Proof positive

that spring has sprung. Only a bit of blossom so far, but the promise of a lot more, despite the attentions of a pair of bullfinches.

 

 

 

 

 

In case you need more proof – here is Babybel having a lovely time in the sunshine on my birthday – as did her Gran,

and some more spring flowers on our dog/duck walk on Monday.

 

 

 

 

 

Not all the birds we saw were ducks -

we saw Little -

 

 

 

 

and Large, as well. He has to be the biggest swan I have ever seen, and much more willing to come close than most of the swans on the lake. [Why am I suddenly thinking about Adam Cooper?] [That link is for Mrs Cheddar to enjoy.]

Despite all this excitement I managed to print out just a few [?] of the photos for tomorrow’s college work, and sorted out all [?] of the other things I need.

The design of the triptych, which is the real point of the exercise, didn’t take long once I’d remembered this poem, which has lots of visual imagery. We didn’t have to use a poem, but I love this one, which seemed perfect for the theme of ‘past, present, future’. Paint some lining paper, add the poem, print off a few sepiaised photos of past and present Cheshire [editing out the more embarrassing ones] and I’m done.

The design of the book of photos, which is just an add-on to encourage us to play around with our images, has, of course, taken a lot longer. I still can’t decide what binding to use. Codex – which I’ve never done? Coptic? The one I call slit and slot? I had lots of other ideas, but decided to keep it simple with one of those three, which have the advantage that you can go on adding pages to them until you’ve run out of paper/time/ideas.

We also crammed in a visit to this [OK, but a bit lacklustre – the most interesting things were a pub loo door and Willie Whitelaw’s graffitied desk] and a second birthday celebration next door.

My old principal used to say that a busy student was a happy student – I think she may have been right …

A day out and a day in.

Yesterday we decided it was time to revisit Highcliffe Castle, so we pottered down to Dorset, had a look at the art exhibitions that were on [some interesting ideas], spent some money in the shop [things for Babybel – 4,, things for Gran and Granddad – 0] and had a good lunch in the excellent cafe.

Then we came home and I played with GIMP, which, I’ve concluded, has much more interesting filters than PSE. This is one called Qbist, layered over one of the photos from college.

 

 

 

 

And while I was at it I had a go with the Hockneyiser

 

 

 

 

 

 

and Lunapic – this is the Obama style filter, you’ll be amazed to hear.

Then I began to have to fight with BT Total Broadband and/or Google Chrome to  get, and keep an internet connection, so I gave up, turned everything off, and watched a very good programme on Indian textiles on the telly.

 

 

Today, Wensleydale went to help Babybel’s Daddy do DIY - [and Babybel, of course, who has her own tool kit]. I stayed at home and kept busy. I:

1. painted some black paper with Inkaid, on which to print off some of the 230+ images of myself I’ve accumulated over the last few days. [Vain? Moi?] Tried to remember if I usually use two coats, as per instructions, or only one. Plumped for one.
2. Went up to local shop to buy things we forgot to get in Sainsbury’s.
3. Took delivery of parcel.*
4. Made birthday cake with ingredients bought in shop.
5. Put serviettes to dye in the washing machine. They were once white, but got a bit discoloured so a while ago I dyed them blue to go with the blue paint in the dining room. However we no longer have blue paint in the dining room so I have dyed them black to go with the black curtains. I suspect this will be their final reincarnation.
6. Made coffee. Still no reliable internet, so phoned BT. Waited while someone told me repeatedly how very busy they were– thank goodness its a free phone number. Eventually got through to a very helpful young man in India who managed to improve the connection no end. Everything now working apart from Chrome.
7. Made mock up of the triptych for Wednesday, which involved wrestling with a metre and a bit of lining paper – very curly lining paper. Decided to make the real thing bigger. Wrestled with an even bigger piece of very curly lining paper, painted it with gesso, and glued on quotes from Robert Frost and TS Eliot. [Pretentious? Moi?]
8. Took cake out of oven and dyeing out of washing machine.
9. Made a cheese sandwich and a strong spritzer.
10. Put dishwasher on and washed up the non-dishwasherable.
11. Painted triptych.
12. Found variety of papers and ironed Bondaweb on to them.
13. Made cup of tea. Downloaded Opera, as recommended by Cheese Major, which has changed sine the last time I looked at it. Felt confused, but discovered it has a mail program which might allow me to give up on Outlook – followed instructions to download it, couldn’t believe it was really that easy.
14. Tore up Bondawebbed papers and ironed the bits on to A4 cartridge paper, on which to print off some of the 230+ images of myself I’ve accumulated over the last few days. [Vain? Moi?]
15. Saw Wensleydale coming up drive, breathed sigh of relief, and put kettle on again.

* Aforementioned parcel. What could be in it? [Not the cup, that’s there to show the size.]

A lot of packaging, 4 catalogues, a receipt and a little white box – overkill packaging, perhaps?

