we are in pain.How can we explain it? Did you, when you were young,Lose a cat, a dog, or even, perhaps, a person? RememberHow it hurt? Remember being told that the cared for oneHad gone away to heaven? And thinking that you didn’tUnderstand? Such pain, such confusion…but gradually, youFelt less and less, remembered less and less, and returnedTo your usually happy state… and life went on.Imagine that pain, intensified, confusion combined with the feelingThat it is all your fault, the way you feel, that this thing should be happening.Imagine it going on and on, for years and years, without improving; ratherIt just gets worse. And it is never forgotten, not for a nanosecond. 
Perhaps, if you can imagine that, you can beginTo understand, to accept, above all, not to judge.That is all we ask for, we who suffer. It doesn't seem like much.


Personally, I thought Robin Williams was immortal, a touchstone, a miracle.  Through his work, perhaps he truly is.  His death is a reminder that all of us have demons.  Some of us deny them, some ignore them.  Some grapple with them and lose.  Some gain temporary respite... but they don't often go away entirely.  We don't know each others' demons... but we should try to remember that they are there.

Watching The Baby : Lessons From Cara

Work wise, it hasn't been a terribly productive week... which is, of course, the point of holidays.  That doesn't mean I haven't learned something...or been reminded of things... and by my baby grand daughter, too.  I've spent most of the week just watching Cara.  This is partly because she is the most beautiful little girl (I'm her granny, I would say that...).   But it was also because she showed me some stuff, and I think it's very pertinent to artists everywhere.

1. Look at things as if you had never seen them before.  Cara, of course, has never seen all sorts of things before, but she looks at everything in the same way, an intense stare that takes everything in.  Her focus is admirable.  Artists need to look at things in this way, taking them all in, seeing something fresh and new in them.  Of course, Cara's first step after looking is to try tasting...I don't recommend that with paint.

2. Keep trying.  If you don't crawl today, you might crawl tomorrow.  Similarly, if you don't make a masterpiece today... well, I'm sure you can join up your own dots.

3. Be joyful; the world is full of opportunity.  You can learn from everything, no matter how small or commonplace, if you just take a bit of time to contemplate it. And, of course, enjoy it.

4. Ask for what you want.  In Cara's case, that involves a lot of screeching; in our case, it might be a request for honest feedback.  If you don't ask, you're not likely to get.

5. Sleep when you're tired, and don't worry about it.  I like this one.  Better work gets done after a nap than when in need of one.

6. Love everyone and everything.  Cara does that naturally... dislike comes later.  Being positively disposed to self and others leads to better work, I think.  And you certainly get more cuddles that way...

7. Wriggle a lot.  Get out of your comfort zone, and into the new stuff.  It's fun!

8. Keep asking questions.  What if I just do this... In Cara's case, what if I press that button...brings lots of music from her toy phone.  Which she loves (the music and the phone, not to mention the bright flashing lights).  Try it; it might even work!

9. Above all...enjoy what you're doing.  If you aren't... then either apply rules one and three, or do something you do enjoy.  Life is definitely too short.

With love from Cara and me x

Playing...

...is the only way to learn.  Any child will tell you that, any parent.  Any artist, come to think of it.  Picasso said that it took him four years to learn to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to learn to paint like a child.  So, I spend a lot of time playing with things.  This morning, it was an image of a rose.  I love roses, my grandmother had a garden full of them; I have a lovely climbing rose in this garden that goes from pink to yellow to white... amazing.  I particularly like overblown roses.  This one was in a friend's garden...

I think it's beautiful.  Partly, I think, it's the colour, pinks to purples to golds.  Partly, it's the movement through the piece, from left to right, the curling of the individual petals.  And just look what happens when you turn it round...

Suddenly, it becomes a spiral; it makes me think of seashells.  Or Flamenco dancers, skirts whirling round them.  Even more movement in this version.  I tried  turning the image the rest of the way round, but the other two options were not balanced enough to consider.

I'm reminded that just because an image, or a piece of work, starts out one way, it doesn't mean that it has to be that way for good.  Sometimes it will look better a different way.  If it is well designed, it will look good any way you turn it, regardless of the subject matter.  It's worth trying, if you're stuck with a piece.

Meanwhile...I need to work out what I'm going to do with these images...

More Finds...

It's interesting, this little cache of work I've found.  It varies from manipulated and stitched photographs, like this one,

which I've stitched in two versions...

When I showed it on FB, almost everyone preferred the one on the top, the one with more stitch.  I agreed...but now, I'm not so sure.  Both are stitched with a dark variegated metallic thread.

And then, I| found this.

