From down the well

Topiary Haven

2012-01-31T11:52:00.001Z

For anyone who might be planning a trip to Tasmania, who is thinking of a holiday but is not sure where to go or who is an armchair traveller with dreams may I recommend a visit ( preferably physically, but initially virtual) to the Topiary Haven. This is a self contained apartment which we were able to use over the Christmas period during our Grand Round the World trip when it was being prepared for rental as a business and we found it fabulous. And as regular readers know we had five star expectations for that trip which this accommodation easily fulfilled. The owners have now launched for public holiday rentals. It is close to the Launceston Gorge as shown above where I swam in the open air pool and was very excited to come face to face with wallabies during my picnic. The very professional website has lots of goregous slideshow pictures of all the rooms, to just the endless detail this pickypicky traveller needed when planning her trip!

It ought perhaps also to have a blue plaque on the door ( or whatever the Australian equivalent is) as the place where my chapter of the Twelve by Twelve book was written!

I should be open that this place is the new business venture of my Uncle Barry and Auntie Diana but I think you will see that I would have recommended it anyway. Now, let me just go to expedia to plan my fanstasy return visit...

Free art catalogues

2012-01-30T19:48:00.001Z

I have stumbled on two sources of free art catalogues as PDF files this week.
The first is the Adam gallery which is a real gallery in London and a branch in Bath, which is where I was persuing their paper catalogues last week. But then I found that they have many for free as downloadable PDFs. Go to their website and click on contemporary artist and then the artists name. There is then a link on the left for artist profile. If there is a PDF there will be a link to it on that page. There are three by Barbara Rae and two by Julio Rondo for example.

Then my beloved October gallery in London ( oh how I miss the days of working near that and nipping in after work) has a new PDF catalogue of El Anatsui's ASI exhibition.
I love having these PDFs on my ipad in Kindle and having them handy for odd free moments or lunchtimes at work.

Oh and whilst is it not free, for those who like Aboriginal Art, their bookshop has copies of Kathleen Petyarre Genius of Place for just £10 plus postage. When I checked, new copies were £86 on Amazon!
I would also recommend their small catalogues of Ablade Glover and Nnenne Okora's exhibitions - I return to mine all the time. At £5 each a good buy. They do post internationally. ( I have no connection to them - just love the art they show!)

Peter Burke sculptures

2012-01-24T22:47:00.001Z

Today I went to the Victoria Gallery in Bath which is currently showing an exhibition by Peter Burke called Earthworks. His sculptures are made of bonded soil. He uses a variety of soils all found within twenty miles of

Bath, which vary dramatically in colour.

All the works were easily viewable as a whole in the large open room.

Although these forms were quite flat they cast intriguing reflections on the floor.

Identical cupped hands protruding from the flat panels were made in a variety of soils which differed not only in hue but in how they cracked creating greater or lesser fissures.

The exhibition was certainly relevant to the working in a series course on which I am about to embark.

Quilting arts magazine

2012-01-23T23:28:00.001Z

I haven't actually got my subscription copy yet but I am pleased that one of my fellow Twelves has given me a sneak preview photo of the articles in the latest edition of Quilting Arts which features our Twelve by Twelve group. We each have one piece of work featured including my In Memoriam quilt for the Volcano theme ( bottom left, the black and orange one).

Cakes

2012-01-21T20:05:00.001Z

In response to Working Mum's request my sister Jenni has supplied a photo of the finished cake.

And while she was at it she sent two others. Just showing off I suspect...

Hmmm, maybe we are quite alike after all!

Its genetic!

2012-01-19T23:35:00.001Z

My sister borrowed my kitchen tonight to make one of her Celebration cakes.

Clearly, making a huge mess whilst creating is in our genes!

I always thought that when she made a shaped cake she did it in a special tin.Not so. She made a big square one and trimmed it to shape.

And then made extra buttercream and donated jam so I could enjoy the 'wasted' bits.

Yum!

On being a notebook polygamist

2012-01-17T20:02:00.003Z

I made a discovery at New Year. Did you know that there are whole blogs dedictated to Filofaxes? They are quite fascinating. Blinging your filofax, collecting filofaxes, comparing filofaxes, considering which diary inserts to put in your filofax. All topics for blog fodder. And it is strangely addictive to read all the details about how people set up their filofaxes. I sent Dennis a link to the woman who changed her diary about eighteen times in one year. Just to show him that, in comparison, I am normal, even if I am a notebook polygamist as you will see...So I am reciprocating with one filofax post of my own to contribute to the genre and to show how to meld a business tool with creative activity.

When I was at the Bar and travelling to speak at conferences I used a filofax and it was stuffed with appointments, train bookings, flight times, hotel names, invoice details, all the stuff neccessary to keep a self-employed career alive. As I left the bar my filofax (personal sized) was on its last legs and was graciously retired. But now I drive the same route every day and there is a whole department of people whose job is to keep my diary, print it out each day and give me the necessary files. I may be senior, but basically I do what I am told. So what need for a filofax?

Well, they are nice to touch and fun to write in and you can buy specialised stationery for it. So, when I returned from travelling I bought a new one and decided to go larger (a5) and hotter pinker on the basis that this would now mainly contain details of my personal and creative life. Which was fine until I went to Apple and became married to the ipad. I spent less time with my frst love as I explored the ipad diary and productivity apps. The ipad is great, but I missed the actual writing with a pen. Although the business like nature of a filofax was not quite working for my creative brain.

So come new year it was time to try to come up with a System for information managmenet. Not just a diary because there are, ahem, one or two other affairs with pretty little notebooks going on as well. After much thought and blog reading I now have a System to ~~justify endless buying of notebooks and the use of pretty pens~~ maximise informational control and making the filofax play nicely with the Ipad.

I intend to do some tasteful blinging of the filofax but so far the only step in the direction is to add in as my front cover this photo taken by Diane Perin Hock of two chairs which are waiting in California for us to return to them together one day. It reminds me of good times and gives me hope for the future. Then I have notepages so I can flip it open and jot notes quickly.

Next is a horizontal year planner. This is where the Ipad cannot match up for a colourful visual view of where I have made my main committments. This really helps to show when and why I cannot take on anything else. Red is for holidays or travel, green is for major art qulting committments like mini retreats or classes. Black is work travel and soon I will be adding in blue for the Olympics when I intend to join in the sporting actvity by sitting on my butt in front of the TV for a month.

The next tab is my diary. I would have liked a timed page but Filofax do not cater for people whose committments are 7 amd to 9 am and then 5pm to midnight so it is a plain week to two page setup with weekly goals in the top box. I track my studio time and art committments in green and add personal appointments and daily tasks in black. In between I keep some ongoing to do lists so I can see how I am doing with bigger projects I have broken down into steps. Finally at the begining of each month I have a coloured piece of notepaper to contain monthly goals both personal and creative. Behind the diary I have tabs containing notes on my overall life plan, lists (shopping, books read etc), my personal financial accounts, a quiting tab with details of classes and shows and spare paper.

I tend to keep the filofax on my home desk most days but the ipad comes with me everywhere. So on the ipad I have major dates replicated in the diary but I also use the Daily Notes and To Do App. This app is linked to a diary and allows you to have different subject tabs for each day. so I have tabs that correspond to those in my filofax. If i am out and about I can jot a note in there and later I can clear those notes off either by actioning them or putting them in the appropriate place in the filofax. This is especially useful when I am web browsing and see a link I want to follow up later or if I am shopping and want to make an note of expenditure. The aim is to keep this app as empty as possible which is odd but it works for me!

I also use Nozbe to keep track of the different steps on my art projects. I could do this by paper list but I like the way it will give you one list of all the next steps you have to do and how you can change the due dates without scribbling anything out. I use Evernote as a big collection of virtual notebooks. This is great for collating emails or clippings from the web on a given subject. So my Evernote notebooks include travel bookings, creativity articles, and research on individual artists or topics of inspiration. So much easier to collate images and notes than trying to print them all off. Plus they are then available to me on any computer. If there are any images I think it would be fun to share I also stick on a Pinterest board.

But then of course there are the rest of the notebooks. I like to journal. The sitting down with a good pen and writing thoughts down kind of journalling. For years I have been using the same type of journals which come in two kinds of covers but in both you can replace the stock postcard supplied ( of which this owl is one) and I use blue fountain pen ink on the lined pages and tuck clippings, tickets etc for memories in the back cover secured by the intergal elastic band. Sadly these journals are becoming hard to find and I am currently trawling the web for lone copies. I may have to join a notebook dating site in due course to find a new version. (Moleskins are recommended but they are so drab!) At New Years I spent happy hours and hours scribbling in this journal. Dennis was somewhat bemused when I told him I was writing my plan for what to write in my other notebooks.

Then I keep a creativity journal. The nearest I get to a sketchbook. I doodle and stick things in and write down what I have done and what I plan to do. It is a thought bucket and must be plain pages and written with a black pilot drawing pen.

I am happy to change the style of my creativity journal as long as they are smooth plain pages. This is the current one.

Then, one day I found these journals. They come in so many colours, Far more than I have here. I have dedicated these notebooks to my Art Learning Notes where I pretend I am still in education and make notes from books or internet sites about material I need to know. So one is about crtiquing art, another about art history etc. One has some work in on the theme of African Ladies.

How, you might say, do I cart all these around? Well, they live in this special basket which I do move from room to room. In the morning I decide which items I might reasonably have time to use out of the house and put those in my work bag or handbag and in the evening they come back to sleep in this basket which also has some book on creativity in it. The exception is when I go for my Sunday morning ritual tea and reading session at Cedar Farm when I just take the whole basket. I am assuming that is what my husband meant when he said I had become a notebook basket case.

So, that is my complex system and it is working for me. Except, best Quilting Buddy came last week and bought me a red Magma notebook and a little Orla Kierly notebook. So Now I need to review my system.....

What works for you? show me!

If you had a million....

2012-01-05T13:28:00.000Z

You know the question. You win a million, a squillion, whatever. What would you do with it?

Can there be a better suggestion than this true story from George Clooney featured in Esquire Magazine?

"There's ten of us, we've been best friends for thirty years. Ten guys. And their wives, and their kids, are all family now. I'm not big on keeping up on the phone, none of us are. Some guys I won't talk to for two months and then you pick up the phone and hear, "So, anyway." There's no guilt or where have you been? or what's been going on? or why haven't we talked? There's an ease to it.

I remember when Richard Kind's dad suddenly died. This was about seven or eight years ago — maybe more. Richard's a really wonderful character actor. He loved his dad, and he was very grown-up about passing on the news. He called and left a message: My dad died, I'm in Chicago, the funeral's going to be in New Jersey tomorrow morning. I'll talk to you when I get back.

This was five o'clock at night. I was in L. A. Rick is a Jew. They bury the next day. They don't screw around. They get you right in the ground. So I called up Michael, Grant's brother, and told him Richard's dad died. He said, "We should be there." The guys were all around the country. One was in Denver. One was in San Diego.

So I got a jet and we spent the whole night flying around the country. San Diego, Denver. We landed in Trenton, New Jersey. Richard didn't know anything about it.

We got to the synagogue, this giant synagogue, with the people up front. And Richard didn't know we were going to be there. We're sitting there, the nine of us in the back row. And Richard gets up to speak about his dad and he sees his nine best friends there. And what I loved about it was that all of us understood that there are moments in your life that are real passages. Your father dying is a very big one. Because you are now the man of the family. We understood how important that was at that time."

Planning 2012

2012-01-04T21:24:00.003Z

I love the New Year period because it gives me an excuse to plan and I love to plan. Any kind of planning really, especially travel planning, but I have also long been an advocate for more formal Life Planning. There are many models for doing this. Lisa Call has a very goal oriented approach on her blog for example which I find inspiring although mine tends to end up more strategic than specific at this stage). This year I stumbled upon and decided to use a free e-book by Michael Hyatt. (You need to sign up to emails to get it but you can always unsubscribe!) This is not a miracle never before seen life sorting method by any means but it is a slightly different format to what I have done in the past.

The gist is that you list 'life account's - basically areas of your life that you wish to plan. Work, family, health etc. For each one you write a Purpose Statement of a sentence or so, write an account for your life would be in that area if it were perfect, write an account of the current reality and then a list of steps you need to take to get to the perfection from the reality. He then writes about a review system.

All fun and good until I got to the account entitled Art Quilting and then I began to struggle. What is my purpose? I know what I do, but why am I so compelled to do it? Pages of journallinng later I have some ideas but am still finding it hard to distill into a sentence or two. (Hard in a fun way you understand!!)

So I thought I'd ask you... Why do you make art? What is your purpose in doing so?
Are those questions easy and obvious to you or do they make you stop and think?

Christmas cake

2011-12-18T15:24:00.001Z

Today I decorated the first Christmas cake I have ever made. Previously my sister who has professional qualifications tended to decorate our family cake. This year though Christmas is at my house so I thought I'd give it a try,even though I don't even like to eat fruit cake. Came out Ok didn't it?

Um well,no. That cake is a previous creation of Working Mum on the Verge , my old school friend who ought to enter The Great British Bake Off. But she was during my decorating session, as she was back then, my inspiration.

But not my teacher. This, with no instruction whatsoever ( and little more effort) is my cake.

I tell you, there are times when there is no point competing.

Bumps and lumps are the in thing this year,did you not know?

Besides, there's only my Dad bothered about the cake and he'd only poke his good eye out on those snowflakes....

A Mr B's Reading Year - December - Gold by Dan Rhodes

2011-12-01T22:17:00.001Z

it is the first of the month and on the first of the month Mr B queues up with all the money-withdrawing pensioners and postcard-sending tourists at Bath Post Office to send me a book. Or so I thought. In fact he must have nipped down there on a rainy day when bingo and the inside of the open topped tour bus was a more attractive proposition! in order to save sometime in the line, because the book actually arrived today.

Which means that it is well beyond time that I posted the review of the last book, Thin Blue Smoke by Doug Worgul. I confess I have been a littte shy about doing that ever since the author popped up here with a comment and said he was waiting for my opinion. Right. That's the ante upped then.

I have now given it thought and would say this. There are some authors who hit the jackpot with their first novel and then go on to disappoint. ( Monica Ali, Zadie Smith say). Then there are others who write a pretty good first novel and go on to improve wih each one. I am guessing Doug Worgul is the latter. Set in Kansas City the book concerns a group of people connected by their ownership or patronage of a Barbecue restaurant. Worgul can create a sense of place. I am given to fanatsy flight booking on Expedia but never until I read this did I plug in Kansas City. And indeed of taste. He never explains what the vinegar pie is exactly but I want a slice. And he can create characters and throw in enought political context for me to feel I had learned more about the civil rights era. Where the book failed a little for me was the plot. It kind of flatlines along with a game attempt at a spike just before falling to its end. I was constantly hoping for the book to build, for events to develop a heightening significance until they exploded into a memorable end. Rather, they accumulated aimiably like old men lined up at a bar with their halves of mild until the last event when a kind of ruckus happened and time was called. A little disappointing. But that leaves room for the second book to be even better and that means I can anticipate purchasing it which I certainly will do.

Which brings me to Gold. I started it tonight at ten past six and I finished it at ten to nine and in that time I also cooked and ate some mutter paneer and naan and fell asleep under a quilt for a while. (The sleeping relates to my having a chest infection not to the writing mind you.) This is not a weighty book. Nor is it, as the reviews on the cover suggest, " laugh out loud funny." Not unless you habitually laugh out loud at the the kind of humour found in a quite good English Language essay written by a seventeen year old boy. Think characters who are called Septic Barry or are wholly irrelevantly lesbian. I can see where it is supposed to be funny and it occasionally would have caused my mouth to twitch had I had more energy, but it is to funny what last years Christmas cracker jokes are to Frazier. That is not to say that it has nothing going for it. It is published by Canongate who also publish the wonderful Alexander McCall Smith and they seem to have a knack for what I call "bedtime stories for grown ups". This book is a light, untroublesome, tale, nicely self contained. Nothing really happens, but it doesn't happen in a way which leaves you undemandingly entertained even if it does not have the sneakily intelligent wit and sense of reassurance that McCall Smith delivers. It does not have the dramatic denoument either but it does have a touch of poignant irony that caused me to close the book with a sense of completion.

If Thin Blue Smoke is a substantial Boudins sourdough deli sandwich, thick with fillings and served with garnish - tasty, memorable and satisfying, yet not quite enough to classify as a gourmet meal - then Gold is an over refrigerated white bread supermarket sandwich. But one that hits the spot at the time.The prawn mayo you grab just as you are running for a train, say, and savour morsel by finger- licking crumb as you read and slowly relax as the train rumbles through the dark taking you away from a long work trip back towards home. Good for a girl with a chest infection who needed to slow down tonight.

