Too busy to blog?

Life is specially busy at the moment because we have resumed our regular child minding mornings, looking after Babybel and the VHC twice a week. You forget the amount of time and stuff it takes to look after a baby, even a sunny natured little bruiser like the VHC. Fun - but we get home and collapse...

However, last weekend I got my act together and tackled some of the college work that I have been procrastinating about. Well, the business plan is due in tomorrow so I had to get that finished.

After much head scratching I got Big Mac to recognise that the Epson printer has its own menu of settings and that I wanted to use them. [Answer - download updated drivers. Sounds like I know what I'm doing? I don't, but it worked.] This was so I could print an A3 copy of 'Ashes to Ashes' for college tomorrow. That's the piece formerly known as 'Earth to Earth'. I found I kept calling it 'A to A' - possibly because I'd been bottling ashes. As you do.



I also finished 'Lost Words'. Amazing how effective deadliness can be. [These don't have to be handed in yet, but we are due to talk about our exhibition tomorrow so I thought I'd better have some samples ready.]

And POT got its photo taken.

I found some time for my new no-thought-required embroidery, from an inherited 1955 transfer.  I am having fun with this, despite the vast amount of satin stitch, because it is so mindless.















And I have continued to twiddle around with Dave Loveland's recipes - seems to be a theme here of just following instructions!

Dave has been running a short series based on a rejected photo. I don't know what his original looked like - this is mine, taken when I first got Paddy and was finding out what it could do. [I am NOT showing you the photos I took with the backwards facing camera...]















And this is what I did with the bookshelves, following Dave's recipes as far as I could because:
a)  I don't have the same apps and
b) I am not good at doing what I'm told.

Interesting what a variety you can get with a bit of twiddling. I love the two that look like Coke cans.


So now you know why I wasn't blogging.

Frustrations

This post originally had a different title- but then Blogger lost it. I wrote it in the Blogger app on the IPad - with some difficulty, as said app is not very user-friendly. I saved it for a final check on Big Mac - but when I logged on to Blogger it wasn't there - and it had disappeared off the IPad as well. Blogger it.

Needless to say the Blogger app has been deleted - at least I didn't pay for it.

It has been a day of frustrations, starting this morning when I tried to find my tiny funnel. in order to put these into test tubes, as suggested by Terrie the tutor. As you do.

And, as you do, I couldn't find it. What I did find was this which was the last thing I turned the workroom upside down looking for. And my copy of this, which I was dimly aware I hadn't seen for a while. But no funnel. And although Wensleydale found another one, by then I'd got the bit between my teeth, carrying out the rearrangement of the workroom I'd planned since I went to Hobbycraft last week to buy a zip, a pen, and a rotary cutter blade - and came back minus the pen but with two sets of storage drawers. Well, they were 20% off...

So the room now looks tidier - temporarily - and emptier - partly because of a bin full of dejunking, but mostly because a lot of books are on their way to the spare bedroom, which W. has lined with shelves. There is still room for  a bed, if we ever have any visitors, although I'd have to move the detritus of 2.75 years of a Foundation Degree off it if they actually wanted to sleep in it.

The ashes have not been bottled, but I have put the funnel in A Safe Place fior later.

Playing around...

with this - my old fashioned hussif made using old
 fashioned [and old] transfers. As always when I end up making something like this, I end up with a list of 'if onlys' - if only I had measured my scissors before I made the scissor pocket - it's too big for my small  scissors and too small for my big scissors. Maybe I'll have to buy a middle sized pair? If only I hadn't  rounded the corners, so I didn't have to make bias binding which took two attempts to apply even reasonably well. But I loved doing the old fashioned embroidery, [so much so that I've started another one] and my satin stitch is much better than it was. Not good, mind, just better...

I have also been playing around with the new toy. A while ago I discovered Dave Loveland's I365 project, fascinating to one who enjoys mucking about with photographs, but at the time I didn't have the technology. Now I have, I've been trying out some of his recipes.


This is my version of his recipe for the 8th May, 'Threesome'. I know they look a bit like cigarette ends, but it is actually the ash from 'Ashes to Ashes'.

It's been fun to follow Loveland's recommendations, although it does tend to lead to spending money in the sweetie shop that is the app store.

Tomorrow we resume our grandparent duties, as Babybel and VHC's mummy has gone back to work, but after that I know I have to get back down to college work after this little holiday.

The good and bad of life.

In reverse order - the bad is a stomach bug which meant I had to miss college yesterday - I'm feeling much better now, just sleepy!

The good is that before I was struck down, I bought myself the cute little toy on which I was [but no longer am] typing this - an IPad. Love it, though I don't think I'll be typing much on it unless I get a keyboard to go with it, which negates the purpose a bit...

Since my laptop has all but died, and the big Apple (to coin a phrase) is not very portable, I treated myself. Long term readers of this blog will not be surprised to know that I've been envying Iphoneographers for ages- all those apps! In the app store I feel like a child in a sweet shop - but there are a lot fewer calories in the treats.

These are my first efforts with some of those so tempting sweeties - though unfortunately I can't remember what I used for the first two...

though this one is Iris and FX Photo Studio.