It's called Norfolk Fields, and it's a combination of monoprint and painting.  I love the Norfolk landscape, the huge flatness of it all, the long avenues of trees and the enormous skies.  It's stunning.  I'm reminded that landscape and things natural are really where my art is rooted, though it's not always immediately apparent.  It's just that I'm as fascinated by the inner landscape as by the external landscape that surrounds us.

Just to give you a closer look at Norfolk Fields, here are a couple of details...

My work has always been diverse, and I think these two pieces epitomise it.  Fortunately, I don't feel I have to choose between mediums, between methods; it's all expression, in the end, all creativity.  It is as it is.

Working With Pain.

I have a lot to do today.  I need to make up packs of textile and transfer paints for the local gallery, and to sell on my upcoming website.  And I need to put together a set of samples for the new class I'm offering at the gallery, on working with fabric paint.

Today is also the day I hit a wall of pain.  It happens, every so often.  Usually, what happens is that I knock my head against that wall until I weep copiously and then go to sleep.  The definition of madness,of course, is doing the same thing time and time again, but expecting a different outcome.  Today, I want and need a different outcome.

So, in the kitchen, waiting for the kettle to boil for my second cup of the day, I asked myself, what does the pain look like?  And in my head, I saw a wasteland of stones, pebbles, rocks.  Surely, I thought, nothing creative could be done there; it's barren.

And then I looked harder.  Each stone is beautiful in its own right.  Could make the beginnings of a piece of work, all by itself.  Combined, they are overwhelming, but beautiful.  Lonely, but beautiful.  Sad, but beautiful.  And surely, they will be the basis of some interesting work.

:
Pain.  You can lie down underneath it, or you can ask it what it has to give you.  You might be surprised.

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!

Felting...

is becoming something of an obsession.  This is a shawl collar, made from Nuno felt, with stitch round the edges of the collar, to give it some definition.  I'm quite pleased with the way it turned out.  I'm not sure that it looks great on my chair, there, but on a person, it looks great.  I'm now trying to decide how to fasten it.. perhaps frogging, perhaps a loop and fascinating button... perhaps a vintage brooch. I'd love to know what you think.

As well as the coaching I do, I work as a volunteer mentor for people who are starting small businesses.  I met a new mentee today, and as always, it inspired me to do more coaching.  It is not a part of my work that has ever really caught on, though I have had some success working with people who are in some way stuck at some part of their creative journey.  I'm working on a new workbook, intended to help people find their own symbolic visual language, which I'm finding quite interesting.  Actually, it's more of a work bag, as you get a journal as well as the book in E-book form, and some other bits and pieces.  I hope it'll be fun to do. 

I've intended for some time to start a creativity blog; even made one here on Blogger.  I've held back from working on it for some reason, and my recent experience with Spunbond Sensations! is making it even more doubtful.  I had hoped that people would participate in Spunbond Sensations, as I can't answer questions I'm not asked...it's a bit like talking to yourself.  Perhaps it is just the blog structure... you can comment, but you can't blog on someone elses' blog, unless they allow you to.  I'm aiming for a cross between a blog and an email list; so far, it much more blog than conversation...  Perhaps if I started a list to support it? 

Machine Embroidery...

...or embroidery by machine?  I spent a large chunk of yesterday, and a lot of thread, stitching these, which will be made into bags or flowers or....whatever... It's pretty monotonous work, and I was reminded of a conversation I had with a friend, last week.  She said that she had bought an embroidery machine, with module, and had never really used it, because she realised that she didn't like setting up the machine to do something, and then walking away from it.  I had said, at the time, that I thought these machines were great if you wanted to make a large number of identical things, like embroidered sweatshirts, but otherwise, I really didn't get the point. Halfway through the stitching on the larger piece, though... I wasn't so sure.  Wouldn't it be better to programme a machine to stitch in circles, and just leave it to get on with it...?

Well, no.  Partly because the 'circles' I'm stitching here aren't really circles.  They vary in size and shape, and most of them wouldn't pass muster as a proper circle...  Many of them overlap.  It's what gives the fabric its charm.  And partly because I wouldn't hear the prompts the motor was giving me... that bit is thicker, so we're struggling a bit... and that meant, to me, that I needed more stitch in that area, to be sure that I had secured the bits and pieces underneath the cloth.  But mostly because if I left it to a machine, it would have no soul.  Throughout this stitching process, I'm constantly paying attention, making decisions, caring for the cloth, doing what it needs.  Machines don't have soul.  But the combination of machine plus maker produces magic. 

Glitz and Glamour...

are much underrated, as I'm discovering as I learn to work with feathers, furbelows and frills...  This is a prototype silk paper and feather flower for a fascinator.  I love its exuberance.  I'm also grateful for having done a few floristry classes; there is a lot of similarities between hat making and floristry, when it comes down to it. and learning how to wire things properly has been a real bonus.  Now, I have to put this lot to one side, and contemplate it for a while... where will I add the beads (for there will be beads...)?  Are the colours appropriate?  Does the silk paper require more stitch (yes, probably).  Is the construction method right (no, not yet, but I know what to do about it).

