Eleven Books, Two Cheques and a DVD

Much as I would have loved to have followed your advice and spend the weekend reclining on my sofa, Saturday was spent with ladies from the Enfield branch of the Embroiderer's Guild making little bonded books. And lots of fun it was too!

Eleven lovely ladies produced eleven very beautiful and individual books... each one quite unique.

By a stroke of good fortune there was a rather fabulous hydrangea bush outside the hall with some gorgeous coloured petals so instead of using the ivy leaves that I'd brought along, several of the ladies used the hydrangea petals on their covers instead (including me!). This one below was made by Jackie.

And on Sunday... I retired to that sofa (with my laptop so I could do some studying)

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More news... I have had a final adding up of the money raised at my pink party...

And we raised a magnificent £262... THANK YOU!

When I went to send off the cheques there was a form that required me to have a witness to sign that they had seen me add up the money and write the cheque... well I didn't! And then of course I proceeded to feel guilty as though I had embezzled the money, so you can all be my witnesses that the cheques have been written... and you'll have to take my word for it that they have been posted!

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And finally.... I've had a preview of the cover of my DVD!

Not long now before it will be available.

Just a little excited!

Chasing My Tail.

Quite often on this blog I get comments of the "You are so amazing, you do so much" or "You must have more hours in the day than the rest of us" variety... and they make me smile. They make me smile because they are kind but mostly they make me smile because in my head the reality is so different. I seem to spend most of my life barely one step ahead of myself, rushing from one thing to another and never really achieving half of what I want to do. Take yesterday for example...

It was my weekly machine embroidery class at the Settlement. I planned the programme for the term during the summer so I knew what I was going to do. For the classes up until half term I had all my samples made. The plan was I would make all the samples for this half of the term during the break... but for one reason or another it didn't happen. This week as usual has whizzed by and so I woke up on Thursday morning with no sample. Fortunately it's an afternoon class!

So I put on the radio, made a pot of tea and got to work making this little embroidered envelope from transfer printed fabric, adapting a pattern by Jill Kennedy in Stitch magazine.

A little envelope designed to hold the little hand made books we've been making in the previous three lessons. (samples made during the summer!)

Tiny books just 4" square made from appliqued tissuetex and filled with coloured pages.

Which was all well and good until half way through I remembered it was my turn to make the cake (to be cut into 12 portions) for the over 60's club meeting this afternoon. A rather rapid all in one fruit loaf... complete with sunken fruit... was delivered just in time and still warm!

Which of course meant I then rushed out leaving the ironing board up looking like this...

And my sewing table strewn with mess looking like this... not having eaten any lunch and forgetting my sister-in-law's birthday card... which is already late. (Happy birthday Anne! Sorry!)

Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining... I love what I do... and I like to be busy.

In fact, I get restless and irritable if I haven't got anything to do.

And when the ladies in the classes I teach produce fabulous things like these books...

it makes me really happy... because they are so beautiful!

and I learn different ways of doing things from them too.

But sometimes I wish it would all slow down just a little bit.... because I'm tired...very, very tired!

And it doesn't make for very interesting blog reading if I tell you about how I collapsed in a comotose lump on the sofa last night and instead of doing the academic reading I needed to do for a tutorial today... I fell asleep! Rather dispels that wonderwoman myth!

Keeping an Open Mind

There is currently an exhibition of Bridget Riley's work at Kettle's Yard in Cambridge.

I was aware of Bridget's op-art work in black and white from the sixties, which having a mathematical background I found quite fascinating.

Movement in Squares, 1961

The paintings in Kettle's Yard are selected from the past thirty years up to very recent work and are big and colourful. I saw the exhibition when it opened but if I'm honest, I didn't understand it and felt somewhat indifferent which annoyed me. Here I was standing in front of what was generally acclaimed to be great art and I didn't "get it". So when an opportunity arose to attend an evening talk with Bridget Riley in conversation with Paul Moorhouse, art curator at the National Portrait gallery, it seemed too good to miss.

Loss, 1964

Last night I went to St. John's College, Cambridge and listened to this amazingly vivacious 80 year old talk about her work... and I'm so pleased that I did.