Now, I am still in need of bedtime reading for tonight so I am going to ( close your ears Mr B) download Michael Connolly's The Fifth Witness on to Kindle, in full confidence that in that I shall get a real zinger of an ending!

Cranky

2011-11-15T22:54:00.001Z

I admit. I get cranky from time to time. I am not perfect. But at least I am not secretive about it on top. Let me share.

Today was the day the builder, finally, after many broken promises started to build the bespoke islands for my studio. One for cutting, one for pressing, on castors so they can push together. I had a detailed conversation about my requirements and at his request I drew a detailed picture with precise measurments and instructions...... On the left a 500m base unit, on the right a 1000 one. Side panels on each side? On top worktop 160 cm length. Four castors and all made to the same height as the kitchen island in the kitchen. No problem he assures me. And I am sure you crafty people agree: not a complex and challenging design.

I get home. The cupboards are the wrong way around, the worktop is 164 cm and the whole thing is 4 inches higher than requested with the effect that it is too high for cutting and too high to sit at with the bar stool which I left with them as they were constructing it. Like I said.Cranky.

So I ring the builder. Oh no problem he said. He told Dennis it might be too high. He knew it was too high but it was easier to do it that way than to cut the side panels down. But he did tell Dennis he can alter it.

Very Cranky. I mean,why build it knowingly wrong only to have to re do it?
I go and relay the conversation to Dennis. He denies that any such conversation or any conversation capable of being construed as possibly being akin to such a conversation took place. One of them is flat out lying to me and I am not betting it is the one I have known for nearly twenty years who didn't decide to knowingly build it wrong in the first place.

Past Cranky now. It is for times like this I have a design bath with bubbles. I go and soak. And wash my hair, finishing a shampoo bottle in the process. I get a new one out of the storage cupboard and notice that the label has changed. It is the same in all respects save that the new one is missing the words : 100% satisfaction guaranteed.
WHY????? What have they done to my shampoo that they know in advance I will not be 100% satisfied? I mean what does a shampoo have to do in the first place to make me 100% satisfied? Clean my hair that's what. How hard can that be? Oh and not wind me up again after my relaxing bath. So I guess it was a self fulfilling prophecy to remove that label. What stupid brand manager / PR person came up with that one then?

Sigh.

I'm in my studio!

2011-11-08T23:25:00.001Z

I wanted to wait until my studio was all done and perfect before I showed more photos. But I could not wait that long to get in and start working so I thought I'd do the slow blow by blow account for you over the coming weeks. As you will see the studio already has interesting features. Some permanent, some definately not.

The wooden desk came from my Chambers when I was a barrister and is now my sewing desk. The glass desk is my writing and computing area and came from John Lewis. The black drawers are supposed to hold all my fabric and threads. Of course they don't. But there is other storage space so that's OK. The boxes under the desk will be tidied away too and either an inspiration board or a set of narrow shelves will go at the side of the desk in the eaves. I have not quite decided yet.

In front of the desk you see my innovative design towel. This low cost work area is at optimal height for maximum backache and is also of optimal uselessness as a cutting surface. It will be replaced by a kitchen island type worksurface made from kitchen cabinets on castors on Monday. Or on whatever day the builder thinks counts as Monday. I am not saying he lies, but let's say he does not have perfect timetabling skills. That island will have an overhang,hence the bar stool, so I can sit and do design or fusing work there. The artistically embellished ( with rips and burns) ironing board will be replaced by an identical ( save for being slightly narrower) island. This means i can push the two togther if I ever need a large surface still. My main design wall will go between the pressing surface and the desk and extend over the side of the desk. Being a loft conversion, wall space is not in good supply so the design area is maybe not as big as is ideal but it is big enough.

The one straight full height wall there is will house the shelves that match the cherry desk. The books currently on the window seat will fill about half the shelf space so there is plenty of room left and on top I plan African baskets that my friend Magie is going to go and pick for me on her next trip to Ghana. My wadding roll and scraps boxes will go in the window seat, on which there will be cushions, of course.

To the left of the desks area are the stairs and the reading nook area, which will have low bookcasing all around and an arm chair and foot stool.I am debating between a deep pink and a green colorway in a stripe fabric. I am going to go back to the shop on Friday to choose. I may put a secondary design wall at the foot of the stairs. Also to the left of the desk you can see the door to the bathroom.

Now, I have to tell you about my design bath. First of all, I can see the design wall from it, perfect for seeking inspiration. Then, it is an air bath. No nasty chrome outlets. Just tiny pinprick holes.

But press a button and you get this:

AND... Lets say I run the bath and then decide I need just five minutes more quilting time. I can press a button and my bubbles will come on in exactly five minutes time. And if I keep doing that so that my quilt gets bigger but the water goes cold I can press a button and it will heat up the water that is already in the bath without me having to add more. I love this bath. I bought it with the last cheque I got from the freelance lecturing work I used to do and everytime I use it I have a moment when I remember the fun parts of working in London on expenses, the hassle of travel, the joy of making large groups of people laugh and the misery of being ill alone in a hotel room. This bath makes me both proud of what I achieved in my day job to be able to buy it and inspired to achieve (albeit with different criteria) with my art.

On the other side of the bathroom is the toilet. The seat remains in the hall down stairs and you will see that we have a leak. Sigh. The builder came out tonight to isolate the water and is coming first thing tomorrow to sort it out. Frankly, I am amazing myself with my patience these days.

Almost there now!!

2011-10-31T20:42:00.001Z

You will excuse me not blogging last weekend but I was busy decorating my studio. It's nearly ready!!! It needs a little more paint and stain and some cabinetry building and some furniture ordering and some cushions ordering but only the paint and stain will stop me beginning to move in and thats a matter of days now. Yipee!!! I am so excited. Photos of the moved into studio will follow in due course.

And now for the shameful confession. I have never done any decorating. Ever. Bar painting a bit of furniture. Mostly because if you casually say to my Dad ," I'm thinking that the dining room might need decorating soon" his usual response is ," I can't get down to do it until Tuesday". He loves it. And all my life I have been under the impression that he had special super-skills and that he clearly changed into his decorating pants in a phonebox. And due to my failure to ever decorate in my life I think my parents thought that my practical abilties were such that I'd struggle to work out how to open the door of a phonebox.

But here's the thing. Decorating is fun. Lots of fun. And cutting in is not some high precision engineering task. It's painting in a straight line with a brush. I did I think seventeen or so hours at the weekend and didnt want to stop. Turns out its like dyeing fabric. Start with boring, add colour, get pretty. What's not to love?

So tell me, what else have I been missing out on? This splitting the atom stuff... Just like unpicking a seam, right?

A Mr B's Reading Year - November - Thin Blue Smoke, Doug Worgul

2011-10-28T19:57:00.001+01:00

Today was an exciting day. Look what was waiting for me when I came home. Aren't you jealous just because of the packaging alone? And I know its not November but it came earlier than expected.

Mrs B's Emporium of Reading Delights in Bath has made one of my blogs before as the first shop where any member of the Twelve by Twelve group spotted a copy of our book in a proper bookshop rather than a quilt shop and subsequently as the shop where I was filmed for the BBC news. So it is fair to say I am predisposed to like it. But, I have to say I was a little sceptical of its latest innovative gift offering - A Mr B's Reading Year. In effect this is a postal version of their Reading Spa only it lasts for longer and you have to supply your own cake. ( Although, now I have said that it would not suprise me if a 'with added brownie' version of the gift is launched soon.) The idea is that they spend sometime getting to know you and your taste in books , either in person or by telephone or email. Then, each month except January, when you are presumed to have Christmas books ( and I assume the staff to be too knackered after the Christmas rush to be bothered) you get a personally chosen book with a note explaining why it was sent for you, written by your own personal bibliotherapist.

Now, the idea is great but I did wonder whether it was possible to know enough about the content of enough books and to know the reader well enough to get eleven good matches. But when I was in Bath this time I read three books I would not have picked up had they not recommended them and loved them all. And I am half way through one I did pick up all by myself but, as it was hardback, I would probably have put it back and awaited the paperback, had Ed not enthused about it so much, by the time he had finished, I was cradling it like my child, lest anyone abduct it from me. So I decided to let them challenge themselves on me and bought myself a gift.

This is what was inside my package.

Initial reaction: Doubt. The cover makes it look like a knock off of Angela's Ashes. Which, as a book was great. As the precursor of the misery memoir genre it was not great. But when I turn to the back cover, I understand. Although I have to say, it does not seem that they have had to try very hard. The blurb uses all the key words I would say I, liked in a book iin two sentences : love, friendship, community, race, faith, music, barbecue and the language of rabbis. Actually, on second glance, the Jewish connection turned out to be my mistake. It is about the language of rabbits. but thats quite intriguing too.

It says it is a debut novel ( good because if I like it there is no great expense of getting all the back catalogue) and that the author is in the ranks of chroniclers of American Life such as John Irving and Garrisson Keillor ( not good as those are two authors I have not read but always knew I probably should and if this book is good I will probably have to buy the back catalogue of TWO authors. And Mr B, if you are reading, no you can't send me those authors the next two months. That's cheating.) Dennis gets a spoiler email to check I do not already have a book they intend to send. His first impression of this book was the same as mine: that it looks like a Fried Green Tomato at the Whistlestop Cafe type of book, which is like saying it is a Helen Mirren type of actress.

So, I just have to finish The Submission by Amy Waldman and I can tuck into this one with good expectations. I read but rarely blog about what I read so I plan to blog my package each month then later tell you what I thought of it. You could buy a copy and read along if you like. If you want the packaging as much as I did Mr B's ( a shop in which incidentally my only financial interest is that they stay open so I can part with money in their premises) now have an internet shop.

A good marriage

2011-10-19T19:44:00.001+01:00

A good marriage requires a fair division of household work. So tonight we split tasks between us. Dennis learned how to cook breaded hake,

and I did the washing

And ironing.

Fair, no?!

Teaching technology

2011-10-19T19:32:00.001+01:00

Dennis is on a Charles Dickens kick. He has read two biographies of him, has declared that he is going to read all his novels in the next twelve months, went to see Simon Callow perform two of his plays last week and today decided that he really did need John Foresters biography as well. Which is the official one, is reprinted in three volumes and costs over £65. Or, if you buy it on Kindle £2.82. There is, I think a point at which every staunch 'I prefer a book over the evils of Kindle' person reaches their conversion point. Dennis just reached his.

So I began to teach him how to download his book. Twenty seconds later, it downloads. All 900 pages. He is very impressed and has a read of the first few pages to get used to turning pages on the Kindle. So then I show him how to download it from archived items on the Kindle app on the ipad. ( Because someday I might not be such a nice patient wife and I might reclaim my Kindle just when he wants to know what Dickens had for tea the day he finished Little Dorrit.) Of course the Ipad version opens at the place he was at on the actual Kindle. His eyes grow wide.
" So it knows what page I am on?"
" Yup."
He looks at the Kindle and looks at the ipad with renewed respect and then says,
"So, these Kindle and Ipad things. They are female then?"

Alicia Merritt at the Bishops Palace

2011-10-09T14:01:00.001+01:00

Alicia was kind enough to send me an invitation to the private view of her exhibition at the Bishops Palace in Bath. In the end, as we were newly arrived in the area and on New Zealand time we did not make it but went yesterday instead. Whilst I would have enjoyed seeing other people at the event, the counterpoint to that is that we had the room to ourself and were able to enjoy, uninterupted, the effect of seeing the series of quilts. I have seen several of Alicias map quilts seperately in shows but it was inspirational to see a body of work all together.

Caught on film!

2011-10-03T19:25:00.000+01:00

We are in Bath at the moment and a visit to Bath means a visit to the wonderful Mr B's Emporium of Reading Delights. Well, thats not quite true. It means several visits, first to pop in and say hello and just enjoy the fact that we are close again, then various visits to buy. We joke that once we have popped in and Mr B knows we are there he and his staff will begin to plant books that are to our tastes that we swear were not there the day we first went. He and his staff talk knowledgably and enthusiastically about books so you can't help but add a few to your pile.

But today their tactics in getting me to buy was unparalleled .... They filmed me reading for the National BBC News!! Here is proof I was on the TV.

Of course I had to buy the book I was reading when I was on national TV. Which was the Victoria Finlay book Colour by the way. We can only blame the excitement for the others that ended up in our bag. And this was not even a buying visit!! Poor Dennis was also filmed but was cut in the editing stages.

By the way, if you are starting to think about Christmas presents for readers you might want to consider a Reading Year gift ... Who would not want to receive eleven packages like this a year?

Hands on drawing

2011-09-19T07:44:00.001+01:00

Ok. I bought the books about how to start drawing. Anyone know a good one about how to stop?
Yesterdays discoveries:
1. Graphite tint pencils are lovely to draw with.
2. There are only so many positions into which you can put and hold your own left hand withiut getting cramp.

Three roses in a vase

2011-09-17T22:51:00.001+01:00

Thank you to all who left quick responses on my last post. It was indeed three roses in three vases. This is the story. I have decided to learn to draw. This is a big thing as there was a lot of resistance there to overcome. I have been readng the first few pages of Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain and I have been loving the videos of Danny Gregory and Tommy Kane tonight. It made me want to try. Not aiming for the Royal Academy, just something I might enjoy doing in a travel journal.
So I got out some watercolour postcards I bought becuase I decided it was not possible to be intimidated by a postcard in the same way as a new sketchbook and had a go at the roses in our lounge. Four and a half minutes later, this. (Bear in mind its an ipad photo on my carpet so not the best reproduction of colours!)

I show it to Dennis. " You have a go."
"No, I can't."
"Neither could I until five minutes ago. I bet you can."
"I can't."
I went on enough that he, under much protest took card and pen drew a few minutes and thrust it back at me.
" See. I can't."
" Whats wrong with it?"
"You can't tell what it is even"

Hence the question as to whether you could tell what it was.
I told him that you could. He shrugs. " Well, you could guess at a vase."
" ROSES man! They can tell what kind of flower it is."
A slow boyish grin spread over his face.
" Oh. Well I might try something a bit more complicated."

So thank you.

I had another go trying to be more gestural like his style

Then I got brave and tried the Kremlin. I accidentally lopped off a section of tower but hey, how many frills does one tower need? And its not my fault they seem to have a subsidence issue in Red Square these days.

I am not saying that there is not a lot of room for improvement, but I think I might have started something hard to stop!

Oh, and in answer to Brenda's comment that they looked like three roses in a vase but knowing me there would be somting deeper. Nope. Just three roses. Bought at a petrol station because they were pretty.
Of course each rose represents the life of an African woman subjected to FGM, rape and forced marriage
No, only kidding.
Although now I think about it..... :)

A little experiment

2011-09-17T21:26:00.001+01:00

Could you please help me help out a friend here. I will explain what this is all about in my next post but could you please leave a comment and tell me what this is a drawing of? it is not a trick. My friend says it is not recognisable. I say it is. So I need to find out who is right!!

Temporarily single

2011-09-11T21:38:00.001+01:00

I am a rugby widow. The World Cup has started and Denns is now living on New Zealand time.
Which means that he had to get up at three am his time to go and watch live rugby at his local club.
This lasts until October 23rd and so we have had to plan our October holiday in Bath to start in a motorway motel en route so that the middle of the night ( My time) matches can be watched and he can still get to Bath in time to watch the middle of the night ( his time) match between Bath and Leicester.

Do I mind.? Nuh huh.

Widows get to look at other men. What's to mind?

New blog on the block.

2011-08-28T12:43:00.001+01:00

I am pleased to annouce a new blog which Diane Hock and I hope you will enjoy reading.
It is entitled Tea and Talk for Two: A creative conversation across two continents.

We recently spent time together in the same country and enjoyed just hanging out in coffee shop (preferably attached to pencil shops) and discussing creative matters. It was in one such coffee shop when were lamenting our imminent separation that we came up with the idea of continuing the conversation via a blog and letting you eavesdrop.

It will not be a subsitute for our individual blogs and will not be about our non- creative daily lives but is about us considering the creative process. We aim for one post each a week. We are very partial to listening to the conversations at other tables so if you have something to say about our topics why not add a comment and we may well incorporate that in to our chat. There are several posts up already so now is the idea time to come on over and sit with us before there is too much back reading to do!

