Hurrah!

Essay and PowerPoint presentation finished – apart from a final review and edit.

Unfortunately [there is always a downside] the essay is a tad too long. About 1000 words too long – which in an essay which was supposed to be no more than 2,500 words is, perhaps, more than a tad. My trusty editor has read it and suggested some cuts – otherwise it would have been even longer – but neither of us can see where else I could cut it without losing the thread of the argument.

I’m torn between handing it in and hoping they don’t notice <g> – or ‘fessing up and telling them to just read the first two thirds! Trouble is, the last bit is the bit which refers to my own practice, which is part of the brief. Sounds suspiciously like I haven’t really answered the question, doesn’t it?

The problem is that it turned into a fairly academic discussion of Susie MacMurray's work, which I than pulled together by linking her approach to my own.

Well, that’s my story and I’m sticking to it…

I suspect the PowerPoint will be too long as well, but as I have no experience of PowerPointing – indeed, spent a lot of time in my last years at work resisting the notion – I don’t really know. Anyone know if 2 minutes per slide is a reasonable time allocation? That I could cut if necessary.

Glad it’s all done, though – now on to finishing off the Drawing Studies portfolio and then I can get down to the 3D piece. Oh, and New Year…

Santa was very good to me today!

I hope you have all had an equally good time.

Happy Christmas!

Imagine the sound of a slowly deflating balloon…

That’s what I feel like. Not in a bad way – just gradually relaxing…

In addition to all the shopping, wrapping posting and cooking – on Wednesday Babybel took her retinue to meet a VIE

More important than Santa – although he was there too.

More important than the Fat Controller – although he’s a clue.

[We went a bit shy at this point.]

 

 

 

This is the VIE we went to see – and he gave us all a ride, as did his friend Duck – all very well organized by the Didcot Railway Centre.

A good time was had by all.

 

Then one girl and her dog came to spend the night with us while her mum and dad celebrated their anniversary.

 

 

 

 

Today Gran and Grangrad have been recovering. And Quality Control is getting over her sulk.

Actually I spent most of the afternoon working on my essay – the first draft is finished, so I’m going to sleep on it and have another look at it tomorrow – yes, I mean tomorrow, as we have the big family do at Babybel’s on Boxing  Day, and Wensleydale has volunteered to cook.

Mmm – cooking Christmas lunch or writing an essay?

Wonder if he’ll swap?

Playtime!

 

 

With rubber bands,

 

 

 

 

the bottom of mushroom boxes,

 

 

brown paper [can you read it?]

 

 

 

 

 bus tickets and the back of an envelope,

 

 

 

more brown paper,

 

and my favourite – 1/4 inch slices of a loo roll tube, stitched to paper.

You may have noticed these all lack one ingredient which perhaps should be part of work for a degree in stitched textiles. There is some stitch – but unless paper is a textile, there are no textiles.

Whoops.

Inspiration from here, here and here. 

Speaking of inspiration, after all my whingeing about Amazon’s non- express delivery – 3 days after ordering this from them [ordinary delivery], and after them telling me it probably wouldn’t arrive before Christmas because of the weather – the postie trudged up the drive with it this morning.

Guess what I'll be reading tonight.

Celebrations and samples.

Wensleydale’s birthday bash was very enjoyable – good food, though I sez it meself as shouldn’t, good company and good conversation.

And good drawing.

This is the only photo I took all day, so I have none of the birthday boy, or of the good time had in the garden by the more energetic guests, with one very old toboggan and a lot of snow.

I even forgot to photograph W’s two birthday cakes – one from me, one from Babybel [with a little bit of help from her mum]. Hers was yummy cherry and almond, this was mine, almost as yummy!

Today it snowed again, despite the forecast, so I ducked out of going to the gym again and tidied my work room [putting away the fabrics left over from the 3D samples]. Once I could see the floor I played around with some ideas for the real 3D piece.  

The words ‘everyday treasures’ keep going through my head, so I’m exploring ways of expressing that, using very ordinary materials to make little ‘treasures’ - which will go into a ‘treasure chest’, obviously.