Am I having fun?  Hell, yes!  And developing skills in one area, means that you automatically improve in all the others...competence is like a net; improve your handling of one type of material, and the whole of the net will shift, improving your handling of others, too...  And it encourages you to be open to  new things.  Go on, you know you want to try something new... what's stopping you?

Making Magic?

I have been known to say that 'I haven't got a magic wand'. Well, I have now. I saw it in a shop and decided that I just had to have it. I'm going to tart it up a bit, you understand, but this is the basic no frills magic wand that every girl just has to have. I have it displayed in a prominent place near my computer, as a reminder that, no matter how much I tart it up, it's not going to work UNLESS...

1. I know what I want to achieve. Whether that's cleaning the workshop out or creating a body of work, it doesn't really matter. I have to know what I want.

2. Turning up to do the work. If I don't make the time for this, I'm never going to make the work, clean out the workshop etc.

3. Being kind to myself. I need to look after myself properly, so that I can get things done.

4. Having a plan. If I want to achieve lots of different things, I need to work out what my priorities are, and use my time accordingly.

5. Turning up to do the work. Yes, it really does matter more than any of the rest of it.

So...I keep my magic wand to remind me that I don't need a magic wand. All I need to do is get on with it (whatever it is)...

ps if you need a bit of help with this, try looking at the Creative Focus book...it works the same as my magic wand, except that it helps you to do all the things I mentioned... and it's just as pretty!

Bertha's Big Day

I'm thoroughly enjoying using Bertha... for those of you wondering who or what Bertha is, she is a wide scale printer, which allows me to print cloth up to 24" wide, and as long as I like... I'm still at the experimental stage, but I hope to offer other textile artists the opportunity to send images to us at the Gallery, so that we can print cloth for them, too. Meanwhile, this is one of the images I'm working on currently. This was printed on Evolon and stitched into. It's part of the 'Cracking Up' series I've been thinking about and working on for a while. Not sure if it's finished yet, I may add something else to it, possibly using the embellisher. I've included a small close up, to let you see the detail in both the stitch and the print itself; remember you can click on the images to enlarge them.

The original image was a photograph of cracks in the floor of an outbuilding at the Gressenhall Museum. It's amazing how quickly and easily a photograph can be manipulated on computer. The challenge, I'm finding, is working out how to combine photographs as abstracts with stitch. I've always said that it's important to leave space for stitch in any design we make; I'm finding that if I work the image too hard, it's difficult to work out quite how and where to stitch...and to justify the stitch at all. That hadn't really occurred to me. I don't see myself as a photographer, but in some ways, that's what I am, or what I have become. It's not a turn in my creative journey that I was expecting, but that's okay. I love the unexpected.

At last...

...here they are, in glorious technicolour. Lovely Lutradur and Finding Your Creative Focus had their respective debuts at Festival Of Quilts, and now they're popping up for sale on my other blog
Or at least, Finding Focus is there, Lovely Lutradur will appear later on today, or possibly tomorrow. I've been catching up with my admin work today, sending some books away, some CDs too. Self employed persons don't get Bank Holidays, and neither do those of us who work Wednesday to Friday (aww...). Now all that remains is for me to finish the Exquisite Evolon book, which is in the process of having its gallery put to rights, and I'll have that with me at the Knitting and Stitching Show at Harrogate. Hurrah!

I had a great time at Festival of Quilts, particularly teaching. I love teaching, and everyone in the classes rose to the occasion, and seemed to go away happy, and with some lovely work in process, too. For once, I managed not to buy much at all in the way of supplies, but then, I was really busy... and finally, on Sunday, managed to make the book with Lutradur XL that I'd been promising I'd make all week... For those of you wondering what Lutradur XL is, it's a heavy weight lutradur, which, as well as being interesting to work with in its own right, is a wonderful substitute for Pelmet Vilene. I prefer it, in fact, as it doesn't give off fluff in the sewing machine, and it takes colour much better than Pelmet Vilene, particularly line. So...some experiments with that, maybe even a new book... watch this space!

Tomorrow is gallery day, which is always fun. I usually take hand work to do, but might just play with my sewing machine, for fun. There's a piece of Evolon which I transfer dyed which is just begging to be stitched... And then, I have the workshop in the evening, which we've transferred from the Wednesday night, as I now work three days a week, and was finding it too tiring to zoom around at work all day and then zoom around in the gallery in the evening. We are meant to be working on Beautiful Backgrounds, but last week's class on designing and making dolls was very well received, and the people who attended want to make more dolls. So we might end up with two classes running simultaneously... stranger things have happened. At least I'm flexible...