It's in the genes

2011-08-26T21:04:00.001+01:00

This is my Crazy Daisy china cupboard. Not a full dining set because you can have too much of a good thing, but just enough for me to have pretty breakfasts or afternoon tea with. But now there is only one of the big plates. They have to stand up because they are fractionally too wide to lie flat. Since the kitchen went in they have been just fine but a couple of weeks ago one slipped and shattered as it hit the surface below leaving several tiny gouges in the worktop. I confess that my first thought was whether I could attach the resultant shards on a quilt. Because you know how I like to use things in unexpected ways.
The second thought was that the blemishes on my new kitchen were going to drive me mad. The third thought was that Dennis was not going to be happy when I bought a new worktop

Tonight my Dad who is staying and is happily prowling the house looking for things to with his tool box came into the kitchen and said "Show me these gouges then". I went to do so and they were no longer there ( but Dad was looking like the proverbial cat in cream).
"How did you do that?" I asked incredulously
He shrugged . "Just put in a bit of woodfiller. But it dried a bit light so I tinted it with your watercolour pencils."

Ipad for quilt designers ( and ultimately for Luddites too).

2011-08-09T23:29:00.001+01:00

Diane Hock

and I had a girly -geek day today. We took two ipads, one laptop, two kindles and a mobile phone which provides a back up mobile wifi mobile hot spot and went and claimed our place on the sofa at Cedar Farm coffee shop for a good few hours.

There we engaged in serious ipad app research, purely for your benefit you understand.

Our aim was to find a single app or if necessary a combination of apps that would allow us to
1. Blog surf for images and information for information, clip that information and sort it into subjects for easy retrieval
2. To be able to add our own notes and sketches inspired by that research
3. To be able to retrieve that material and collate it in a visual collage type display
4 . I also wanted to be able to access the material from my work computer which is so secure I am unable to download programmes and also my itouch so I needed web based services which with cloud based synchronisation.
5. I also wanted some project management functionality for time and cost recording and to do lists, preferably with one visual overview of all projects.

I cannot guarantee we hunted down every possible app but we had a good go. Your needs and preferences might differ if you have similar needs and want to spare yourself several hours you might want to try the following apps which we concluded were as good as it was going to get ...

a). EVERNOTE

This programme allows you to set up notebooks for an individual topic. The notebooks can be collated in stacks of similar topics. In your notebook you can put text notes and images and can create to do lists. You can email notes to your notebooks or can write direct in the app. Images can be annotated with comments The App is free and cloudbased. In a full web browser you can get a web clipper to install which allows you to clip web pages and pop them in your notebook. On ipad however, this clipper cannot be intalled in the safari browser. The solution is with the MEMCLIP app (also free) which fulfils this function.

So that got us a single source to store and organise all that inspiration. But evernote notebooks give you a list of notes one at a time. It does not appear to easily allow you to combine the material.

For that we turned to

B) PINTEREST.
I found the App for this fairly useless and deleted it. However, the programme works perfectly well on ipad from the web browser. Pinterest allows you to set up ' boards' - basically virtual pinboards on which you can pin images you see from the web which you like. The site automatically records the original source of the images. Others can follow your boards. It is a good free site on which to combine visual images by topic. However, it does not facilitate added Text documents other than the captions added to images.

An alternative visual display which does allow notes ( and arrows and the like) is

C) MOODBOARD
The Lite app is free but limited athough t is enough to play with and get the idea. The full app is a fairly hefty £6.99 but allows unlimited boards on which you can display images and notes in a very decorative way. Diane has it and her verdict, when asked whether it was worth the price, was "I'm not sure. Not yet but I want to play with it more." I personally will probably stick with Pinterest.

For project managment I like

D) NOZBE
This app allows you to make as many projects as you like and on the same screen to show related to do lists. Even better you can link NOZBE with EVERNOTE and DROPBOX ( a file storegage service which I already use to store my files and photos so nothing is vulnerable to loss if a hard drive crashes. It offers some free storeage and more at a low monthly cost). So in NOZBE I can have, on one screen, to do lists, notes and files including images all together. It does not link to Pinterest but because Pinterest is web based you can clip your Pinterest boards with MEMCLIP, pop it in an EVERNOTE notebook and then it will come up in NOZBE too.The NOZBE app (£10.49)will allow you to have as many projects on the ipad as you like for that one off payment, but in order to synch them to NOZBE on other devices or the website you must have a paid account. The exception is that you can have a free account limited to five projects only. Now for business use or for coordinating all aspects of you life I can see that five might be enough. But, if used only for Quilting projects a limitation of Five works in Progress at a time might well be a good restraint!

And it fits in neatly with the

E ) LEANKIT app
which is all about a Japanese method of work flow control called Kandan. Basically you write your intended projects on cards. The are stacked up in a to start pile. As you start to work on projects they can be moved to an In progress and then a Completed pile. You can set limits on how many cards go in each column and you can make it all rather more sophisticated with sub columns and categories. Thats not the best of explanations but it provides me with sn excellent visual representation of what work I have at what stage. Very helpful. Diane found SCRUMBOARD which seems to do much the same thing although I found the graphics less crisp and the options less sophisticated.

for the Time Recording I turned to

F) TASK MEASURE.

Free and dead simple. Put in the name of your project, press start. It records tme. press stop. It stops. the difference to a stopwatch is it retains the records so you can see the cumulatve time each quilt took. Excellent for figuring out profit margins or answering the inevitable "How long did it take you?" question.

So, there we were. Information collated and organised. Tasks to doable and timed. Now we wanted to pull it all together, to sketch next to the information and colour in. We ordered more tea and set to. We played with various notebook options which allow you to use your finger or a stylus to hand write and draw. ONENOTE ( Full Microsoft on laptop programme good, app only for iphone and useless) and MOLESKINE ( seductive cover app limited) being but two. None provided good enough control on the handwritng and sketching front. We were getting frustrated when suddenly we broke the barrier and found the perfect solution :

The onsite art shop sells really beautiful journals.
We concluded that much though we LOVE our ipads we also love paper and pen and that the ipad cannot match the use of a sketchbook for the actual work. We believe that the collation of information is fabulous on the ipad but when it comes to using that information we vote for printers, pretty books and real scissors and pencils!

Of course havng spent all day looking at productivity apps we have spectacularly failed to actually produce anything. Except this post of course. Which was written in the BLOGSY app of course......

Missing in Action

2011-08-07T22:53:00.002+01:00

Having had over a week off work now there should have been ample time to blog but somehow... I blame it all on Diane and her family who have arrived from California and are forcing me to have a good time gadding about the country finding quintesessntial things for them to see. Seeing as my breakfast of boiled eggs in an egg cup with toast soldiers was the first thing they found exciting this quest has not been hard. And I confess that after doing it innocently once or twice, but then seeing the reaction, we might have been deliberately constructing sentences that commence, "Go past the castle and turn right...".

First we went to stay with my parents in the Lake District where we took in a ceramics fair at Hutton in the Forest.

I particularly like the work by Pollie and Gary Uttley whose glazed pottery is inspired by Indian Textiles.

More on that in a later post. Afterwards we went to Carlisle to wish my now nonogenarian Granny a Happy Birthday.

I felt it incumbent on me to check out the saftey of her new scooter before letting her loose on it. Really, it should have go-faster stripes down the side of it.

From the Lakes we went to York. While we were there it was my birthday and as the day started at a cracking 27 degrees my husband was telling me that it didn't always rain on my birthday. Huh. It so does always rain on my birthday!

Fortunately this downpour came just as we sat down for afternoon tea. Let it rain, let it rain, let it rain....

Now we are home hanging out, eating mexican food and trading ipad apps with each other and preparing for Festival of Quilts. More later.

Building a Studio - 6 - starting to take shape!

2011-07-20T21:30:00.000+01:00

Would you like to come up my stairs and see what is going on? Come on then.

Bill the builder has disappeared off to Tenerife. This means that in fact lots of work has been done this week as his two employees have bene left to labour without interference. So its starting to take shape. At the top of the stairs ( still awaiting bannisters) you turn back on yourself and into what will be my library area with bookshelves built to fit both the tall walls and the dwarf wall under the eaves which is high enough tfor tow bookcase shelves. This area is 3.5 m (11 feet 5 inches) by 2.4 m ( 7 ft 10 inches) Imagine a nice arm chair and a foot stool here then walk past it into the studio proper....

The gable end you see here will house my design wall with shelves underneath along the floor

This right hand segment which is over the front of the house will house an admin desk ( where the blue tool box is) and my sewing desk running out at 90 degrees to the gable wall - roughly where the bin bag is and shelves on the walls. Oh and floor sockets for the sewing desk

This left hand side houses my window seat which has a dvided top so both sides lift up for storage not least of my wadding roll. This side also will have shelves and a cutting/ pressing table with a bar stool.

The main studio area is I think from memory 21 feet or so by 12 feet five inches ( 6.5 x 3.8 metres). The other quarter of the loft next to the stairs is a bathroom. There will be a bespoke window above the door

The bath will be tiled in. It is double ended and there are recessed lights right above each end. Perfect for reading in the bath! The alcove will have shelves.

A wall hung toilet will be installed. As will a magazine rack right next to it!!

and all along the wall will be cupboards.

Some days Charlie the calf gets so tired just from looking up at the dormer and watching the work that he needs a lie down.

Border Crossing

2011-07-11T23:05:00.000+01:00

I know I have been appalling at blogging of late -as soon as I can find time I shal tell you why I have been so busy. But in the meantime here is a link to one day in the recent past ( why blog it myself when Working Mum did it all for me?) and here is a picture of my SAQA Auction quilt Border Crossing

and its official description:

A background of machine and hand-stitched hand-dyed cotton, with neocolour crayon and a central hand-stitched 'road' panel of African barkcloth still bearing the original stitching by its African maker. Over that is a 'frontier fence' of raw-edged appliqued hand-dyed fabric and Ghanaian batiks.

Building a studio 5 - major progress!

2011-06-14T18:15:00.000+01:00

Before I went to work:

When I came home from work:

I am beginning to feel under pressure - I had better be producing some good art from this space to justfy it, I fear!

A funny

2011-06-12T22:36:00.001+01:00

Not only did Dennis drive me most of the way to Rhyl and back ( the bit he didn't drive was less to do with his hand and more to do with the extra piece of French toast he ate at our OK diner breakfast and which made him feel sick) he is furiously marking GCSE scripts to earn money to pay for our regular sojurns to Bath in 2012.

Todays best asnwer:
Q: War is the greatest problem faced by the poor. Do you agree?
A I agree that war is the greatest problem for poor people because if you are really poor where are you going to find the money for a tank?

Building a studio 4

2011-06-09T21:36:00.000+01:00

I got stairs today!!

And a huge space for storage under the stairs with access via our bedroom.

We have been having a discussion on the UK Quilters Guild Competmorary Quilt Group Yahoo Group ( gosh, thats a long name!) about quilt storage because it suddenly occurred to me that whilst I had a perfect plan for the space to make quilts in I had not really thought about how to keep larger art quilts without folding them. This cupboard will give plenty of space to hang them from trouser hangers but it was originally designated for household stuff so it was rather tentatively that I mentioned to Dennis that I might actually like my studio to spread down a floor after all. His response:

"Well quilts are things for the house aren't they?"

If you had any doubt that I snagged The Best Quilting Husband let me tell this tale. He has been having problems with bending his fingers for a while and tests have been coming back without providing any diagnosis. Finally this week he saw someone who reckons he has the solution. However, its one of those treatments whihc in the long run will do good but in the short term ( a couple of days or so) may make things worse). He was apologising for taking the very quick appointment they offered for tomorrow.

"Why are you apologising to me for that?" I asked.

"Well, I might not be able to grip a steeering wheel and I promised to do the driving to the quilt show this weekend."

That show by the way is Quilt Art at 25 at Rhyl museum -starts on Saturday until Mid- August.

Building a Studio 3 - Lack of Progress

2011-06-05T15:19:00.000+01:00

The stairs for my studio were ordered to arrive some 12 days ago. This is what they look like.

Not good. The builder is very angry at being let down by the stair maker who has been very reliable in the past. He made the staircase of the house across the road which we inspected before chooing our builder. Mystery is afoot as the stair maker stopped answering the builders calls and the builder became concerned that the joiner had gone out of business. So on Friday he paid a visit to his premises in Wigan. All boarded up. But his cheque has not been cashed. Having been told thsi via email, I rang the joinery business pretending to be a potential new customer who had herd a rumour that they had gone bust. The phone in the closed up business was answered withing 3 rings and I was given an astonished denial that they had gone bust. But still no stairs or any explanation.

Two new joiners are coming out on Monday to measure, the quickest is to get the job. Sadly this is holding up building as both the bathroom and the dormer window are depedent on the very precise location of a supporting wall which cannot be finished until the stairs are in.

Meantime the Velux windows went in the bathroom and the seating area. Wrong type ( I asked for PVC not timber) and in the case of the seating area one the wrong size and position. Grrr. We are working with this builder without plans so we have a great deal of flexibilty as we build. This has huge advantages: cost is one - no need for an architect and the building inspector is on a 24 hour notice call out system so no delays for advance approval of building regs either. More so, I get to discuss options as we go along and that is proving a very good thing as we have been able to make changes for the good once we have seen the space develop. In fact once the floor and ceiling went in and we could see the exact head height the whole furniture placement changed. And we decided to add a dormer. And it allows the builder to come up with genuis ideas.

For example, you see here this partition wall in progress which is the wall of the bathroom? As you can see from the first photo it is one side of the stair well meaning that it is fairly useless. This bothered Bill the Builder. So he suggested he build a kind of cellar door that will clip to that wall but is releasable over the hole to sit firmly and securely on a lip and can then be stood on, his idea being that the usless wall has just bcome a huge design/display wall. Genuis. ( In my mind it also operates as a kind of drawbridge in reverse to prevent savages who wish to steal my stash from getting up the stairs while it is down. I shall keep a stock of boiling oil on hand.) At the point when we both independently came to the conclusion that the bathroom door should go on an angle to avoid a sharp corner, he offered to hand make me ('in the original price' of course) a shaped window to go above the door which will add light and make a lovely feature.

However, one of the disadvantages of no plans is that you need very clear communication about details. Now I thought that asking for a top hung, white PVC window to span three beams so I could sit and see the view outside was pretty clear. Somehow this translated into a two beam window in timber with a position that shows sky only. Fortunately the builder's philosophy is (a) Can Do and (b) The Customer Is Always Right. Which is why a replacement larger velux has now been delivered. I should think so :)

Pending the stairs going in all the progress that is being made is me doing the kind of shopping that involves you spending hundreds ( ahem, nay thousands) of pounds and coming back from the shop with nothing in your bag. The toilet and vanity unit have been ordered as have spotlights and curtains and bed to turn the temporary studio into a guest room.. Tiles have been chosen. Desks, paints and shelves researched and - for let no one say I do not micromanage - the loft floor has been written on with precise instructions for socket locations and furniture postions and the extact width the window seat has to be to fit a roll of wadding inside.

And is there any quilting going on? Well what do you think?!
But I sold Leaving the Accra Quilt Show and it appears that I may have secured a commission for a similar one.

Studio Building 2

2011-05-19T21:35:00.000+01:00

How to build a studio floor:

Step One cut a big hole in the ceiling below the loft.

Step two. Get Mick the Muscle up on the porch roof to gently guide half a ton of steel girder through the window.

Step Three: Balance it on its end with the tip though the hole and send The Apprentice up in the loft to receive it.

Step Four: Get Mick the Muscle to give it one almighty heft and Bill the Broken Foot Builder to help out

Step Five: Up, up, up on tippy-toes with half a ton of steel on your fingertips.

Step Six: Make ballerina like poses

Step Seven: repeat four more times.

Then today the timber for the floor struts arrived just before the building inspector who passed the steel girders but insists that we replace every single internal door in the house with thicker fire doors. Hmm. Didn't plan for that. I guess that's what 'contingency' is for in the budget. And Dad if you are reading this... would you mind painting a few extra doors when you come down?!

Building a Studio 1

2011-05-18T07:47:00.004+01:00

I have not blogged much about the house recently and I probably owe you some before and after shots another day but today's news is all about the commencment of studio building.

Well, it turned out an actual building would be too expensive so....

... no, I jest. (I hope). This is the builder bolting pieces of timber to steel with a great big machine in the pouring rain.

Inside the house they have demolished a partition wall which formed three cupboards between two bedrooms.

The side door there is widened and becomes the door to the stairs. The door facing the camera will be the door to the understairs cupboard from our bedroom and a new partition wall will be errected a little nearer the canera than the original was, to finish off the room that will then be Dennis' library. The steel will somehow get inside the house through a window and up through the ceiling here in a way whch actually I think it is best if I do not know. Then the stairs go where the cupboards were and construction of the actual room begins.