The little white box contained this, a somewhat more expensive replacement for my £5 charity shop watch, which finally gave up the ghost last week. As the local charity shops don’t seem to sell cheap watches any more, I decided I needed some colour in my life and gave myself another early birthday present. It is rather fun

 

 

 

 

Spot the difference?

Tomorrow is the actual day of my eleventy third birthday, so we are off for a family outing to look at model trains. Not that I am specially interested in model trains  but I know a young lady who is, and watching her watching them will be lots of fun.

What a dreadful assignment!

First day back at college and what are we asked to do? Work with a partner to take photos of each other, manipulate them in Photoshop, print them off and make a book of the best, and then produce a paper based triptych on the theme of ‘Past, Present and Future’ inspired, more or less, by our images.

I’m sure you realise how devastated I was by this.

There were two drawbacks – first, that the college network was working at the speed of a paralytic tortoise, and the other that this implied that I should limit myself to Photoshop - which of course I ignored.

Fortunately I’d treated my self to PS Elements as an early birthday prezzie, so I came home and played with it.

This is the ‘Cut-out’ filter.

 

 

 

 

And PostworkShop – this is ‘Outlines with Scanned Brush’.

Hope the pictures aren’t meant to be recognizable.

 

 

 

 

And Befunky – ‘Holgaart’ . I'm in there somewhere.

The book is called ‘How to Survive Modern Art’.

 

 

 

 

 

And Sumopaint – the ‘Kaleidoscope’ filter, which does a good job of showing off my Frida Kahlo eyebrows.

I don’t have purple hair, I was wearing a hat with purple flowers on it.

 

 

 

I may get round to GIMP,  and some of the other programs I tried out in the great flower extravaganza, [just search for passion flower’ or ‘dahlia’ on my blog], if I decide the current 190 or so images aren’t enough.

Yes, I have spoken to Wensleydale in the interim, and looked after Babybel, been to the gym and done a few chores – although progress was helped by another bout of insomnia last night.

Then there are the other important decisions, like what sort of binding to use – currently thinking of a simple codex, but with flaps and holes and fold outs – and how I can wangle a triptych into a book format. 

This was all supposed to be doable in the college time left over from thinking about topics for our research project and having tutorials on it.

Fat chance.

Suppose I ught to write a research proposal too. My preferred topic? Artists’ books …

Everything comes in threes.

Or in this case, possibly goes in threes, as I have finished three things in the last few days.

1. Is a sweater, which I can’t show you because it’s drying, but it is pretty unexciting anyway – I don’t do complex patterns any more. Knitting is what I do when reading emails or watching Scandinavian thrillers which i have to read.
2. Is a little green one-sheet-of-paper book. It started as a print out, on newspaper, of one of my Sumopaint designs, but it was dominated by the ad on the newspaper, so it gained spray paint,  appliqué, stitch and sequins, and lost bits I cut out. Weird, but I like it.
3. Is a slightly bigger purple book -  used Colour Catchers again. Yes, I have a fair amount of purple washing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I like this one too.

My foot is much better, even after our sunny Monday morning Babybel, dog and duck walk. The ducks don’t actually join us on the walk, although they do tend to swim after bread providers for a short distance. The Canada geese, after ambushing unexpecting bread holders, will walk with us for a time, but they too lack stickability.

And that cygnet was so busy showing off he never got a nibble – unlike the dog.

Back to College tomorrow – we are looking at the theme of either:

1. past, present, future – or
2. identity.

Which, precisely, is unclear, but I can’t say I'm thrilled by either.

We have to take props which reflect our character and personality [I don’t have any bad-tempered old bat props, unfortunately] and will be photographed with them – or with someone else's – opinions vary.

Why do I keep thinking of ‘Calendar Girls’?

I am not taking my clothes off for anything – in any case, just like Celia Imrie, I’d need bigger buns…

What would you do …

if you had to rest your big toe?  As in RICE – Rest, Ice, Compression, Elevation?

Don’t laugh, it is very painful. I don’t know what I've done to it – Mrs Cheddar suggested it was gout, but when I Googled it the symptoms aren’t quite the same. It started on Tuesday night, but was not too bad on Wednesday – or I wouldn’t have gone out, but on Wednesday night it was agony, and I could barely walk on Thursday, hence the RICE. It has been a bit better today, but I am still trying to keep off my feet.

Using the sewing machine is out, unless I change the habit of a life time, and operate the pedal with my left foot, so I made a couple of books – what else would I do? Most of it done sitting down at my desk with an ice pack under my foot – there’s one there now, and it’s bliss.

This book mailer got a little damaged when Babybel helped her Granddad open it, so it is patched with tape. I was trying to make it look like a bar code, but ran out of tape, and ended up with a mess. The pages are an eclectic mess mixture of paper, including some of those I painted on Wednesday – whatever was easily to hand, really. The stitching is Keith Smith’s ‘Triple Dash’ – but there are four signatures, so i suppose it is ‘Quadruple Dash’.

