Testing

 Thanks to Sandy for her tips on defeating Blogger - but before I  attempt html I'm  trying something called Scribefire. Livewriter  it ain't - and it seems to lack a spellcheck, which could lead to  some interesting posts - but at least it allows me to write  alongside my pictures...

Every silver lining has a cloud.

I had a birthday earlier on in the week - not saying which one - and lovely Wensleydale decided that I needed a new computer. A bigger, sleeker and prettier one than my elderly Acer laptop. So I am typing this on my new Mac. As I have never used one before, it has been a bit of  a learning curve, but once W. had found where they've hidden the @ sign, I was away - and  I've realised that I can still use a lot of the things I'm used to, like Chrome and Picasa. 


But not Livewriter - and as the free Mac alternatives I've tried don't seem to work, and I'm not prepared to pay £££ for a blogging platform - I'm stuck with writing this in Blogger. Past experience suggests that writing will not be the problem, it will be adding pictures. I know Blogger has had some changes since I last used it to write my posts - so we shall see.

 I Cat

I take it back about the writing, Blogger seems to want to change font in mid-stream. And I do not like Times New Roman, even if Blogger does.

Another little animal - the only visitor to our bird squirrel feeder. Plastic window frames are clearly no deterrent - though the glass was.

Well - my return to Blogger for posting has been a frustrating experience. I am about to try posting on my website and college blog - if Wordpress proves more amenable on a Mac, this blog may be moving soon...

Off with the old

i.e. Prayer Flags – and on with the new – which will be lots of one of these. Probably the multicoloured one in the foreground, which was made of pages from an old ‘Great Art’ catalogue. Which suggests an interesting title if I follow my usual naming practice. Modesty suggests that I add a question mark…

Mmm – 312 pages in the catalogue, 6 pages per shape [anyone out there who remembers their maths better than I do and knows what this shape is called?] = 50+ of them. Wonder if I'll run out of patience or pages first – and is there a tree big enough? Though as I'm not good on ladders, I could break the habit of a lifetime and just pile them on the grass.

 

 

 

Of course, if I do decide to use the catalogue pages, I won’t need to colour them with these rather nice looking naturally coloured paints, which arrived today – but I’m sure I'll find something to do with them. The palette is just a little bit bigger than a Koh-i-noor palette, better quality – and three times the price.

 

 

 

I seem to have been a bit quiet about my weekly photographs, but I have been carrying on with them, even last week when it was about all I could do. I wasn’t due to take any today, but it was so lovely I decided to take POT out for an airing, and photograph him in the only place where there's enough room to spread him out in all his glory. He is now about 3 metres long and 1.8 kilos in weight – two thirds of the way towards completion, so I don’t think he’ll make 7 metres as I’d hoped– but still quite impressive.

Slowly getting back to normal…

thank goodness – by tomorrow I might even have some energy.

The college session on Wednesday was helpful – the advice was to keep on doing what I’m doing, scrap Prayer Flags which I’ve been increasingly unhappy with, and get some natural dyes/paints/inks to colour the pieces I want to colour.

So I have – except that the natural watercolours and oak gall/ genuine walnut inks haven't arrived yet. In the interim I have started an indoor piece for which I  can’t think of a name – brown paper, bleach, non-natural gold paint and hand-dyed thread bought from one of my fellow students. I’ll post a photo later when I’ve worked up the energy to take one.

This afternoon Wensleydale dragged me out to Mottisfont, for the exhibition ‘A Slice of Life’ – interesting works from Mottisfont’s own collection, and from that of Southampton Art Gallery. I may have mentioned before that Southampton has a brilliant collection of 20th century art – they reckon it’s the best outside London - and Mottisfont’s isn't bad either. Degas, Hockney, Hepworth, Sickert, Lanyon, Spencer, Goldsworthy, Long, Piper, Sutherland, both the Johns, – and lots more. Mostly small, apart from a great George Shaw drawing, mostly British, mostly drawings and prints. And of course there’s a good coffee shop – and daffodils in the grounds. If you do visit you should look out for the bird feeders behind the entrance kiosk for another brilliant show…

This was going to be the week…

that I got motivated. I thought the first week back at college was going to be a ‘self-directed activity’ session, so I planned to roll a lot of tubes and play around with some ideas.