Leaving the Accra Quilt show/ Quilt Judging

2011-05-17T20:43:00.001+01:00

Thank you all for your comments on Quilt Judging both on the blog and those who sent private comments. I have been delayed in responding by the need to make the above quilt in about 3 1/2 weeks. It has now been dispatched to the special exhibition of wax print quilts to be shown at the Loch Lomond Quilt Show this coming weekend. I made another with the left overs but I was so tight on time with that one that I forgot to photo it so you will have to wait for that one!

You will note that the pavement for the Leaving the Accra Quilt Show is the same techniques and fabrics as for Mothers of The Orphans. And so when it makes its way to Festival of the Quilts it will similarly get low marks I am sure. If you click on the photo above you should get a zoom view so you can see how many different shapes of eyebrows I invented! And the little laminated copy of the book about wax prints which the show is to publicise. It is 22 x 44 inches.

As for the judging issue, I hope I was very neutral as you my reaction to the comments when I asked for your views. It was interesting to see how much your views then co-incided with mine. I could see entirely why some aspects were satisfactory but the one comment I struggled with, given your reactions to the quilt when I first posted it was the comment that the visual impact was satisfactory. Interestingly I got a private comment from another quilt judge who has seen the quilt in person and who would have given it higher comments throughout. So I know where I can work at technical excellence and I know that the artistic element of judging is entirely subjective and unpredictable.

You may be interested in this video of the same Judge who judged mine explaining her judging at Festival in 2009 and this video of her colleague. Incidentally I was at that show and agreed with their decisions as to the winners, for what my opinion is worth!

Finally, a news report was circulated at work recently showing that Israeli Judges doing criminal cases were more lenient when they had just eaten. At the next show I enter I am going to make a quilt embellished with real food and invite the judge to snack while they comment.

Quilt Judging

2011-05-05T23:23:00.002+01:00

You will recall my quilt Mothers of the Orphans.

You can see detailed shots and the previous comments on the quilt at http://downthewell.blogspot.com/2011/04/mothers-of-orphans-into-light.html. (sorry about the non-embedded link but blogger is not embedding tonight!! It was shown at Trentham and I was delighted when one of the traders said it was 'the kind of quilt which they asipre to make.'. What a lovely comment!

It arrived back home tonight with the Judging comments. I am posting them openly because I would be very interested indeed in all your reactions to and comments on the comments - whatever they are. Do you argee/ disagree? Can you add some specificity to them for me? etc etc.I will post my thoughts when I have had chance to consider yours, if I may! I am looking for constructve criticism of my work here and assistance in understanding the results so feel free to say what you will.

The possible marks are Excellent, Very Good, Good, Satisfactory or Needs Attention. In the following categories I scored:

Visual impact. Interpretaion of chosen theme: Satisfactory

Originality/ Content: Good

Design, Composition, Colour: Satisfactory

Choice and suitablity of materials and techniques: Good

Surface design and embellishment not applicable

Quality of piecing Satisfactory

Quality of applique satisfactory

use of chosen materials Good

Quality of execution of quilting - satisfactory

Edge treatment, finishing, hanging - satisfactory

The only comment in the large box for Judges comments is' A brave try at some very difficult piecing. I like' vibrant'"

Warning! Deliberate controversy follows!

2011-04-14T13:15:00.000+01:00

I have recently watched a fascinating programme called Kidult - which for UK readers is available on BBC I player. It is a documentary about a 4 year old, Marla Olmstead. She is the daughter of a painter and was allowed to paint freely with her equipment being set up by her father as a way of keeping her quite so he could paint. Her paintings were picked up by a gallery and she sold many for large sums. It seems that her run of luck ended when the press began to cast doubt on her ability. She was filmed painting and a 'expert' said that she was doing no more than pushing paint around like a child would do'. Collectors started to get worried and the phenomenon of her success apears to have ended.

You can see many examples of her work here .

The documentary raises many issues- including the obvious one about how appropriate it is for a four year old to be taken to her own gallery show in a limo with child seats in it! - but the one that caught my attention was the debate within the show about whether her art was 'good'. It raised the old question about the value of modern art. It is 'good' or is it a conjob? If a child can do it and adults pay for it does that make the adults fools or the child a prodigy? If a child can produce a piece of work that is indistingushable in quality from that of an adult artist does that mean that the adults work must be 'no good'.

These are on the face of it interesting and ever debatable issues. But I beg to to raise a point: isn't it entirely the wrong question to ask - is this piece of art 'good' or 'bad'?

Art is about beauty. How often have you ever heard anyone discuss whether a sunset is 'good' or bad' compared with last night's.

I have on my wall at work prints of Gee's Bend quilts. It has often been said in the quilting work that these are 'bad quilts. It is true that they are uneven and crudely stitched in some cases. But when vistors to my room look at them they never realise they are quilts. They pronounce them 'fascinating' and 'beautiful' because they judge them from different criteria. They judge them from the emotion they get when seeing them and the fact that they are unlike anything they commonly see.

So why do we feel the need to construct a framework in which something created as art is 'good' or 'bad'.
I can see two answers - you may have more.

The first is that those in the art / quilting worlds set up definitions of good/bad so that people can be ranked. My quilt Mothers of the Orphans: Into the Light is in a show tomorrow. The term 'show' is actually a misnomer because it is not possible to enter this 'show' without entering a competition. It seems it is not enough for us to celebrate what people have created and faciltiate its viewing without adding the element of Judging to it. My quilt kept me happy for hours. It interested others in its making and it has received very positive comment on my website ( thank you all). I fully expect though that it will be returned with a little slip saying what is wrong with it because it does not conform to the traditional quilt making measures of what is 'good'.

I am interested in why we see quilts as suitable for competition. I think jurying is a little different - there is a reason to curate a show to make it cohesive and to limit what can be fitted intoa venue. But to rank a quilt? Is that not a little like ranking whether an oak is more or less beautiful than a beech tree? It can only be done by reference to a set of pre-determined criteria that are actually unrelated to the emotional reactions to a work of art, because those emotional reactions are variable between indididuals and so cannot be measured for the purposes of a fair competition.

Plus, art is to me about self-expression. How can you measure and therefore Judge that?

The documentary showed the expert of Sixty Minutes who ended the Marla phonomenon by stating that Marla was just playing with her paint like a child and was not painting like an adult. A comparison was made elsewehere in the film with Jackson Pollcok, yet it was not said that he dripped paint about like a child. It was said that he 'invented an entirely new way of painting'. It seems to be that we have constructed an art world in which the furthest away we get from the free and jubilant play of self-expression we get the 'better' we judge the art. Is this because those who hold the power in the art world are fearful of being as free as a child and need to create boundaries which justify them not having to go there?

The literature of Aboriginal Art is much the same. Dennis looks at Aboriginal Art and shrugs and says' I don't get it . Its just dots'. Of course only some Aboriginal Art comprises dots but I have been working hard to explain to him that - despite all the art talk guff going around about the art, there is in fact nothing to get. It is indeed just dots. Colourful, free, joyous, instinctive, beautiful - to the -eye -of-the-beholder ( or not depending entirely on personal taste) dots. Dots which express culture and stores and feelings. Anyone can do it. Especially people who have never worked with acrylics to whom you have just handed a canvas and some brushes and who does not yet have a hang up about whether their work is good or not. And thats all it needs to be. Unless you need to make a living out of being knowlegable about these things because you are not going to sustain a career out of merely explaining that dots can be beautiful.

Which leads me to the the second reason which came out in the documentary for constructing this 'good'/ 'bad' dichotomy was - wait for it - yup, it's money.
The gallery owner says,

"I have always thought that modern art is somewhat of a scam. I have been a realist painter all my life and there are times it can take me nine months to do a painting. Then you read about auctions and the records set at Chirsties and Southerbys for these abstract paintings with swatches of paint like this and like that and they are selling for millions of dollars. You know the most I have ever sold a painting for was a hundred thousand dollars which is a lot of money, its an awful lot of money, but when you look at the amount of time I put into that painting compared with what some of these paintings are selling for. That I don't get. I just don't get because my kid could do that."

Now I understand that opinion. To an extent. If you start from the premise that art is valued as a commodity by a fair hourly rate for production. But I have always doubted that it is reaslitic to seek to value art in that way or to make a living from it in that way. When we were in Germany we went to see an exhibition of Quilt Art 's wrk. My husband was taken aback at the prices they were asking. I explained that they had put a lot of hours into the work and were seeking to get an hourly rate back. As someone who could - more or less- deconstruct how the item had been made and calculate probable cost of materials, transport, marketing etc, the price was not unreasonable at all. But when we worked it out, the pieces were costing well in excess of the average UK workers wage for a month. Who can afford that?

People who value art and who earn considerably more than that is the answer. And if those people are to spend large sum of money on art most ( I accept not all) will want it to be an investment. Either a monetary investment or an investment in their image - one that says look how cultured I am. Or how knowledgeable I am. Or how much taste I have. Or an investment in ther own happiness: what a beautful thing I brought into my life and how happy it makes me to see it each day. In none of those scenarios would you want the positive feelings to be taken away by a view that the picture is somehow tainted or less than it was billed to be. That you have wasted your money. And so, if you are going to pay good money for art that is done quickly with crude techniques there had better be something else about that art that gives it a status value.

In Marla's case it is the fact she is a four year old. But if she was an average four year old the painting sold by a gallery for thousands of pounds would be nothing more that the pictures on most Mom's fridges (except that Marla was probably given bigger tubes of paint and canvas rather than sugar paper). So it becomes necessary to say that she is a 'special four year old'. Why - what is special about her work? Ah well, you see, her stuff it is 'good'....

Much the same happened when Nelson Mandela began to paint. His art rocketed in value. It is very simple acrylics. Nothing very skilled. I am sure he didn't claim it to be - he was painting for recreation. But it sold very well. Why? Because it is by Nelson Mandela who is a truly remarkable man. So the value is not in the quality of the work. It is in the association with the man. ( This I can say for sure becuase I own some of the work for that very reason). And that means we have to start to evaluate what the qualties of the man are that gives the work such value. Which is nothing to do with the work being 'good' art. Nor about the time it took to paint. One piece is his handprint. You know - like kids do: hand in paint, hand on paper. Done. But when Mandela does it, the bit in his palm that naturally does not touch the paper - is the exact shape of Africa.. Now it must have taken all of ten minutes to do that and thats allowing for the time it took to remove the paint and design the piece. So on the gallery owners logic, about £20 quids worth. Plus a bit for materials transport and framing. But if valued on spine tingling factor and the owning of something actually touched by the man himself.- well its worth what someone will pay.

So what I am saying - at some length I am afraid, - is that it is wrong to try to vaule art by an hourly rate mechanism. And I am afraid probably makes it unreaslitic to expect quilt art to make the makers the living their skills lead then to hope for unless they can sell with reference to an added value such as celebrity, or uniqueness or the invocation of an emotion that will inspire buyers to part with money to retain that reaction everytime they see the work in their own homes. And I am also saying that is is time to stop categorising art and quilts as 'good or 'bad' and start to examine them on the reactions they bring out in us. And to accept that the reaction caused by a painting on which nine months was spent may well be equal to one on which a child spent five hours daubing paint. Because joy can come from either method and that really is what art is about.

Oh and time for those of us who do not make traditional based, perfectly stitched quilts, to desist from enetering shows becuase we will not win or we are not good enough yet. Lets take back our quilt shows and enter stuff aimed at spreading joy and creating interest and not only showing how we can do 15 handquiting stitches to the inch and a perfect binding.

I got interviewed!!

2011-04-11T23:09:00.000+01:00

Ever wondered what I sound like in real life?

Annie Smith interviewed Diane Hock and I at PIQF in October last year for her Quilting Stash podcast. I was very excited and then she lost the interview! It has now been rediscovered on her archives ( does that make us sound like the Beatles at all?) and you can listen to it here. And this is what we all looked like on the day - posing by a potted palm having broken into a banqueting suite to sit in the mostly dark to record the interview in quiet!

Mothers of the Orphans: Into the Light

2011-04-04T18:56:00.000+01:00

Last September I went to a class at Midsomer Quilting by Lisa Walton who was teaching her crystalisation technique. I was supposed to be making a quilt that looked like her class sample, as shown below - namely a kind of bulls eye pattern with changing values in a square ring. As you can see, I got to making a tiny bit of the internal square and got rebellious!

I have to say she was very supportive of rebellion! This technique is very easy but rather time consuming. I started at the class, did a few more days on it in Bath where we were on holiday, took it to California to retreat where, after a couple more full days on it, the top was, I think, complete.

Now, this technique is the one Lisa and Nic Bridges used on their award winning Bushfire Sunset Quilt (which I have had on my sofa!) and which is beautifully lomg arm quilted by Nic. Whilst this quilt will always owe a debt to Lisa, I wanted to make it my own in some way and not just an alternative version of her work. So I hand stitched it. For months. And months. It is just finished now.

I loved sitting stitching it whilst watching TV. Very relaxing. I deliberately alowed the stitches to be uneven for variety and texture and to hopefully add to the African feel. The yellow sunlight patches all have slanting diagonal stitches, the green cross stitches and the rest straight stitches apart from some fabric which had dots on so I gave those french knots. Just becuase I could do what I wanted!

There was a point when I hated it and doubted if it was worth continuing but Diane Hock, who had seen it at retreat encouraged me and gave me vaulable advice about blocking and now I like it.

It is called Mothers of the Orphans: Into the Light because having started with the yellow I realised I had a sun. I had African fabrics with me and started to think as I made it what that could be all about. We hear a lot about the AIDS orphans so I thought it was time to commemorate the mothers and so the quilt depicts three mothers approaching the light that some people say appears as death happens. Which is why the figures are ghostly. I know I know - not really a happy quilt topic, but that's what it said to me it was and there was no arguing with it.

I think being a quilt which was cobbled together on the hoof with no original plan, it suffers a little from that. I also put some organza patches on thinking I was being clever and playing with light and shade. What I was actually doing was sticking organza patches on and they, on reflection, add little. They may even take something away, but hey, that a lesson learned. But I love the handsewing on the tiny patches and will be tempted to make some more in this series. Just don't expect them to appear quickly!

The quilt is now lovingly packaged in a box and will shortly be on its way to the Quilts and Embroidery show in Utoxeter which takes place on 14th 15th and 16th March at the Racecourse.

To give you an idea of scale, this picture is about 90% real size.

Short term memory loss

2011-03-31T23:03:00.000+01:00

Our work computer system has many, many layers of security requiring codes and passwords just to get it the home screen before you even start entering user names and passcodes for various programmes. One of these is a password which is regenerated by the system every three months or so., It tell you you need to change it and there is a button to click on and it spews out random letters. If you don't like what you get, you can get it to spew alternatives. All are entirely un-memorable.

Unless you have a System. I decided that if I read them as names and came up with an image of the person whose name it sounded like I could remember it. So I have had the Pakistani Diplomat MI5 spy, the Vietnamese woman who sold sticky rice in banana leaves by the side of the road and currently the Sudanese camel trader. He came along only on Wednesday and as I get to know him I am beginning to fear that he may also trade in refugees. Before that there was a one eyed Turkish carpet trader.

And that is where the problem is. I can see these fictional characters in my head real as life. But apart from the new one I have not got a clue what their names are. I types each one's name at least once a workday for three months each. One only last Tuesday. Do I have the faintest idea what they were called. Nuh huh.

Which is more worrying? That I may have pre-Alzheimers or that I came up with this systen instead of writing the password down backwards somewhere in teh back of a diary as I bet most people do?

Journal Quilt for March

2011-03-27T21:20:00.001+01:00

I haven't felt like blogging much recently. But I have felt like quilting! This is my Journal quilt for March for the Contemporary Quilt Group Challenge. I have called it.

The Doctor's opens at 9am

I am trying out methods or products or techniques that are new to me in these 10 inch quilts. Today I tried using abaca tissue for the background and a collage method. Worked fine until I pillowcased the quilt and when I turned it right way out again a big chunk of the tissue had peeled away revealing the wadding and there were two other cracks. Hmmm - the solution?.....

... collage a bit more on over the big gap and seal the cracks with acrylic paint!

It was clearly going to be fragile even then so I painted all the tissue with matt varnish with a view to longetivity. But it has a delightful unintended consequence - on the figures made of tissue which had been stitched I got a darkening of the colours that gave a distressed effect that added a lot of interest.

My weekend dyeing experiment

2011-03-14T19:19:00.000Z

You may have noticed that every book on dyeing fabric tells you to do it a different way. And they do so in such an authoritaitve way. Some of that can be explained by there being a number of equally acceptable variants. But some contradictions are just that - down and out unreconcilable contraditions. And which fabric is best to use from the array on offer at Whaleys of Bradford, the UK fabric wholesaler of choice? I asked on the Contemporary Quilt Group Yahoo group and got more fabrics named than people who were giving the opinions. Helpful.