This is, as you can see, a Sainsbury’s cheese box from Christmas – I kept it because I liked the hole in the top [now front].

I Bondawebbed the box to a bit of experimental dyeing, cutting the Bondaweb away from the hole. These pages were anything I could find in the paper drawer which seemed to go.  The binding is Ailsa Golden’s ‘Bunched Stitches’ – although my bunches are beads. Although I find beads on the spine are a bit of a nuisance because they stop the book lying flat, it seemed a good use for these spotty orange ones.

Of course the other thing I can do in my enforced rest is play with the computer – although BT is doing its best to restrict me, by b****ring around with broadband. We hope this is part of their promise to provide us soon [for a fee] with their whizzy new faster version – but this seems to involve cutting us off altogether for long periods of time, or delivering a v-e-r-y  s-l-o-w version when we’ve got one at all. Of course, as soon as I pick up the phone to ring BT – it comes back on again. That has happened three times now, which seems too much of a coincidence. [Paranoid? Me?]

Good job I’ve got some downloaded programs to play with, like PostworkShop.

This is a collage so boring I didn’t bother showing it to you when I made it – I was experimenting with a cruciform design as suggested in several design books. A good test for the program, I thought.

 

These were all made by applying a single ‘style’ to the original – apart from the blue and yellow one, which like this lot -

 

 

 

had a style applied to a style. Or in some cases a style to a style to a style  - you get the picture.

The one with letters came from using a brush called ‘Letters’ at its largest setting, in one of the Sketch styles – the sketch was very sketchy so the letters are sparsely scattered. You can choose the letters the program uses so you could make it say something, although I think you’d end up with anagrams...

Definite improvements, some of them. I think PWS passed the test.

It has been a beautiful day.

 

So beautiful that I was inspired to paint some papers.  The colours are a bit odd because I was experimenting with using watercolour to make paste paint, and  used up some left-overs. [Those dark marks are shadows, because the sun was shining!]

 

 

So beautiful that we had lunch in the conservatory for the first time this year – and I took my sweater off!

So beautiful that we tore up the ‘to do’ list and went to the Hillier Gardens, where there were spring flowers, 

 

 

 

camellias,

 

 

 

 

 

 

an amazing rhododendron, 

 

 

 

 

and beautiful trees.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The tea and cake were pretty good too.

But best of all – my beloved flowering cherry at home thinks it might almost be spring – there are little tiny red buds on there.

 

 

 

According to Google weather, there was a ‘chance of snow’ today -suppose it still might…

What a difference …

a good night’s sleep makes! [Plus having a day at home and not too many chores.]

I did a little collaging – Quality Control and friends [she is, of course, the one who’s out of step],

 

 

 

 

 

and a little kirigami. These aren’t from my calendar, which is a bit neglected at the moment, they are all my own work. This is actually a pocket in the collage sketchbook, hence the diagonal line.

 

Then, inspired by this post, I took this, which had been hanging around for years – possibly decades – and tried to make it a bit more interesting.

[Mmm – just Googled CPC and out of dozens of possible sources, my money’s on the electronics firm, which would mean it used to belong to Cheese Major. Unless it was one of the many government initiatives which came, went and sank without trace during the years Wensleydale and I worked in education.]

But I digress. Unlike Hanna’s original, I started with the cover. A bit of fossicking turned up an experimental piece from the summer - painted iron-on interfacing ironed-on to some rather bright hand-dye. The ends are different because the interfacing was smaller than the hand-dye.

So I free machined it, going round the shapes in the paint in whatever colour took my fancy. [I’ve decided the only way I’m going to gain confidence in FME is by just doing it, in situations where I don't much care what it ends up like!]

 

 

 

Hanna added end papers to her planner, and I was going to do the same till I found this – a bit of paper bag printing on poly satin, bonded to more hand-dye and embroidered. I never knew quite what to do with it, so it went in the front of the binder, with an offcut of the outer cover at the back – end textiles. I stuck them down with double sided tape, but the cover is sewn, with pockets to slip over the covers.

I wasn’t sure about the painted interfacing when I first did it, but today, every time I pressed it, it got softer and more like a rather bizarrely coloured suede. Nice.

Then I tackled the inside. The binder is an odd size, just too small to take A4 paper, so everything had to be cut down to fit.

 

 

These are the dividers, made from an old calendar. I’m not usually a flowery calendar person, but this one was free…

I added some lined paper, cutting down some with two punched holes which won’t go into the four ring binder I take to college.

Now I need to decide what to do with it. Hanna made hers as a planner, and heaven knows I could do with one of those, but I can’t find any printable planner pages on the net that make any sense to me at all.  Maybe I’ll have to wake up my dormant form-constructing skills, and see what I can make for myself.