Nude, 1951/52

She spoke about her childhood in Cornwall and the love of nature instilled in her by her mother. About how her mother would make her really look at the colour, shape and movement of everything around her. She spoke about her early days in art school and the strong grounding she had in life drawing and how the tonal drawings she would make then went on to inform those early black and white paintings.

Reve, 1999

Another strong influence on her colour paintings was the work of Seurat. A study of Cezanne gave her a desire to dig deeper and explore colour and pictorial space further.  Her work is filled with movement and rhythm.

Two Reds, 2000

And armed with this greater understanding of how Bridget Riley works, knowing where her influences have come from, I find I have a greater appreciation. Aesthetically they might not be my first choice of paintings to look at but I now feel I can take something away from the experience of looking at them... and so I intend to go back to the exhibition in Kettles Yard, which has been extended to the end of December and take a closer look.

Rose Rose 5, 2009

As I work through my MA over the next couple of years I think I might be doing a lot more looking and appreciating of things I didn't understand before.

Bewitched

For someone not that keen on making dolls, I seem to be churning them out lately. This latest was started in the Diva Doll class at Art and Stitch last week and it seemed a shame not to finish her in time for Halloween.

Lucretia... a most glamourous witch!

Complete with spiders in her decolletage... and bats in the belfry!

And of course... suitably witchy boots!

I carved out her companion over breakfast this morning... pumpkin cutting rather than paper cutting.

Although I think I'd better get back to my paper cutting now. Enough frivolity for one day!

Pink Friday Party

Welcome to my Pink Friday Party... do come in in!

We have lots of cake of the knitted variety... 87 cakes to be exact plus 3 crochet flowers, 2 knitted egg cosies and a beautiful cupcake pendant. I have to admit as more and more cakes arrived I had to shift the goal posts slightly. There will still be a donation for each cake received but not quite as much as I first thought! I have picked three names from the 37 lovely people who have sent me cakes and they will be getting a little thank you gift. I would have loved to send you all something in return but I'm sure you'll understand why that might be a problem. So Vera, Rebecca and Susan D something will be coming your way soon... and everyone else... thank you!

All parties need balloons... especially pink balloons.

And of course I had to make real cake... what else could we have with our cuppa?

... perhaps some chocolate cupcakes too?

and two types of vanilla cupcake?

In fact there is ginger cake, carrot cake, brownies and several other varieties too (not all made by me I hasten to add!)

So... are you coming over for tea?

I  thought we could play party games.

And possibly have a raffle too.

Now you are probably thinking I've completely lost my marbles doing all this for a virtual party for my blogging friends on the interweb... and you'd be right!

So I invited some friends over to join in the fun and help me eat all this cake!

So all I need to do now is say thank you... a HUGE thank you to everyone who has helped make this party a success. Thank you to everyone who made cakes, real or knitted, thank you to everyone who donated a raffle prize, thank you to everyone who came and drank tea, ate cake and gave a donation, thank you to my little band of helpers who sold raffle tickets and thank you to Jane and Suzie for making tea all afternoon. We raised £132 which means with my donation plus a donation from my lovely husband who has just promised to match mine we have raised well over £200 for Breast Cancer Care and Cancer Research UK.

Thinking of Linda... and everyone else who has to battle with this awful disease.

A Beginning

I'm starting to think about my MA... both the practice and the research... and I have decided to start from some of the work I was doing for my BA Fine Art module. I'm looking at holes, the missing parts of stories, revelation and concealment , lace and knitting. This has also meant I've returned to paper cutting and I picked up this charming little book by Rob Ryan.

On the back cover there is this illustration of a paper leaf and it got me thinking what if...

I did this with a real leaf.

Which was good fun although not quite as easy as cutting paper!

Given my love of words and text, I couldn't ignore the bits that I cut out...

I then tried cutting a lace pattern from another leaf

Again... it bit of fun.

I've no idea where any of this might lead at this stage but I don't mind because at least I've made a start and we all know that any long journey has to start with a single step.

And I've finished the first page in my sketchbook...