So, realising that my bathroom is in such a state I cannot make it worse with splashed dye and realising that I had a small window of opportunity until the builders come on the 21st, I set out to experiment.

I chose five fabrics to test:
Plain Cotton White
Poplin Cotton Delphina White (Shrunk)
Mercerized cotton white
Cotton sateen Arian White
Plain Cotton Optic White

I shall be testing different methods in due course but the point of Experiment No 1 was (a) to compare the fabrics and (b) to see if salt made any difference. Ann Johnstons book Color by Accident says no. Committed to Cloth's Tray Dyeing says yes.

I adapted the basic method from Ann Johnston's book - adapated in the sense that she uses urea (which of course Committed to Cloth do not) and I didn't have any. I used a fat quarter of each fabric for each side of the experiment, in each case dying in a 3.8 litre lakeland plastic lunch box and scrumping the FQ's up side by side. I wet the fabrics with a cup and a quarter of warm plain water.
I made a dye concentreate with Procion MX magenta - two and a quarter tablespoons to one and a quarter cups of warm water. From that concentrate I took ten tablespoons and for the first box of fabric I made that up to a total of one and a quarter cups of warm water and poured it over the fabric. For the second box I made the 10 tablespoons of concentreate up with a salt solution to a total of one and a quarter cups again. I made the salt solution with 200g of salt to 1 litre of water.

For both boxes I agitated to let the dye through and let sit for 10 mins. I then poured over a cup and a quarter of soda ash solution. I made that solution by adding 9 tablespoons of soda ash to 1 gallon of warm water. I squished the fabric around again and let sit in a warm place, lids on. I agitated again after an hour, hand rinsed after six and washed in a machine with synthrapol.

The first lesson I learned was that if you put two capfuls of synthrapol in a domestic washer there is so much foam created that it backs up through the powder dispenser drawer and all over the floor. But lets not linger on that point.

Unfortunately this is the best picture I cna get my camera to take and it does not really show the subtle variations. The top row are without salt, the bottom row with.
Verdict: Salt made no discrenable difference at all.

The fabrics are as listed above arrayed from left to right.
verdict::
(a) Plain cotton white was a shabbier pinkier outcome than the middle three. It also feels rough. Not the best. But not the worst. That was most definately Plain Cotton OPtic White. It was a nightmare. Not only is it the most faded of teh colurs it unravlleed everywhere which none of the others did. It came out of teh washer like this:

To be avoided at all costs.
The Delphina Poplin, the Mercerised Cotton and the Cotton Sateen Arian all took the colour pretty much the same. The difference is in the weight and finish of the fabric.

The mercerised cotton is the heaviest - heavier than most quilting cotton but not too thinc to use in a quilt. It feels sturdy. I did a hand stich test on all three, using a perle thread and sewing through one layer of the fabric and one layer of wadding ( since I tend to pilow case my handstitched quilts) and it was absolutley unremarkable to hand stitch through.
The Cotton sateen is gorgeous because of the finish to the fabric which is kind of - well sateeny! Shimmery. However, it was a little stiffer to hand sticth. Not hard at all on individual stitches but for a running stitch of more than two at a time it showed a touch of resistance. The Delphina cotton is the lightest. perhaps akin to the flimsy Kaffe Fasset fabrics you get. I had read on the CQ Yahoo group that because of its close weave it was hard to hand stitch. I did not find it hard even with such a thick perle thread. However, because of its light weight when I did running stitches it did gather up which the other two did not do. The stitches left a more marked dimpling effect which could be agood thing if you were after a distinct valley between your stitches for contrast purposes.

Overall, I think you get what you pay for. the fabrics are different widths so I converted to a square meter price based on the price for 1- 2 metres. It gets cheaper if you order bigger amounts. Listed in descending order my my personal preferences are:

Cotton sateen Arian White £9.08 per sq m

Poplin Cotton Delphina White (Shrunk) £4.06 per sq m ties with Mercerized cotton white £3.62 per sq m

Plain Cotton White £ 2.79 per sqm.

Plain Cotton Optic White £1.82 per m sq

What a surprise! I think the sateen is too expensive for just playing and trying out methods. However even factoring in dye costs it is not that far above commerical fabrics for a special final project. Certainly a lot cheaper than the sateen on sale at Fetsival last year whch was over £30 per meter if I remember correctly. For playing I would go for the next two on my list
I hope this helps anyone else considering having a go.

How to recognise an art quilter

2011-03-06T23:16:00.000Z

How can you tell an art quilter from a traditional quilter? I know there are all kinds of debate about the utility of art or the art of utilty or such yada, yada, yada stuff. Its easier than that. To wit:

When I was only a traditional quilter (because really I think all art quilters resort to strip piecing in times of extreme stress) I had a shopping list that read

1. Fabric

2. Fabric.

3. Fabric

4. Thread.

Today I realised my shopping list read:

1. Half mask respirator

2. Grout tool

3. Acid cartridges

4. Flexible fence wire

Further, had I been a traditional quilter only, when my husband called me down from my bath to let me see just how utterly unsuitable the new lampshades we spent all day choosing really was, I would have been cursing and muttering about the stupidity of lighting designers and what a waste of time the day had been. As it was my immediate thoughts were:

1. Camera

2. Monorinting inspiration

3. Spoonflower.

But really - who wants a light that makes these kind of patterns all over the ceiling and walls of your supposedly restful lounge?!

The pre-Photoshop photos:

Post a 3 min session on photoshop - who needs stitch to do shibori?!

2011-03-05T21:53:00.002Z

I love this advert!

Monoprint quilts

2011-03-05T21:02:00.000Z

I have been playing with some of the monoprinted fabrics from last Sunday. Here are two little quilts I made just to use some of the fabric. My main idea was for the black and white ones but I have not even started on that yet!

Some details of the top one (Although the colours are not that accurate. Comes from forgetting to take the photos until after dark!)

Monoprinting

2011-02-27T21:15:00.001Z

I was able to spend all day to day in a community centre in Manchester at a newly formed local group linked to the Contemporary Quilt Group of the UK Quilters Guild. We played all day at monoprinting. Well, actually most people payed for a couple of hours or so then worked on some sewing they brought but me - not good at stopping! I was having FUN!

Here are a few of my favourites.

If you want to see all the cloth I produced I have put a Flickr set together here of all the dry ones ( the last ones got carried home wet in layers of bin bags and are still drying upstairs. Now I have to make something with them. I already have an idea......

Blind up. Quilt up

2011-02-22T20:42:00.000Z

The title and the photo say it all.

Save that Dennis wishes you all to notice that today he chose bananas in a perfect state of ripeness to match the tones of the quilt for the photo.

Oh and to say that today I am the featured artist on the Lark blog - the are doing features on the Twelve by Twelve group in the run up to our official book realease date.

Kitchen quilt

2011-02-20T23:07:00.000Z

I finished another little quilt tonight. This one is destined for my kitchen wall - I'll show you it in situ when its hung which will be after my pelmet and blind are fitted this coming week. It measures 14 by 14.5 inches.

The fabric on the left is commerical but I made the fabric on the right and I am very proud of myself as its the first time I've done anything like it. I quilted the pattern, and rubbed some silver oil pastel into some of the lines. Then I made freezer paper stencils and overlapped green markal stenciling, rotating and altering the stencils as I went. then I did the same thing with silver metal leaf. Then I hand stitched a similar set of symbols.

Ironically it is inspired by my latest Twelve by Twelve quilt but I can't show you that until my reveal on 1st March!

Journal Quilt

2011-02-19T18:31:00.000Z

This year I signed up for the Journal quilt project run by the Contemporary Quilt group which is part of the UK Quilters Guild. It started this month and the first four 10 inch square quilts must contain a circle. This is my first one:

Despite my experience of working with square quilt in the Twelve by Twelve project and despite very careful measuring it measures 9 3/4 inches square. Sigh. I don't suppose anyone will shoot me for it. The wonky botton edge is far more to do with my cropping on Photoshop skills than my quiting skills. (And my lasziness in not correcting it). I wanted to experiment with some surface design. the copper is Jaquard paint, the sliver is a metal leaf which has actually dried a little scrubby - I shall probably give it a second coat. The greens are Inktense pencils.

Talking fof Twelve by Twelve - my copies of our book arrived yesterday:

I understand that Amazaon.com and Barnes and Nobel are shipping it already in the States. Amazon.co.uk are still on pre-order ... but why not place an order now so you get a nice suprise like I did?

Dennis was excited to see that he got a credit for the photography he did for the book.

PS Did you notice our kitchen walls have been painted now? Thanks Mum and Dad :) I think I spent about £35 on tester pots trying to find the sage colour that was already in my head. No luck. In the end we mixed, on an easy 1:1 ratio, the two Farrow and Ball paints we used in the dining room and sun lounge- exactly what I wanted.

Olympics 2012

2011-02-15T22:46:00.000Z

Today the athletics schedule and pricing came out for the London olympics. I am the least sporty person going in terms of participation but I love to watch athletics. We have been toying with the idea of getting good tickets ( for who wants to be at the back of the wrong side of the stadium for the 100 m?) for the whole tournament and making the olympics our summer holiday. Much as we did for the athletics and rugby at the Manchester commonwealth games.

Then today I found out that the best seats for the whole of the tournament would cost us £11,550 for ticket alone plus accommodation.

Are they having a laugh?

I shall be watching ( with close ups, replays and helpful commentary and no travel problems ) from my sofa for free.

Who exactly are they marketing to? Oil sheiks?

Quiltfest 2011

2011-02-15T21:55:00.000Z

On Sunday Dennis and I drove to Llangollen. I went to meet up with Magie Relph, to divest myself of money in exchange for more of her African baskets, to discuss future kits and to see the quilts at Quiltfest. Dennis went so that he could drive and I would not kill myself or other road users when I fell asleep most of the way back home. I was ill last year and missed the show, which, because of renovations to the usual venue was split betwene three buildings. that arrangement was retained this year and personally I found it a great shame.

The first display was in the Pavillion where the famous Eisteddfod takes place and where the traders were. I don't wish to disparage the quilts of others but the fact that I have no photos to show you perhaps itself illustrated best what I thought of the quality of that show. We then had to trapse in cold rain to the museum where some very good quilts based on the theme of trees were displayed in an upstairs gallery. It was very hard to stand back from the quilts and see how the details played from further away.

From there we had to go another half mile or so in more cold rain to Plas Newyd where an excellent exhibition was displayed in a very small space with some quilts almost at ground level because of the shape of the room. As you can see it got very crowded and I did feel that the artists were not given the opportunity to show their work off to the best effect. It was hard to stand and really take in the work because you felt that you had to move aside quickly for others to see.

I thought the premise of this exhibition was fascinating though. they quilts came in pairs. One was made entirely by an individual. The other was collaborative being started to the same inspiration source by the same individual then passed through the hands of three others before being finished by the originator. The 'intervening' members often did rather drastic things to the part work they received but on the whole it worked very well. I was interested to note that it was often not apparent before I read the accompanying notes which was the individual piece and which the group one.

As I bought a photography permit I can show you an example set with the explanation and artist credits: Posting these information sheets was a great addition to the display.

First room complete!

2011-02-02T21:41:00.002Z

Yeah!!!! One room in my house is actually complete. Well, I'd like a picture on the wall and the lamp shade on the table lamp is temporary, but for such minor details how can one resist blog-celebrating?
Of course it is the least necessary room in the whole house - my dressng room:

And the paint is on the walls downstairs. I ignored all your advice (but thank you for it anyway) and went with the recommendation of Best Quilting Buddy who knows best, having slept in the rooms concerned. She recommended placing the the darkest colour on the two window walls and the small wall in the dining room backing onto the kitchen and she was dead right.

Its hard to photograph the colours accurately, but we went with Farrow and Ball Green Blue ( or it might be called Blue Green, I forget) in the lounge with Pavillion Grey in the alcoves. The carpet ('Silverstone') was laid today.

In the dining room and sun lounge we went with Ringwold Ground and Lichen which I absolutely love. It is perfect and a touch darker and earthier than the dreadful lightbulbs we inherited make it look in this photo. And in fact, despite deciding not to go for two shades of green, when the sun is shining in, the sun lounge looks lighter than the dining room which is what I wanted to achieve anyway.

We had a slight wobble when the lounge was first painted as the colours looked slightly different to me and I was disappointed. It transpired that when the decorator said he would get us the Farrow and Ball paint we chose trade, he actually meant he (and all of his decorator freinds who he rang) had never heard of Farrow and Ball, didn't know that it was a traditional paint company with no acrylics which gives a better depth and chalkier, longer lasting finish and that he would take our paint chart have it scanned and buy a close match in trade standard Crown Paint.

It was in fact an interesting experiment because it confirmed that the use of a company like Farrow and Ball is not just a middle-class affectation but really does produce a different result from the standard DIY store paint. And that scanning a colour gives a very close but not exact match. The grey in particular was very, very close but to my eye had a taupe undertone compared with the blue undertone of the F&B paint. The decorator redid the lounge and was duly educated!

Ineptitude

2011-02-02T21:19:00.001Z

It should have been so simple. The carpet for the lounge was fitted today and furniture is arriving Thursday and Friday. So last night we decided to watch TV and just before bed to take the old 3 piece suite out to the garage to store it, because Best Quilting Buddy has kindly agreed to assist by getting a van and is coming in a few weeks to take it off my hands. All we had to do was take the furniture through wide double doors into the front end of the hall, through the porch and into the garage next to the porch. The exact route the furniture came in by.

Only, to do the turn between lounge and porch it is actually necessary to take the sofa backwards into the hall straighten it up then come out straight into the porch because the angle between lounge and porch is too acute a turn. No problem. Big double doors make that a breeze. Or it would have been had we not earlier temporarily placed a bookcase full of heavy tomes about Churchillian history and Aboriginal woven baskets right where we now needed the sofa to go. So, we set to and removed all the books to the nearest resting place, which was the stairs, hefted the book case backwards, and swung the sofa into the hall. Now its a straight run out of the door.

Only, will it go it that way? Will it heckers like. ( The TV, which by this time was a good 30 minutes earlier, was the Pete Postethwaite film Brassed Off ,so excuse me if I come over all Yorkshire in this post). After about thirty minutes of huffing and puffing and 'up your end ,no up your end -ing' we concede defeat. The ***** thing is wedged in the porch door frame.

OK. Lets not be Bears of Little Brain. It came in, it will go out. I stand and think. I measure. I mentally tilt it and rotate it. I kick it and tell it to move. Nope. Fine. So the removers are clever little people and we are sadly inept idiots. No problem. There are large patio doors to the rear of the living rooms and a wide side access. We'll just go the long way around. So we push and huff and puff some more and get it unwedged and carry it into the lounge and through the dining room to the patio doors in the sun lounge (Note to BQB: undamaged. Do not worry).

We go outside in the pitch black, because we are waiting for the electrician to fit the oustide light in the side access area and find that we cannot open one of the double gates because the cotton brained previous owner thought it would be a good idea to build a brick base for the rain water butt right in front of one of them. Dennis votes for going to bed and asking the carpet fitters to help. Oh no. I am not going to be defeated now. I am Woman.

I get the wind up torch, two kitchen bowls and start to drain the butt through the tap at the base of the butt into one bowl and scoop from the top wth the other, letting the water run free momentarily free inbetween moving the bowl from under the tap and putting it back, having sloshed it's contents down the drain because Cottton Brain did not build the tap over the drain, did he? Twenty five minutes later and a lot of sloshing of cold rain water later, the butt can be moved.

Now all I have to do is demolish the brick base. For once I am glad about the prevous owner's shoddy workmanship becuase it is easily pulled apart and the gate is opened. Now, we have to carry the furniture all the way around. Only we will need to rest because its now way past midnight and we have weak and tired muscles. But we can't set the furniture down in the said access because its all wet from the sloshing and BQB will not thank me for wet furniture. So I go to get towels to give us little rest points. Only the towels are upstairs and the stairs are now completely covered with books. So we then have to move the bookcase back refill it to get the towels.

We heft and puff some more and - look. All stored. It only took an hour and a half.

And I still can't work out how they got it through the front door. Or indeed in and out of the same sized door at our previous house. As I say. Inept.

Just over two hours left

2011-01-24T10:48:00.000Z

Just a final reminder that you have a touch over two hours from the time of this post to get your final bid in for my Woomba Woomba quilt. I close at 12 midnight Australian time.

Bid by leaving a comment here

Interactive House - Help needed

2011-01-22T11:15:00.001Z

Who would like to help me decorate my house?
By which I mean, who would like to help me decide which walls to put which paints on so that a man can come and do the actual work?