Flowers again - they are some of the few things which stand still enough fro me - well, most of the time.















It's the perfect toy for when you are lying on the sofa feeling sorry for yourself!

The beginning of the end?

We had a very helpful group critique in college on Wednesday, at which 'Earth to Earth' and 'Lost Words' went down well. Thinking about it afterwards, I came to the conclusion that there really isn't much point in making any more work at this stage - so I'm not going to. Probably.

If any of my fellow students are reading this, I hope you'll still speak to me - but one of the reasons was realising just how much big stuff we are producing between us - and most of it needing wall space. So realistically, however many individual pieces I make - there will only be room for one or two of them.  I'm unlikely to make anything mind-blowingly brilliant in the next few weeks - especially as we're away for some of them - so I'm quitting while I'm ahead. Lest this implies that I've finished, nothing could be further from the truth. I need to think about how to present the photographs of 'Earth to Earth' [our idea of mounting them on foam board was dismissed as 'too A-level'!] and find a better box for 'Lost Words'. Then there's the stalled business plan [it's so boring] and the non-existant contextualisation - and producing sketchbooks and notebooks that don't look like afterthoughts [even if they are].

But before I can face that I need a break, so  I have started some old fashioned hand embroidery, entirely unconnected with college. In my kitschier moments I have fancied making myself one of these, so  I dug out some linen I've had for about 40 years and got started.

Contrary to appearances, these are both on the same fabric. It was going to be yellow linen, but despite looking in all the likely places and several unlikely ones, I couldn't find the yellow linen I was sure I had. I did throw out a bin full of stuff in the resultant temper tantrum, however, so it wasn't all a bad thing.

My eagle-eyed readers will have spotted that, lurking behind the half finished stitching on the left are some suspicious looking marks. Yes, it's a transfer. Undergraduate stitch student uses artificial aids and other people's designs shock! In the spirit of old-fashioned kitsch, I decided to use some of the transfers I inherited from mum - probably pre-war, and surprisingly effective still, unlike the crinoline lady. Yes, I confess, I would have used a crinoline lady if the transfer had worked...

Your eagle eyes will also have noticed that I'm rubbish at satin stitch. And that fly stitch is going to have to come out. But I am sooooo enjoying myself, and Wensleydale keeps saying how much he likes seeing me with some embroidery again.

All this self-indulgence will end at 9 p.m. tonight, though, when 'The Bridge' starts - our weekly wallow in Scandinavian drama needs to be seen to be fully appreciated - er - read. So it's simple knitting [or nail-gnawing] for a couple of hours.

Still here ...

just busy. We spent last weekend in Brighton, to see Babybel and VHC's mummy complete her first marathon, in the very creditable time of 3 hours 44 minutes. We also managed a visit to Brighton Museum, where we only had time to look at Julian Bell's work in what looked like a very good exhibition. [And the 20th century furniture as well - we always look at the furniture.] [And a cream tea.] Then on the way home on Monday we stopped for  lunch and a some highly contrasting art at Petworth.

Tuesday was busy too, catching up on what had been neglected over the weekend and a visit to the Watermill for 'A Winter's Tale'. I didn't enjoy this one as much as Henry V, although I did get propositioned by Autolycus [one of the penalties of sitting on the front row.] But it was still a good evening, and as ever the music was excellent.

Wednesday was back to college, and relatively peaceful. I had a helpful tutorial, with some good tips on how to present my work in the degree show. It was good to relax a bit before Thursday, which was a full day looking after Babybel and VHC - not that they are difficult children, but we're out of practice, especially with babies.

So this weekend has been rest and recovery time - a little bit of college work [mostly sorting out stuff for a critique session], a bit of non-college sewing, as I decided that our new yoga mats needed bags,  and a lot of sleeping.

The sun goes in ...

the rain comes down, and the productivity and enthusiasm comes down with it.

Partly because 'Saga' doesn't seem to be going anywhere. I think the more effort I put into it, the less I like it. After rolling the tubes, sanding them [should have stopped there], adding the crud, sanding off the crud, and colouring them with coffee, I started stringing them together. And decided that the result was b-o-r-i-n-g.

So I deconstructed what little I'd done and slept on it.

Today I sprinkled them with gold and black ink.

Mmm - maybe not. Back to the sand paper? Give up? Go for the Kaffe Fassett solution - if 20 colours aren't working, add another 20 - or in this case. another 2?

Although this ['Lost Words'] is sort-of-finished, I'm not sure where to go from here. It is quite tiny, and I think probably needs a frame - but what sort of frame?  And what size? And do I want to include something about the source? I'm tempted to get a bit kitsch and add lace and dried flowers - but I have a funny feeling that would not go down well in some quarters...

So I decided to tidy the workroom [I was that desperate] until I got distracted into trying out the collagraphs I made in college before Easter.

Mmm - shouldn't have bothered.

And that led into some stripy monoprints - which were better before I decided to add a watercolour wash to some of them.












But life is not all gloom - Wensleydale and I had a pleasant morning doing things like having blood pressure taken [him - he's 'normal'] and buying shoes [me] and finishing off with coffee and lovely fresh Danish pastries in the Cathedral restaurant.