'If you make happiness your goal, then you're not going to get to it… The goal should be an interesting life."

Dorothy Rowe

Monday 23 May 2016

I'm moving

Not far, just over here. I have decided if Blogger insists on making it difficult for me to post to my blog, I'll go somewhere a bit more welcoming. If you want to follow me, my new Wordpress blog is still called 'Cheshire Cheese' - same name, same ramblings. You're welcome to join me at:

https://cheshirecheesesite.wordpress.com/

I shall leave the last nine years witterings up here, but I shan't be posting any more - it's too much like hard work!

Sunday 8 May 2016

Where do I go from here?

   
 
Well, it's all pretty much over. The walls and floor are painted, the gloves are erected and arranged, the 'background material' (sketchbooks etc.) is displayed, and Wensleydale and I are exhausted. It feels like it's finished, but I have to remind myself that there are several more visits to make: to pick up the background material before the exhibition opens , to steward, and then to dismantle it all and bring it home. (Assuming, of course, that no rich art collector has decided to buy it all.) (If you are a rich art collector, or just want to see more pictures, there's a video on the University of Chichester Fine Art Department Facebook page, which includes some more traditional art as well.)   So it isn't really all over, although I would like to think it is. But it is time to try to decide what I'm going to do with the rest of my life. I have promised W. that there will be no more degrees, but he keeps on saying 'if you do decide you want to do an M.A. ...) so I'm not sure he believes me. I had told myself that the knitting was over now, apart from socks (pair completed) or scarves (one started), but then when I was thinking what to do with the gloves (pull them back and use the wool for something else), I started thinking about knitting and felting containers. Which turned into thinking about knitting distorted containers, because I liked making the distorted gloves. Of course I haven't got the wool yet because it is still in glove form, but - assuming that no rich art collector has decided to buy them all - I will need to do something with them - so watch this space. Not sure what I'm going to do with the armatures though - anybody got any ideas what to do with umpteen metres of threaded rod and innumerable nuts? Better still, does anyone want umpteen metres of threaded rod and innumerable nuts? Lightly used, one lady owner from new.   In the meantime I'm doing some light pottering - trying to use up the non-knitting stash, albeit on a very small scale. Tiny weavings and embroideries, little books, small knitted samples. Whoops, how did they slip in? Because I found an excellent book called 'Pop Knitting' in a remaindered book shop in Romsey (the books were remaindered, not the shop) and in the middle of an insomniac night last night, decided to try some of the stitch patterns out. (You will not be surprised to hear that the wool in the gloves is not the only wool I own.) I'm using some hand dyed 4 ply which has been hanging around for years because, like a lot of my hand dying, the colours were not quite what I'd intended.  Nor do they go together, as you can see. ( Yes, it's garter stitch, but a version where you change colour on each row, by sliding the stitches back on a circular needle. This may develop into something, but in the meantime a bit of undemanding knitting with no pressure and no deadlines is just what I need.   
 

Sunday 1 May 2016

A change of direction?

On her excellent blog, Alisa Golden suggests that if you are feeling uninspired, you grab a few sheets of coloured paper and make a book. While you are doing it, inspiration will, hopefully, strike. So I did. (It wasn't this book. It was a red one) and inspiration did strike - I decided to make a colour circle of books. Next up was orange. I immediately hit a problem. I had very little orange paper, and I was not in the mood to paint any.              
Which is how I ended up making an 'orange' book whose pages were mostly brown, copper and turquoise. Then inspiration struck again, and I decided to make some little textile pieces to go in the books. (Some quick little things, just what I need!) I started with the orange on as it's the smallest, due to the paper shortage. A little pin loom, just the right size, drew itself to my attention, so pin weaving it was. (The weaving, which is 8x9 cm, goes with the paper much better than it appears in this photo.) This is, of course, an experimental piece. In the next one, which I have already started, I have used a brown warp, and the one after that will probably be more abstract.   This does not mean that I have totally finished with the gloves. I shall be back at Uni on Tuesday and Wednesday, setting up the three remaining ones, and dropping off all my notebooks, sketchbooks etc. The it's a week to wait for marking to be done, the results, and the exhibition, before it is really all over. The two years have passed so quickly, and I have learned so much, but I shall be glad when it's finished.