If you want to play you might like first of get hold of the relevant paint chart. I know colours will look different on each screen ( they are vastly different between my home and work laptops and different again when I painted with tester pots) but at least you will get the idea of how one paint relates to the other.

Then here are the rooms. In the photo above I am standing my pation doors in teh 'sun lounge' looking into the dining roon and to the doors leading to the lounge.

This one looks the otherway

And this one looks slightly sideways so you can see how the kitchen flows off the dining room

Also, over the sofa which is temporarily plonked in the sun room there is a large window.

So, we are more of less picked for paints.I am still debating a couple of close choices between brands but for your purposes and advice you need only consider Four Farrow and Ball Paints from the above chart : Green Blue, Lichen , Pavillion Grey and Ringwold Ground. On my screen the latter looks very pink but it is not in real life - it is creamy.

The idea is to make the lounge, dining and sun lounge work as three distinct rooms but also to make them all flow together if the room is opened out.
We have chosen to use the Green Blue on all the lounge walls save for two big alcoves by the chinmey breast which will be Pavillion Grey. We have chosen a plain teal fabric for curtsians and an off white and silver blue suite and light grey carpet. The kitchen will either be in lichen or another brand similar but very slightly lighter. It is cream with black tiles.

So my question is - which of the following three options for the sun/ dining rooms would you choose:

(a) paint the dark colurs on the arches and the light on the long walls. (I.e Green blue on the wall leading dining room to sun room then lichen on the arch and pation door wall, ringwold everywhere esle

or
(b) reverse that ( i.e) paint the arch, the diningroom to lounge door wall and pation door wall and the wall with the window and adjoining the kitchen ringwold and the two long solid walls (in the top photo the one with the brush propped up against it and the one next to it with the paint samples on) Lichen.

or

(c) none of the above - please specify.

In terms of furniture, it is all an ash that looks very much like light oak and there will be a sideboard on the dining room long wall and a sofa and lamp table on the sun lounge long wall. under the window lamp table and two swivel chairs, nothing on the wall by the kitchen, and on the left of the door going to the lounge a tall display china cabinet.

Opinions quick please- I have to choose at 8.30 on Monday morning.

New Year Goals (or Oh How Life has Changed)- Part Two

2011-01-20T21:33:00.003Z

This post follows on from New Year Goals (or Oh How Life has Changed)- Part Two. which you may want to read first.

As I said in that post, I was intrigued by Lisa Call's habit of choosing two words to represent her focus for the year. I didn't think I was going to copy her thing but, in my Zen reflection days ( I told you - you need to read the last post if you don't know what I am talking about,) I found two words rising to the fore: nesting and preparation.

Unless you have stumbled on this blog from nowhere just today you will know that I currently live on a building site. In my head it looks like Buckingham Palace only with less Louis XIV bling. But to outsiders? A big pile of dust and workmens tools. Getting it to an abode more fit for the spoiled Princess I am involves shopping ( no hardship but time consuming) and actually making the lap, bed and wall quilts we want to have on the walls. So given I work full time it is unlikely that I am going to both make the shortlist for House Beautiful and say, fully stock an Etsy shop, enter one quilt no older than 12 months in every category at Festival of Quilts in one year, write an quilting article a month, make a quilt based on each room in the Blackburn museum and have them exhibited in the museum, enter quilts in European and US shows attand two residential retreats the other side of the world, and and start to teach. All of which I would sort of like to do. (And yes, in regard to Festival , I know that is a crazy idea. But wouldn't it feel like a real achievement?!)

Hence the nesting. There are I think, a minimum of 24 places in the house for which I would like to create a sewn item ( ranging from bed quilts through wall quilts to coffee table runners). Now do you see why entering every category at Festival sounds achievable? Of course I could fling together some log cabins and the like and I could do all that fairly quickly. But I don't want ('I don't WANT said the Princess, stomping her feet') to spoil my beautiful new house by slapping fabric down and calling it art. Or even slapping fabric down and calling it a liberated log cabin. I want to make stuff that gives me satisfaction so I feel it is enough of an achievement and good enough quality for me to want to live with it. Although, I like liberated log cabins and they relax me to make them so there might be some of that whilst I cogitate on my next Great Work of Art. Ok. My First Great Work of Art.

Which is kind of how the Preparation part links in. For so long as I have to spend a good time of my ~~weekend~~ precious quilting time choosing taps and admiring the tile grouting, I am not going to be producing as much as I will when my new, shiny, fit-for-a-Princess studio is ready. And what time I have should go mostly to 'nesting quilts'. But I will not be able to keep myself from other exciting possibilties. And why should I? After all I do this for fun, not to challenge Bobby Sands in the self-denial stakes. So this year is also about preparation for when I have time to do more. I have visions of quilts in my head that I know I do not yet have the skills to actually produce. So I choose to start to learn them now. I choose spend time on small projects in preparation of making larger ones later. I shall start to record ideas and sketches to come back to later. I shall set myself up to get better.

In my last post I talked about making choices not goals and about preserving the feelling of balance and relaxation I have finally achieved in life in general. So I give myself permission to choose to change all of what I am telling you as and when I feel like it.

But my starting choices for 2011 are:
* to make house quilts that have meaning to me
* to write up those which are suitable for a magazine pattern/ article
* to make a series of quilt kit patterns as commissioned by Magie Relph
* to continue to participate in the Twelve by Twelve group
* to join in the Journal Quilt Challenge for the UK Quilters Guild Contemporary Quilt Group
* to use the last two as ways to develop new technical knowledge and to breakaway from opting for the easy quick and mediocre and to head towards deeper more meaningful ( to me at least) work
* to keep a sketchbook and basic art kit at work and try to get a few lunchtimes in at the museum for future quilt preparation
* to buy as many quilt books as I like. Its not frivolity. Its education and preparation.
* to keep ( a la Lisa Call - I swear she is not paying me!) I records of the time I spend on tasks to better inform me of what is achievable and what prevents me from achieving what I set out to
* to finish a quilt I started in Lisa Walton's crystalisation class last August and enter it at the Utoxeter Quilt show in April
* to make one quilt to enter at Festival of Quilts (not counting the fact that out Twelve by Twelve quilts will all be there this year)
* do a little dying and screen printing even if I have to wait until summer and do it outside because my wet studio will not exist for a good while yet.

I might choose to actualy keep my website a little more up to date and to go back to the By Design articles I started. But I am not sure about that one yet. Feels suspiciously like work :)

Oh and right now? I choose to sign off and go to bed with a book.

New Year Goals (or Oh How Life has Changed)- Part One

2011-01-19T21:33:00.000Z

I have been using keeping my Queensland Flood Quilt Auction at the top of my blog as an excuse for not posting recently. But really it was because I wanted to do a New Years post and got stuck in a debate in my head : ( put the kettle on at this point- you might need it).

To go out of order, part of the debate ended up being did I want to post my nineteen days worth of musings for the world to read at all? Not that they are particularly secret or personal but because I fear thaye are boring. But I decided I did want to, because I have gained so much inspiration from other people's musings I thought there was the odd chance that it would help someone else. And hey, if I am boring you, go do something better. No offense taken I promise you. As long as you come back another day to see if I am being more interesting.

I have long had a New Years habit of getting out my journals from previous years and looking at my New Years entries to give me a sense of what I was concerned about then, how life has changed, what I wanted to achieve and what I actually have achieved. I then write a new journal entry for the next year. This included personal goals and tasks but also lots of professional ones. Indeed, back when I was a self-employed barrister life was all about goals and self-set targets. It was up to me to find much of my lecturing and writing work and my executive looking leather filofax bulged with plans, targets and to do lists. I needed a system to keep track of multiple clients, deadlines, up to four different sets of travel bookings a week, tax and VAT records and personal tasks. I have to say, I was pretty efficient at it.

And pretty done in by it.
If you look at my journals for 2005 - which of course I am not going to actually let you do :) - it is all desperate scribbles about finding balance and debating whether financially I could afford to only take bookings four days a week and keep one for admin. Eventually I did this and, whilst the filofax stayed the same, the journals became less frantic. With the caveat of keeping balance then, I'd say that the lifeplanning standard advice to set short and longterm life goals and keep then under review probably played a very large part in me being where I am now in my professional life and a vital part in my never finding myself in Cardiff when I should be in Leeds. ( I am aware that any lifestyle in which that is real and ever present danger is probably not all that normal).

Then, in November 2009 I left work, set off to travel the world for three months, took another month off at home and started an employed job. The job itself is demanding but in an entirely different way. My work lists are presented to me. I have hardly any tax records to do. My travel arrangements now consist not of booking multiple trains, flights and hotels a week, but of remembering to fill the car with petrol now and again.(And thats not hard because the sweets I keep in the armrest usually need replenishing at about the same time). The filofax was replaced by a hardly used diary with pictures of Aboriginal art for 2010 which so far has not been replaced at all. So lots more time for quilting, making setting art making goals easy. One would think.....

In fact, when I looked for last years Goals, there were none. There was a vague New Years entry in my travel journals but none of the life planning of prevous years. There was a picture of the secluded beach in Tasmania where I stood on the sand on New Years Day and realised that for the first time in many many months it was not going to matter today if I dropped a ball because there were none I had to keep in the air that day. So I kind of had a clean start to start again setting different kinds of goals and plans. I feel no compulsion or need to do that at all for my professional life this year but I do see my 'arriving' in that area as the opportunity to fully develop my artistic life.

In December I discovered Lisa Call's various posts on goals and the debates between not setting goals at all, and the merits of having targets and aims. (She started with the latter, flirted with the former and reverted to the original goal setting.) I was particularly interested in how she chose words for each year to live by. So, on New Years Day I pulled out my pile of journals, put on the Viennese concert and start to write. Or started to think about writing becuase suddenly - not so interested in goals. Did I need them? Was this the stage in my life where finally I could cast all that off and just be?

I decided to just live with that debate for a few days and see what feelings arose. (How very Zen of me!). I noticed that I felt resentful if I thought about scheduling tasks in the studio but quite interested if I thought about words such as 'focus' and 'choices'. I felt very reluctant to make to-do lists (which then created a kind of self-set obligation) or 'goals' which seemed to set up the pressure not to fail. But I felt rather lost without any plan. I like not being stressed. I like having time to relax. I like beeing free to potter. I don't like aimlessness and lack of direction.

So this year I am not making Resolutions. I am not setting goals or targets. But I am going to make some good choices. Choices that are about filtering out what I do not have time to do despite me really liking the idea of them. Choices that keep me relaxed and chilled but also enthused and enriched. I am going to focus on studio tasks that givem me real not part statisfaction.

And what are those choices you ask?
Ah, well, I shall tell you, but I think that's for another post don't you?

Circling back

2011-01-19T20:37:00.001Z

Herewith * the first completed quilt of 2011. Which would be an achievement had the fabric not been bought in the last month of 2009 with a view to immediate use on my return from Australia! I am not all that good with quilt names but (unless you all have better ideas) am contemplating Circling Back for all the memories of quilt shops Down Under it invokes. This is the front.

And this is the back.

And this is the second completed quilt of 2011. A seventeen inch shack quilt which may well bcome a kit in a series of little shacks. I am not sure now about the roof. It is a Shaman (medicine man)'s shack.

I know I have been blog deficient lately so I have some longer more thoughtful posts lined up. In my head that is, not actually posted, but it is ia start!

Finally, Don't forget to visit my Quilt Auction in aid of the Queensland Floods and snag yourself another Aboriginal inspired quilt.

* Herewith is a good word don't you think? Along with aforesaid, thereunto and hitherto mentioned. Do I sound like a lawyer?!

Woomba Woomba

2011-01-13T12:48:00.000Z

Even with my house in a hopeless state of 'destroy to rennovate' disprepair, I cannot help but realise how much better off we are than the people whose homes hae been flooded in Quuensland. Accordingly I am particpating in the Queensland Flood Appeal auctions to raise money for the relief effort.

This quilt - now named Woomba Woomba (that being one of the names thought to be the original Aboriginal name for Toowoomba, one of the areas so badly affected and meaning Reeds in the Marsh) is for auction. It measures 31 1/2 inches by 49 12 inches and features both machine quilting and hand embroidery together with Aboriginal designed fabrics. It h as a 4 1/2 inch hanging sleeve

(As ths photo was taken in artificial light in a hurry this morning,the colours are more truly represented by the detailed shots) I will ttry to get a better photo up soon.

This is how it all works.

1. Bidding starts at $75 Australian

2. Place your bid by adding a comment here stating how much you are willing to offer to own Woomba Woomba.. Your bid must be greater than the previous bid.

3. All bids must be in whole dollar increments.

4. The auction is open to all and the price will include postage to any address worldwide.(Although I reserve the right to send by surface to a non-european address depnding on the cost).

5. The auction is now open and closes at midnight on the 24th of January 2011 (Sydney, Australian time).

6. I will contact the winner at the conclusion of the auction. The winner must commit to sending their bid to the Premier’s Flood Relief Appeal and provide an email receipt as evidence of payment. Non-austrailan donors can still donate by credit card using the online payment link or there is also information about how to do an international bank transfer.

7. Once I have evidence of payment Woomba Woomba will be posted to its new owner.

My thanks to Toni Coward for organising this and Brenda Gael Smith for drawing my attention to it with her quilt auction.

Icicles

2010-12-24T09:25:00.000Z

Dennis took some great pictures of the icicles hanging off our guttering by the bedroom window. I thought he had done it merely to show me the icicles because it was dark when I got home. But no - he did it because he thought the lines were interesting for quilting purposes. Got to love that man!

Virtual Christmas presents for you all

2010-12-23T22:38:00.000Z

I can't buy you all a real present but I have been shopping to give you a choice of virtual presents that I would love to buy for you and myself as well! They are all under the tree - pick what you like best!

I am sure I will not be the only one to be fascinated by the really interesting baskets forms here by Joe Hogan

If you need wall art and share my love of African items you too will covet a framed print of these fabulous photos from a trip to Mali here or one of these fabulous portrait shots by Laurent Rappa - this one is my favourite - I think you will see why!
If Africa is not your thing, the food or still life photos of stylist Nan Witney would look great in a kitchen.
Or maybe you prefer patchwork on your wall? Or embroidery on paper from the Missouri Bend Studio?

Maybe you prefer ceramics? Try these Beautiful bowls with marks to inspire stitch by Lidia Serra
These ceramics by Catherine Brennan remind me of the ceramics by Pollie and Garry Utley in that they both appear to have textiles imprinted into the clay.

Or for something in a different media how about an altered book by Raymond Papka?

Maybe you have been shopping too and need a bright bag by Yda Walt - I love her street scenes too: a very fresh approach to an old subject.

I found all these things simply by stumbling on a blog by South African artist Robyn Gordon and reading back a few posts and folliwng a few links. I shall be reading more of her blog that is for sure! And maybe in the future funding a space for one of her carvings.

Happy Christmas

2010-12-23T21:05:00.002Z

Here is an e-card for you all - Happy Chistmas!

Girl maths 3

2010-12-20T23:24:00.000Z

Daine wanted to know my response to Terry's question in her comment on my Girl maths posts. Basically - how does Girl Maths help her get an affordable ipad?

This is the response I emailed direct to Terry:

"Ok it works like this:

"Ipads here cost £429.

"Running across the road is free. But if you run across the road you might get hit by a car. In fact you surely will if you choose a freeway. Which will result in serious injuries and will cost you a small fortune in your mysterious USA insurance co-payments and medication obtained by stealth from Canada.

"So I advise you not to run out into a freeway and you thus save enough to buy an ipad.

"Simple.

"If you need extra money to buy kindle books for it advise all the people who would have brought you flowers in the hospital that they should buy amazon gift vouchers instead. But only for half the cost since it is nice to share."

Cabin fever quilt

2010-12-20T23:21:00.002Z

Last Wednesday I set off of work, hit black ice and crashed Dennis car ( mine was already in the garage). the car required a new wheel and tire. I missed a cyclist by inches. (No I have no idea what he was doing on a bike in that weather either.) I ended up shaken and wrenched my shoulder and back a little with referred aching into my elbow. But no major injuries. I had a couple of days at home, went in on Friday to find all my colleagues were also off with various ailments and the staff had cancelled almost all of the appointments. So I got a slightly early finish and got home just as the snow was starting.

Overnight 8 inches of snow fell. Essential travel only was the official advice. Well, I had a hair appointment and I graded that as essential so Dennis drive me and it was grim then. Not a wise journey. Then the snow froze and we have ice over the roads. My sister spent the whole weekend at the hospital (she is a nurse) because she came off nights on Saturday morning to find she could not get home. An on foot inspection of local roads this morning, the discovery that the grit bin at the top of the estate is empty and the fact that not one of the local taxi firms were running pretty much ruled out getting to work by either car or train.