I also keep thinking about amulets – too much reading Sheila Paine - so here we have a God’s Eye made with the backs of envelopes and string. [As you can see, I didn’t quite get round to vacuuming the floor…]

That led to a stitched version, top left here. The other pieces are experiments with painted brown paper, although I have changed my mind about using that. Of course, I could well change it back…

This is a work in progress – buttonholed rubber bands  -the tape measure is to give an idea of scale. 

No idea whether these ideas, specific or general, will work out, but it is enjoyable fiddling about – and after icing the Christmas cake tomorrow, I shall return to playing.

You win some, you lose some…

Yesterday was going to be the day we went to the Discovery Centre to see their latest exhibition and buy some family Christmas cards, [Last minute? Me?] before going on to Brasserie Blanc for Wensleydale’s birthday lunch.

It had snowed a bit, but nothing to put off even the most trepid of pensioners [yes, he’s a pensioner now, too]. We used the park and ride because it gets you nearer to the action than the car parks – and we’d seen what the queues for the car parks were like when I took him down to the doctor’s on Saturday. [He was right, it is sciatica, so he now has some horrendous pain killers and an X-ray].

But the Discovery Centre was closed ‘for maintenance’.

So we went and had our lunch early [very good it was too] and got home in time to wrap the presents [me] and put up the tree [him].

Not enough tinsel [Family joke.] [Must remember to move my coat of the newel post before the hordes family arrive tomorrow.]

I was due to go to the gym this morning, so I thought I’d go into the Discovery Centre to get the cards, before getting the bus home – the top end of Winchester being the closest I wanted to get to the shops on the last Saturday before Christmas. There was a little pressure as we are having a family do for the birthday boy tomorrow, when I can save money by hand-delivering the cards.

We woke up to this.

I fought my conscience for all of 10 seconds and decided I wasn’t going - which gave lots more time for getting ready for tomorrow, but left a dilemma about the cards.

So after we’d cooked and cleaned I played around with some old photos and flauntr, which is not the most user-friendly of the free photo editing programs, but has a wide range of effects, frames etc.

After a lot of muttering from the mad woman in the corner, as she tried to work out how to get her nice new Epson printer to print a card, rather than a picture in the middle of a piece of card, I made some Christmas cards for the family. Babybel plays a starring role, you may be surprised to hear.

And one, dear readers, for you. A photo from last January as it happens, not this December.

 

 

 

 

And then the sun went down looking like this.

Which I suspect means it’s going to get very very cold…

Ticking more things off the list…

Christmas cards written and stamped       a

Cards posted                                        r

Wensleydale’s birthday cake made           a

Last minute Christmas shopping done     a  r    [Just realised what I’ve forgotten]

Presents wrapped                                 r

Well, three out of five ain’t bad.

The tree isn’t up yet but W. likes to do that on his birthday – i.e. tomorrow. Only one of the presents need posting – and that one has already missed the last posting date for the US by a week, so  it’s going to be late anyway. [I’m sure December has been much shorter this year – or maybe it’s because I've had other deadlines to worry about…

I gave myself another one in college yesterday, by volunteering to do my presentation at the earliest opportunity – i.e. 12th January. The essay is half written anyway [more than half after an attack of insomnia last night] and I just want to get it over with so I can start worrying about the next deadline – which is Drawing Studies, a fortnight later.

As it was the last session this term, we had an outside speaker – Jackie Langfeld talking about her experience on the Opus degree course, and the birth of the Paper Warriors. She was very good, and it was wonderful to look through her sketchbooks , and to see where she is moving on to. Although she told us that, at the start of the course she had no firm ideas about the way that her work would develop, [very reassuring!], it was fascinating to see the seeds of the warriors, to mix a metaphor, in her earlier work.

Lots of good ideas for my own sketchbooks, and a good potluck lunch as well – now no college till next year - just one Babybel sleepover, two birthdays, a wedding anniversary, Christmas and New Year – I’m sure I’ll find plenty of time to write an essay and do a PowerPoint presentation…