Turned out it was a workshop session, working with paper – which was quite useful, but not the kick up the backside I really needed.

On Thursday I did manage to get these two samples made – both from an old phone book, one with added Quink and Brusho. I prefer the coloured one but  I’m not sure  that I can justify added colour artistically [Pretentious? Moi?]– but does that matter? Dunno.

I was going to do more on Friday, but we were called in for a spot of emergency babysitting, when norovirus hit the Cheese Minor household – and a some more on Saturday. Then, as I expected, norovirus hit Cheese Acres, and that was the weekend gone. I’ll spare you the details…

 

I have managed to do a bit more today, – dipping the ends of brown paper tubes in gold paint – but the smell of the paint hasn’t improved the after-effects of the virus. These are destined to be fastened together with some rather nice hand-dyed thread – for no very good reason except that I fancy doing it. Just hope it works…

I wanted to get several samples finished, because we have ‘peer review’ on Wednesday, and i thought it was a good opportunity to get some feedback on the things I feel a bit iffy about – like this. 

I hope they’ll be gentle with me!

Finished at last.

The piece formerly known as ‘Compass’ – or possibly ‘No Direction Home’ – but now known as ‘Road Atlas’.

I haven't decided yet if I like it.

Finishing Road Atlas – and college starting again on Wednesday – concentrated the mind and I started exploring a new idea for a large network of tubes arranged in diamonds and equilateral triangles – and when I say large, I mean large, a couple of metres across, at least.

 

 

 

This was a good example of why it is always a good idea to make a sample. Working out the thread path was difficult – I ended up either with knots, or going round almost every section at least twice. And although I think a larger piece might have behaved more the way I was expecting, the small piece lost its shape and wouldn’t hang flat. I could have persevered but I decided I didn't have the time to spend weeks making lots of tubes only to find it didn’t work.

It was time for Plan B – which at Cheese Acres is thinking of Plan C. Plan C is either making tubes for some other ideas [3D pieces] or getting back to the prayer flags.

But I needed a bit of instant gratification, so I made a book – a pipe cleaner bound notebook, adapted to international paper sizes, and some odd leftovers of paper.

I think it would be a great thing to make with children, as intended – however I wish I’d made it A5 instead of A4, and I shall replace the pipe cleaners with thread. But instantly gratifying it was.

Better late than never…

Today I finally got down to finishing off Compass/No Direction Home [still haven’t made up my mind]. Yes, nearly a week has passed since I wrote that I had started it, but one or two things got in the way. Good things, like exhibitions, trips and watching exciting cycling - middling things lie taking another hourly series of photos of ‘Mirror’ [slide show here] – and less good things, like visits to the dental hygienist. Plus the piece itself took longer than expected.

You may notice a slight discrepancy between this – my sketch…

 

 

 

 

and this – my prepared materials.  Unfortunately I didn’t, until I came to assemble the piece. I needed 18 tubes and I had only made 9 [couldn’t even count the 8 I thought I was making properly…]

So I had to make another lot – and as that involved three coats of wax on each, it took a while.

Then life intervened, and it was only today that I got down to the final assembly – or so I thought.

 

 

 

 

Mmm – think that outer ring needs to be black, not cream.

I was despairingly thinking of taking the scissors to the whole thing when W. suggested I over-wrapped the cream yarn with the black yarn. Told you he was wonderful.

Now I just need some interesting TV which I don’t actually have to watch, and I can get it done. [Wrapping yarn round a lampshade ring is not the most exciting activity I have ever tried.]

 

 

 

Our trip out was yesterday: it dawned on me that because it was exam board at college I had a day off. We decided to go to Corfe Castle, which is one of those places we kept saying we should go to. without actually doing so.

W. described the weather as ‘atmospheric’ – by which he meant it was cold, windy and wet. As you can see. So we scuttled round, indulged in a little retail therapy at the National Trust shop, and came home via Walford Mill, where there was an interesting exhibition of Brazilian jewellery made from recycled materials. Very inspirational, although some of the recycling was a bit out of my league.

The tea and toasted teacakes were pretty good too.