So, a snow day. It started thus:
I dressed and made fresh blueberry muffins for breakfast and washed up. I made two calls to work to sort the schedules out. I took a call from the builder to say he could not come and so I then put all the furniture in the lounge back where it belonged and took the dust sheets off. I made two onion and rosemary foccacia and washed up.

I received two phone calls from work to deal with specific cases. I made red lentil and chickpea soup and washed up. I marinated the fish for todays tea and - yes you got it- I washed that stuff up too. I looked at the clock. It was only 10.25. Really - what do stay at home childless wives do all day??? Dennis had to stop me baking because we haven't eaten the mocha cake, Christmas cookies and loaf of bread I made yesterday yet. And, I may have mentioned this once or twice, but I don't even have a sewing machine to make the most of this time!

So I was pretty, much pacing the house fired with guilt at being (more or less)healthy but home and with unresolved creativity, when one of my colleagues rang to say that he was only at work because he happens to live right on a gritted bus route, that many other people were not getting in and that he would really rather I didn't even try.He had taken an executive decision that things were not going to get better by tomorrow and he had cancelled my work for then too. Just then a very sturdily shod and somewhat blue looking postman slid down the drive bearing not just Fibre Arts but Studios magazine. Suddenly I felt so much better - permission and reading matter!

Of course I didn't ger very far reading before the inspiration and need to create took over. I cannot machine sew my existing projects but I can fuse ready for when my new machine arrives as and when the van can get here. Then I thought I could maybe hand blanket stitch. And hang it - I might as well hand piece. Which is how this little quilt top came to be almost, but obviously not quite, finished. The red shape is the Adinkire symbol for creativity. I know its not exactly high art but I thought it would be something to stick up on my temporary studio wall. And it will - as all tops do - look better finished and embellished. It is about 26 x 24 inches.

It is only after I emerged from 'down the well' that I realised I had sewed so much my shoulder was bad again. But I still had fun.

Girl maths Part 2

2010-12-19T18:32:00.002Z

This post will make no sense until you read Girl Maths Part One but for those of you who have, could I just apologise - I have made some basic errors in my previous calculations.

Dennis says I can 'magic money'. Since I posted I started to wrap Christmas presents and realised that I had, in error, ordered two of an item from Amazon. The money I get back when I return it less postage? £11.28. So now I am only pence short. And that was when I suddenly realised.

I made a very, very small income from quilting this year. Tiny. But still taxable as self -employed income. Which means I can tax deduct the machine as a cost of my business and set the cost off against not only my quilting income but my other taxable income, which reduces the cost by £199. Before its starts paying for itself.

Oh and I have now found a shop selling it for the same price but with a special offer kit with free feet and extension table (which I always use on my existing machine). £99 worth of stuff for free. And free next day delivery still guaranteed to my area despite weather.

And I paid with my cash back credit card which gives me 1% of the price back.

Forget the coalition. Vote me for Prime Minister. I'll get rid of the deficit in no time.

Girl maths

2010-12-19T16:14:00.001Z

Have you noticed that one of the nice things about quilters is that they are all enablers.
Never once have I heard a quilter say anything like:
'I don't think you need anymore fabric'.
Oh wait. No thats not true. Actually I have heard that. But it was always followed seamlessly by 'But you have to get that anyway because it is so beautiful/cheap/perfect/in existence.'

So, I suppose I knew full well what you would say when I asked about buying a new spare machine in my last post. I kind of knew what my husband would say too although the thing with Dennis is that although I know what he is trying to get at, I never quite know how he is going to get at it.

After spending an hour or so with pen and paper making charts about what features were different on a range of machines roughly in the right price range, I had narrowed it down to two choices. The Janome DXL 603 for £369 or the Janome QXL 605 which is exactly the same machine only it has an automatic thread cutter and costs £499. I sit Dennis down. I show him the list of features and explain which ones are important to me. I am mid way through when he says ( and I am not making this up),
"Awhh!" in that way you do when you see something you feel terribly sorry for.
"What?"
"A dog with seven feet. Awwh!"
"Huh?"
"Oh no. I read it wrong. A seven point feed dog. Is that different?"

We get over that and I explain how I am asking him to help me make one simple decsion - do I spend £130 on an automatic thread cutter?
Simple in my head anyway. Eventually he manages to explain the cause of his confusion. Neither of the machines I am showing him are labelled £130. So what I'm really asking is whether I should spend nigh on £500 but somehow the question he has to approve is only about £130?

Oh yes. Girl maths in action.

And I can do Advanced Girl Maths too.
If I take the post tax profits (all sitting waiting in my account for a good purpose) from
(a) the quilt I sold
(b) the second Lark advance for our Twelve by Twelve book
(c) my profits from kits for the African Fabric Shop for the last quarter
I am £11.41 short.
So, if Dennis gives me that just because he loves me and to stop me making him sit and look at pictures of identical machines, the machine does not really cost me cash so much as I bartered for it by doing things I need a machine for and therefore the machine is self funding, and therefore free, no?

And if you want to go onto Degree Level Girl Maths, if I have a machine I can complete the quilt which I intend to sell as a magazine pattern which means that the machine is actually not free but comes with a cash back.

I do believe that Christmas is a time for miracles.

Help! Emergency!

2010-12-18T22:28:00.000Z

I set aside the whole of this weekend for working on my Aboriginal fabric quilt and my Twelve by Twelve quilt and look! Kaput sewing machine.

Help me!

Originaly it said itwas an E1 error and the service man (who came out to the house very quickly) rang someone in London who said they thought E1 went a small fuse had blown. An easy fix. But he came and it was not that. And when I got home to the bad news it was showing an E3 error. The Service man is awaiting someone helpful from Janome to ring him.

I decided to give the Janome centre near where I live a call as well. They do not know what an E1 error is either. As the manual tells you to ring the service centre in the event of an E1 error this is not good! Particularly as the error seems to be growing! Plus, there is all that time off over Christmas and New Year when I planned to sew.....

Which brings me to shopping. Well, you knew it would didn't you?!

I think I may be the only serious quilter I know who only has one machine. In fact I have only ever had two in my life. When I thought I might try quilting I bought a Toyota for £99 from an advert. Big mistake. Useless thing. It went back within weeks, which of course is all the time you need to get hooked and I upgraded to the Janome Memorycraft 6600 whch I love.

So, shall I now get a new one? I think most people who have more than one have them because they upgraded and kept the old ones rather than buying a new one with less features on than their main one. But, given our refurbishment costs at the moment I am not in the market for a bigger better machine. I am assuming the old one is mendable and am wondering whether to get a smaller one for times just as this. Just as I keep a spare hairdryer because, if and when the one I use all the time blows up, it is going to do so when I have wet hair and am about to go out. Some time ago I sold a quilt and used some of the profit to buy an embellisher. I held back the remaining profit for something significant and special. Maybe this is what it is for!

So - help me. Either pop around with a spare machine for me to borrow or, leave me a comment to help me make up my mind, would you? Should I be patient and do hand work for a while or should get a new second one asap so I can sew over the holidays? I can stillget next day delivery before Christmas if I order very soon and it doesn't snow too much more. Tell me, If you have more than one do you use them all and if so when do you use which ones? Do any of you have a Janome Jem Platinum 760?

Munich Part 2

2010-12-16T09:20:00.000Z

There was a stark contrast during our trip to Munich. First, Dachau memorial park, site of the nazi conceptration camp. It is in easy 10 min train and short connecting bus ride from the city. I actually went when I was interrailing when I was 17 but Dennis had never been and we are both firm believers that everyone should take time to visit places like this. It is of course grim, although in many ways less immediately affecting than Auschwitz - possibly becuase less remains standing.

This part of the memorial sculpture is the only colour around.

And then back to the tinselly glitter of the Christmas markets.

Did you notice that I learned a new skill in Picassa? Amd I overdoing my collages? It is is much quicker that postng all the photos individually.

So what else from Munich? Not a lot. Terry commented on my packing dilemma post that she never swam in hotels and would I really go swimming? Oh yes. If there is a free spa quality pool I am in it as often as possible. And I love it when I get to be there alone. And this one was amazing. It was less pool more swimming cave. You need to use your imagination for this because for obvious (wet) reasons I have no photos.

You enter the pool down wide water covered steps. All the walls in this area are covered with either small black mosaic tiles or large deep grey stone. The wall to your right is straight and as you get to the bottom of the steps there is a cut out arch in that very high wall but the arch is only about a foot and a half above the water. Just enough to swim under. That leads you to a rectangular area in which there is a button operated set of jets, an on demand waterfall and a small thin window that lets you see out to reception ad lets in the only natural leight into this stone vault. In the pool the window is normal height but in reception it is almost floor level and unobtrustive. If you swim back out under the arch so the steps are to your left the room is thens shaped as a curved corridor sweeping round to the right to an oval area behind the steps - think tadople shaped. The tail of the tadpole is the corridor you swim down - wall to wall water and the only lights are green underwater lights so it is like a cave. In the oval room are verticle jacuzzi jets set in plates on the floor. Every time you move past the steps from one area to the other you catch a glimpse of burning church candles out to the reception area. It was all somewhere between womb like and surreal but very relaxing. Then there was the sauna and steam rooms - nude areas. And no I didn't. Interestingly no women I saw did go without costumes, but lots of men did. Go read into that what you will!

Renovation thrift

2010-12-16T03:00:00.000Z

Lest you think that owning (and incessantly ranting on and on about) my beautiful and cool tap makes me a spend thrift let me show you this:

The extractor fan I fell in love with. Cost £1500. Stupid money. But it was beautiful and cool.... and only suitable for a hob on an island which we decided not to have.

The lampshade I did buy for over the island. Cost. £34.95

Oh and the dressing room is now wall papered and awaiting an injection of colour via textiles.

Munich Part 1

2010-12-15T23:37:00.001Z

First to the Sofitel. Swish 'junior suite' sourced at bargain pay-in-advance-heavily-reduced price. Which is blog code for 'staying way above my station in life and can't bring myself to part with 28 euros each for the breakfast so bought in goodies from the delicious station bakery each day instead.'

Its extremely handy location next to the main train station means views are mostly of the facing buildings or, on our side of the building, of the station tracks. But there is no noise. Unless Someone Else likes to play with all the switches they don't understand and accidentally and unwittingly opens an electrically operated window high, high up over the bed and freezes their wife's feet off when all she is trying to do is have a little relax downstairs. Then you get a little of the station announcements. And of course when you learn all the switches Someone Else can play with the in built electric blinds to his hearts content - up,down,up, down, until it snows and then there is kind of no point. Because then the view of the choo-choos becomes this.

From this you can deduce that it was Cold in Munich.

And the girl is not keen on Cold.

But she can be cheered up with street food.

Note bene: two coats, two scarves. Both worn.

And she can be cheered up even more with not one but two visits to a quilt shop especially when the second is at Someone Else (Who Has An Atonement To Make)'s suggestion for the purpose of a present being bought.

The shop Quilts und TextilKunst is on Sebastietnplatz whch is not on any of the tourist maps we had but is very easy to find because it is between the Viktuelenmarkt ( the fanous and central food market) and the Jewish museum at JakobsPlatz. It has some nice cafes very near by and a pottery painting shop opposite. Like all European shops it is expensive for fabric compared with at home so the bag contains two German magazines and one 'Becuase-I-Had-To' FQ which, for the rest of the day proved extremely useful to wrap around my right ankle to stop my new snow boots chaffing my leg to bits.

At the back of the shop is a small exhibition area and there was to be found A Slice of Quilt Art by the QuiltArt group. The present the next day was the catalogue from that and the QuiltArt 25 show also.

Packing heavy

2010-12-10T10:21:00.000Z

Pam, Ace House Cleaner and Queen of Finding Missing Things knows me too well. This morning when she arrived for work I was bemoaning the fact that people go for a weekend away with a small carry on case and my packing so far for a two hour flight and three nights in Munich involves a suitcase, a cabin sized suitcase and a handbag sized back pack. (And that's just my stuff. Dennis says he can't choose what to take until he sees how much luggage is left for him.)
"How do they do it?" I asked Pam "Why can't I do it?"
"It's all the quilts." she said.

Huh. All the quilts is an exaggeration. But it is true that the cabin bag houses a sizeable hand quilting project and a box of threads. Well, I have time at the airport and on the plane and after dinner (because we are notoriously early eaters on holiday)...... But even if I take that out there is still the matter of the suitcase. I have pared to the minimum but clearly I need help. Which is why God invented Blog Readers.

I was about to ask you this:

Which of the following shall I take out?
Long, smart coat and short, casual coat
Two hats and two scarves - one to match each coat
Snow boots because snow is forecast
Trainers because a day without snow is forecast
Decent shoes to wear to restaurants
Three pairs of jeans (bear in mind one or more pairs might get wet in snow/sleet/rain )
One pair evening trousers
One glitzyish jumper for nice meals in evening
One big polar neck thick sweater
Two different sets of three thin sweaters to be worn in conjunction to create two warm outfits that can be peeled off when I go from colds markets to hot cafes/ shops. A trick I learned in Kyoto
Swimming costume for hotel pool
One book, three magazines
Washbag
Camera

I will cop to the fact that a pair of jeans could be sacrificed. But really - is that one pair going to make a difference?!

But then, I was driving to work pondering which part of this made me abormal and when I arrived I had a an email from a dear friend telling me that she had gone to Starbucks for a couple of hours and had packed
2 Quilting Arts magazines
sketchbook
list notebook
new book on collage
new book about marriage
laptop for online shopping

That email made me happy.
These people who carry on a small bag..... Shame. So abnormal. They must really struggle with that.

I might add another scarf. just for variety.

Quilts

2010-12-09T13:17:00.001Z

Remember when I used to write about quilts and not just my house? Well, I finally finished my 'South Island of New Zealand Quilt'. Note the 'put the quilt on the floor and stand on the sofa' slapdash photography technique.

I chose the word fabric as my starter in the shop at Picton because the various words so summed up the relaxing time I was experiencing. the other fabrics were all bought on my shopping trips in South Island.

Then, on a roll, I actually started one to play with my Aboriginal fabrics which came with me from Australia ( never!) and some batiks from PIQF. Packing boxes turn out to be a good place to set blocks out. I started with something simple and quick for my own play satisfaction and so it will work as a magazine pattern. But I have ideas for later faux complications.

I am also working on some hand stitching of a quilt I started with Lisa Walton in her Crystalisation class at Midsomer Quilting in September and which ( becuase I am a rebel) looks nothing like her class samples. I shall show the full thing when finished. Here is a teaser.

This is my TV sewing. So relaxing. No precision required whatsoever.

Answering your kitchen questions

2010-12-09T07:48:00.000Z

I have never quite worked out the ettiquette for answering people's questions posed in a blog comment. I mean, I always email the person direct with the answer - that much is obvious. But, on the assumption anyone reading the comment might want know the answer do you answer with a comment - which people probably won't go back to read, or with a new post? I am playing safe and going for all three!

So, thank you all for your kitchen compliments.
The cabinets are Burford Cream Gloss from Howdens which is a trade only place. Do not believe the catalogue price. Thye routinely give about 70% off to your tradesman. Which aas well as noone would pay the catalogue prices which is clearly inflated so your tradesman can say he got you a big discount. And they don't sell direct anyway so who are those prices for? We then accidentally decided on a new kitchen when the sale was on too and didn't even know until the builder suggested we complete the order before the end of the month and store it in the garage to save money.

For the ignorant yank ( self titled but surely not!) who asked about the round thing embedded in the island:

A pop up socket so I can plug in hand mixers, blenders etc at my baking island. It actually has three sockets if you pull it up enough.

And Terry, the black sink is 'composite'. Whatever that is.

And Kristin, I am delighted you like the 'wood' countertops. because they are not wood. I wanted granite becuase it is shiny ( and beautiful and cool). But noone would sell it to me. Seriously. all the many kitchen shops went to told me it was overpriced, showed me how its scratches like mad and warned me off it in no uncertain terms. So then I decided on wood block. They would sell me that but warned that you need to care for it and oil it like a cricket bat. Dennis knows excactly how low my tendency is for oilng wooden thngs and banned it. So we got laminate because everyone said it looked fine, was easy care and was priced so you can change it every couple of years without blinking if you want to change the look of the kitchen. I balked because I remembered my mother's 1970's laminate but it has changed a lot since then.

Help! Fire!

