It might as well be spring.

 

I spotted these while photographing tubes today – and there are more snowdrops out. Very cheering – but it can’t last…

 

 

 

 

CG1 and Cellophane have continued to fall apart – I have brought the bits of Cellophane into the house to decide what to do with them. I had thought of making a piano hinge book with them, but they may be a bit too soft and squashy. Alternative ideas are to make a box – or to lay them out like a skeleton in an archaeology programme…

 

Like a lot of us, POT got bigger over Christmas.

I keep forgetting to measure him, but he is at least a couple of metres long, after 3 months. I am not sure how I am going to photograph him if I keep going till The summer.

I also managed a bit of scrappy embroidery  for the gold book -

well, weaving, to be more accurate. The idea for the squares of card came from Jane Patrick’s book, ‘Time to Weave’ – which includes an easier way to do Japanese binding I wish I’d known about 6 months ago. I’m now alternating between adding embroidery and beads to a piece of gold painted corrugated card – as you do - and trying to finish a piece of too small to see canvas work I started on an RSN course 3 years ago. Difficult to decide which is more like hard work!

So what do I do now?

The PMS’s and PCs were handed in yesterday, and then we had an interesting talk from Pauline Thomas – altered books, work about the passage of time – what’s not to like? She even inspired me to think about videoing some of my pieces – yes, me, the technophobe, who has never videoed anything in her life except by accident when she pressed the wrong button on her camera. Need to get a tripod though…

Then we had our usual college Christmas do and came home.

Since when Wensleydale has got fed up of me whining ‘I’ve got nothing to do. I'm bored.’ Not completely true, I had presents to wrap and cards to write [Christmas, 2 birthdays and a wedding anniversary – it’s an expensive time of year.]

Then I remembered that college may be over but POT goes on, so he had to be added to and photographed.

He’s getting to be quite a big boy, just over 2 metres/ 6 foot 6.

That reminded me to go out into the cold and photograph the others.

Remember ‘Plastic’?  Last week he looked like this.

 

 

 

 

Today he looked like this.  I’m not sure when he came down, but we’ve had some pretty stormy weather recently, and his strings had broken.

 

 

Good job I didn’t spot him earlier or I'd have been panicking about changing the photos I was handing in. [I suppose I could e-mail a copy? – no, that way madness lies.]

Mmm – what to do? Leave him there or restore him? Time for what I have learned from Pauline Thomas is called an intervention.

 

 

 

 

 

This pathetic object, on the other hand, is staying just as it is.

though when it has completely disintegrated I may collect the tubes and see if I can do anything with them – I have vague thoughts of a piano hinge book of these photographs…

[Why are some of my pieces gendered [always male] and some not?]

The other pieces are coming on well, too - ‘Country Gardener 1’ is disintegrating nicely -

 

 

 

 

 

and interesting things are happening to ‘Storm Cones’.

And then I decided it was time for something completely different

and completely purposeless – a gold book.  [The cover – recycled wrapping paper - is a uniform colour, that’s my shadow!]

It was late by then, I was tired, I rushed it and it shows – but it was good to make something which has no connection with college at all! Perhaps some small bits of gold embroidery now to go in it?

Marks out of three?

At least 2. Possibly even 2.5.

1. “Add any mail to ‘Postage of Time’  [POT].” √
   
   Notice the posh cream one? A. has threatened to send me a lime green one. Red letter days I’ve heard of – but lime green letter days? [Before anyone writes to tell me, I know red letter days have nothing to do with the mail.]
   
2. “Make 20 brown paper tubes, and 20 plastic bag twists and tie them together with garden twine.” √ 
   
3. “Hang the latter from a tree and take their photographs.” X

After naming POT, I’m tempted to go back to naming my pieces. At first I tried to think of sensible names - ‘Plastic or Paper’? – but of course things rapidly got silly - ‘Tweedledum and Tweedledee’? ‘Pinky and Perky’?

I would probably have got round to the hanging if I hadn’t:

1. Spent 10 minutes looking for the twine [which is green, the photo lies]. Because it is green, I keep it in the green thread drawer – except it appears that I don’t, because I found it in the string box. That is more logical, if only because there is more room in the string box. Well, there was till I bought some more. I’m quite partial to string – especially with brown paper. [Not to eat, you understand.]
2. Spent 10 minutes looking for the eraser stamps I carved on Friday. [No, I didn’t need them today, using them wasn’t on the list, I just realised I couldn’t find them while I was looking for the twine.]
3. Spending another 10 minutes carving a new stamp and proofing it. [As you can see, it isn’t a very complex stamp.]Just when I got to the stage when I remembered that the drawback to carving out all 6 faces of an eraser is that it guarantees you end up with inky fingers, I remembered that I’d washed the previous stamps after using them and left them to dry by the sink. So now I’ve got three stamps with very similar patterns of lines on them…
4. Getting perfectionist about not twisting the bindings on the tubes  - or rather, only twisting them back to front, not left to right. This led to frequent unbinding.
5. Getting perfectionist about getting the right amount of twist on the plastic bags.

Is it is possible to be a perfectionist when you are working with brown paper, plastic bags and garden twine? For ‘perfectionist’, read ‘mad’.

Despite all that, I enjoyed myself. I am finding the ‘3 a day’ lists quite motivating, even though I didn’t finish. I think this is because they make me break tasks into smaller parts, in order to make them doable in a day, and there is a greater sense of achievement.

The idea came from Margaret Cooter, although I’m not using her system. I started with bits of paper, but I’ve now redesigned my college planning sheets to include space for daily lists. I am including mundane things in the lists as well - tomorrow’s includes the dreaded word ‘mending’.

Of course I reserve the right to change my mind in the morning – these things should be spontaneous.