2010-12-08T23:24:00.000Z

I do have an inner arsonist in me, it is true. I mean who can resist putting paper napkin pieces into the candle flame in a restaurant? But I truly did not mean to set the country lane behind us on fire. Or to grow scary triffid like things in the garden.

This is what happens when you have no idea how to use the non-point and shoot functions on your camera but have some vague idea that increasing exposure time might enable you to take a picture of snow in the dark before you go to work. And when you don't bother with a tripod.

Kitchen progress

2010-12-08T22:51:00.002Z

First - any idea what this is?

Or indeed, this?

Yup. One beautiful and cool and (halleluja) working tap.

For some reason you all showed interest in my kitchen so I thought I'd give you an update. (Boy are you going to regret that interest - there is a whole house to go yet!
Thanks to the builder falling off someone elses roof,** the kitchen is stil missing vital components like a floor and a windowsill and textiles and butternut squash*. But thanks to said builder orgainsing subcontractor joiners from his hospital bed, it is functional and I have been enjoying using it.I love the island.

Here are some photos.

I love my pull out thingies too - there are others hidden around the place. This hidden bin was a last minute addition. It is where the radiator should have been. Only the electrcian suggested a plinth heater whch was a stroke of genuis. Assuming when it is connected it works. It will of course all look much better when decorated. And the careful measuring to ensure the island fitted in and all the doors still opened was time well spent as it all works a treat. The island has three drawers on the sink side and is my baking station.

Of course when moving in we had to decide where everythng went. I like to think my decisions were logical. And Dennis was right there when everythng was put away.
So, can he put things back where they belong? No, he cannot. So, when looking for the missing item I have to consider where his brain might have put it. The tea strainer was not in its drawer tonight. That would be the drawer nearest the kettle and the mugs. The one with the teaspoons also in it. The one beneath the teapot. I eventually found it and kindly, wthout even the hint of an irritated hissy fit, wrapped my request that he please put things back where they belong, by presenting him with a ready made excuse. "I found it in the baking station. I can understand that it looks like a sieve so you put it with the flour sieves in the baking drawer, but it isn't a sieve its a tea strainer and I only used it that once to dust incing sugar on your mince pies becuase we hadn't unpacked the icing sugar shaker, so it goes with the tea making equipment. But at least you had some logic to where you put it."
He looks amazed.
"Thats not true but is really complimentary. I'd never be able to think all that."

* Dennis spotted a receipe for butternut squash and wensleydale risotto and requested it for our first meal cooked on a hob in weeks. So off we went to the supermarket to do a two trolley shop having not had any cupboards to store food in for weeks. Did we remember to buy a squash? No we did not. Does it work if you substitute a pumpkin? No it does not. Well, it might if said pumpkin was not one you bought in September and just rediscovered when moving into your new kitchen. However, I can confirm that frozen peas and corn go well with cheese in a risotto!

** The builder is fine but has a badly broken foot now in a cast and attached to his leg with metal plates. He says he can put screws in straighter than the surgeon can. He is anxious to return to work and plans to come in his wheel chair to supervise his team, but not until later this week as his cousin has died and the funeral is soon. I have told hin to stay away until the third of his'things happen in threes' is over.

Parting ways with City and Guilds

2010-11-28T22:24:00.000Z

You may recall that I have been doing the City and Guilds in Embroidery with Stitchbusiness. Of course having a house with a kitchen that looked like this, to say nothing of the other rooms which need attention, meant that I became more than a little sidetracked.

So, before the distance learner weekend last weekend, I took a new notebook and filled several pages with all the tasks I needed to do before I finished up the course. None of which seemed related to the other list in my journal of all the ideas I wanted to work up - ideas I was excited about but didn't have time to do because of the C&G tasks I had to devote time to. I had noticed the textile content of this blog declining in direct proportion to the time I had to do non C&G projects. And, more privately I had noticed that my brain was not spontanously producing ideas at odd times of the day. It was full to the top with to do lists.

So, as I drove to Durham, a little dialogue began in the back of my mind between Me and I as to whether I should continue or not. Was it 'feckless' not to finish? Was it a waste of money? Or a mature well thought out decision?

Now, one of the tasks which I had actually done was to do some edge samples. Mine is an A4 piece of fabric demonstrating various ways of doing it. It passed the requirements but it is not exactly a wonderful textile work. When I did it I had to do a sample so I did, but nothing I was working on for myself at the time required edging like that and so it was a 'bare minimum' sample.

I sat down in class and there in front of me was this most beautiful sketchbook stuffed with painted pages, edging pictures, notes, examples. Bulging. Hours and hours worth of work. I loved to see it. But there is no way on God's earth I either can, nor want, to devote that much effort to a book like that. And I am not required to to pass. But it kind of prompted me to really think about what I needed in my life right now to improve my abilties and to inspire me. I decided that I did not need samples and I did not need to work to a syllabus that didn't co-incide with the creativity welling inside me.

Dennis had come up for the weekend and so when we met for lunch I talked to him. Amongst other supportive and insightful comments which - I admit to my surprise - did not include encouraging me to finish - he suggested I should go and talk to an artist he had discovered working in Durham Cathedral bookshop. So I went up there and she was expecting me and allowed me to sit with her and chat whilst looking at her portfolio. Her name is Judy Hurst and she says her website is badly out of date but you will get a good idea of her work there anyway.

She had no idea what I was thinking about but said several things which confirmed my thoughts. In particular I commented that she really knew who she was in her art. She smiled and said, 'I've spent a lot of time learning who I am not'.

She also asked me about my work and what it was about in a way which forced me to really think about why I made textile works and what direction I wanted to go.

I thought that Stitchbusiness taught the City and Guilds course really well. And I learned a lot. I did it because I wanted to learn more about modern embroidery and to add that element into my quilts. I have learned that.

But I have also learned that I am not someone who needs to makes samples to prove to someone else that I know how a technique works. If I read a book about edges, I know how to do it and when a work requires that finish, I shall go back and do it - with a sample related to the piece if needed. But samples in abstraction - not my way of learning.

I learned that I want to learn. I am excited to learn. But I need to follow my nose down an independant line of enquiry and see where I go with it, far more than I need to follow a structured syllabus. I have learned that I want to do things well and that doing the bare minimum when I would like to do better does not satisfy me. Particularly when it prevents me form doing a task I could do well.

I have learned good design processes and have loved to see the sketchbooks and final pieces of others but the works that are inside me wanting to get out are not going to fit into the requirements of the City and Guilds final projects. I will no doubt work with sketchbooks, but as the muse leads me, not as the City and Guilds verification woman requires.

I have learned that I am not interested in decorative for decorative sake. I like to work with meaning (even if it is only obvious to me) or a aprticular purpose, or I am not engaged enough. I like concepts and connections.

I concluded that whilst I am still moving towards finding my own distintcive 'voice' and and still learning techniques to enable me to achieve what is in my head, the course was no longer sustaining me. It was stifling my creativity. I had found that the wellspring of fresh ideas had dried up in the face of a long list of course requirements.

So, at the end of the day I announced that I was going to cease my particpation. The tutors Julia and Tracy were very understanding and not at all suprised. And as soon as I made the decision all the ideas came flooding back. I felt excited about art quilting again. I felt like a lot of heavy long hair had been cut off me. And the ideas are involving a lot more embroidery than they would have done had I not done the course. I dodn't regret starting it at all. I got from it what I needed. but now I am done.

So, I now have some projects I am excited about which I shall embark on over the next few months. I am also going to allow myself to play. And I hope that means I shall have more work to show you.

And yes the photo of the kitchen was a pathetic attempt to get a picture into this rather non-visual post! And it looks better now.But that is another post....

Kuba cloth

2010-11-28T21:06:00.000Z

For some time I have been occasionally looking round for a kuba cloth because I love the morphing patterns which characterise these cut pile raffia works from the Congo. Most of what I saw were either tattered, way out of my price range or bad examples of the 'morphing'.

So imagine my delight when I am standing inside Magie's African Fabric Shop at the Knitting and Stitch Show and spotted, folded up in a basket under her counter, all by itself: this

Mine. All mine!

And better: not only was it very much in my price range but in fact it was almost exactly what I earned in the last quarter from designing kits for Magie. Clearly it was meant to be mine, all mine....

Kitchen progress

2010-11-18T21:50:00.000Z

Last Friday the kitchen looked like this:

Today (the following Thursday it looks like this:

Can you spot the difference?
No. Me neither.
This is sadly because, after the sink was removed on friday the builder went home and then on Saturday fell off a roof. Thankfully he was not killed or paralysed but he has badly broken his foot and has been in hospital having it pinned. So our cooking water system now consists of an old orange squash bottle that gets taken up and down for refilling from the bath everytime we go upstairs.
The builder has been gamely sending messages of apology from his sick bed and has now arranged for a subcontractor he trusts to finish the units although to ensure a good job he wants to do the tiling and finish himself. Eventually.

Dressing room

2010-11-10T22:50:00.000Z

The green shoots of revovery from our 'destroy to create' stage of house renovation arrived yesterday in the form of Nolte wardrobes for my dressing room (AKA appropriated fourth bedroom.) The first item to come into the house rather than be taken out ( bar the fire which is in but not connected!) Hard to photograph the whole room but you get the idea.

Originally I was thinking of adding this chair but realised that it would fit into the room but would encroach too much on the space in the centre which I wish to use for yoga. So now I am thinking about this piece from MultiYork

What do you think? This is the size of the chaise recreated with shoe boxes and ironing board - too big? Just right? There is certainly still space to put my yoga mat down in front of the double mirrored door.

It goes without saying that the nasty inherited curtains and yellow walls will soon disappear and the foorboards will be carpeted.

Eight days in

2010-11-10T22:34:00.000Z

On the eighth working day of kitchen renovation what do we have?

An attractive (and noisy) dehumidfier drying out the newly plastered walls. In eight days we have had the kitche rewired - including removing the wire which was discovered finished off with a pieces of elastoplast wrapped around the end of it! - the walls and ceilings replastered to make them straight and smooth. Coving put in, exposed pipes in the kitchen and dining room and lounge embedded into the wall and new radiators installed in downstairs living rooms.

The only dramas have been the plumber hitting a wire by accident and causing all the elecriticty to fail and the builder and electrican behaving like two stags fighting for territory and having a major row about the placing of sockets and plugs behind the dishwasher. The builder won becuase he is 'the gaffer'. But now the builder ( who is about 5 foot seven) is scared to talk to the electrician (who is six foot eight) and so I have to trot out my mediatior skills. There is dust everywhere. We are told another week will do it.....

Kitchen fabric

2010-11-10T22:26:00.000Z

When the kitchen came out three pieces of exposed plaster were revealed.

Too tempting. So I set to with Markal Paintstiks and some of my own handdye that had come out at acceptable but uninteresting levels of colour. I only have a few Paintstiks which have hardly been used but now - metalic Paintstiks rock!

Here are detail shots of a few pieces. I soon discovered that more is more - layering up colours gave much better results than using one single Painstiks.

By the way for the non-quiters who read my blog ( yes oddly there are some!) I am not misspeling Paintsiks - it is a brand name for oil pastels which can be heat set with an iron onto fabric. They are the same as the oil sticks used back wne stencilling all over your house walls was trendy, except maybe a little softer to use. How do I know? Because the gold you see below was a decorating product left over from those Jocasta Innes paint effect Eighties days! I hasten to say I never did use it on any house walls.

Anyway - here is some of my fabric:

Wax prints

2010-11-05T14:58:00.000Z

May I commend to you a new book.

Written by Magie Relph and Robert Irwin (aka Saturday Boy) of my beloved African Fabric shop it was wonderful photos of African street life in it - of ocurse with the women wearing the eponymous African Wax Prints. The books is half an accessible history of the fabrics and half a gallery. The Gallery has full page photos of quilts made with wax prints - not always easiest for people to imagine how to use. So if you are already into them this is eye candy. If you are unsure about them this is educational eye candy. Plus the book comes wrapped in a pieces of vintage wax print so you can get all fired up and start right away. How cool is that?

Oh and my Guguletu quilt ( which is available as a kit here) is featured.

The book costs £16.15 plus P&p with the fabric or if for some strange, unfathomable reason you don't want fabric you can have a naked version for £13.95 Plus P&P. Order here.

Quilty kitchen (sort of)

2010-11-04T17:05:00.000Z

The kitchen is going in!
Well, more precisely, at the moment the kitchen is coming out, but let's be optimistic about this.
Dennis has been tasked with taking the photos in progress in between acting as the electrician's apprentice. I arrived home to be told, "I took a quilty photo for you today" :

And you know, he is right. It instantly reminded me of the long lengths of cloth screen printed by Clare Benn - you can see some of her stuff here.

In a minute I am going to look around my current kitchen....

.... to see if I can find Markal Paintskix. Which are in the current kitchen becuase they were in a box in the garage which in 2 1/2 years will be my wet studio but had to come out because the new kitchen is being stored in the garage... oh you get the idea. Anyway, how can anyone with Painstix in their possession resist this exposed plaster work?

The electrican suggested some extra embellishment today- an idea he got from some comedian on TV last night. He suggested that on the basis that eventually someone else will move into the house and decorate, even if in many years to come, we should get some vivid red paint and scrawl on the plaster, "I will kill again."

Finally one last inspiration for those of you (Rayna et al) who like lines to work with:

Fabric finds

2010-11-03T20:03:00.000Z

On the whole I was not as tempted by fabric at PIQF as I thought I would be - I genuinely think the shopping at Festival of Quilts is much better. But of course there are exceptions to every rule. I did get some 'standards' - batiks, handdyes etc as the price works out a little cheaper in the US and well, a show without shopping is not much fun.

But the real finds were the pices of Art cloth by a group of three women called Women of Cloth whom I discovered last time we were in the US as Louise Smith sells some of her cloth through Fabrications in Healdsburg.

This piece is scarf length as I could not bear to buy the smaller piece for fear I would ruin it. This way I will probably just wear it. I love the moon like images. I think this one is by Judy Bianchi but I have removed the lable and and not sure.

This one - by Louise Smith will get cut up and used I think with some metallic painted cloth I also bought. I Plan to use these colours in the house at some point so maybe a wall quilt will ensue. Or a cushion. It would be fun to hide the individual circles in pieces all roun dthe house as a recurring theme. Kind of 'Where's Wally ?'for quilters!

This piece is not Women of Cloth but from a stall run by two Indian women and is a FQ of hand dyed batik and has a seersucker like texture

And finally this one - again Women of Cloth. I plan just to frame this one - again for fear of ruining it. And, as my hope is to fill our home with small works of art from the individual artists I must surely include some art cloth in that.

Dennis was shown it and I crossed my fingers hoping he would see it as Art and not just More Fabric. he squinted at it. "You could see it as Japanese writing. Or a town map. Or you could just say it was pretty. Indeed.

Missing in action

2010-10-31T21:05:00.000Z

I see that this month I have managed to post on the first and last day of the month only. Pathetic. In my defence the middle of the month was spent doing quilty things in California.

First I went with Diane to quilt retreat at Bishop's Ranch In Healdsburgh. beautiful views, scorching weather and a shady verandah from which to enjoy both...

and good sewing facilities which we put to good use from breakfast to bed time from Sunday evening to Thursday lunch time. It was wonderful to spend so much time immersed in quilting and with so many people who understood the compulsion and wanted to do the same. And lest anyone still thinks that quilters are prim, grey haired ladies.... we had a laptop on which to watch the rescue of the Chilean miners and you should have heard the ribald comments from the Quilters who were rating them on looks and sex appeal as they came up. I was shocked.

Well no not really. After all this quilt was made by Diane for the retreat challeneg a couple of years ago, so I was forwarned.

After retreat I was able to spend an afternoon shopping and eating icecream sundae in Healdsburg and then we went to stay at Diane's parents in Los Altos so we could visit Pacific International Quilt festival. I enjoyed the time at the show and I really loved that, although I was so far from home, I kept bumping into people I knew, thanks to having met so many people at Ranch.

But the highlight was when I turned around and there was Annie Smith of Quilting Stash Podcast fame.

Squealies were emitted! And the real highlight?

She interviewed Diane and I for the podcast - its not up on the site yet but you can be sure I'll let you know when it is. Unless I sound as bad as I fear...!

Annie has a new book out and I was able to get an autographed pre-release copy.

When I was in San Fransisco last year I had a wonderful solo afternoon when I cycled, in glorious sunshine, over the Golden Gate Bridge. I passed and popped into, but did not stay to sit in, a cafe called the Warming Hut which sits in the lee of the Bridge. Later, I wished I had not been so concered about possibly being late to meet Dennis off the Sausalito Ferry and that I had lingered a while.The Warming Hut became a kind of symbol of that lovely trip and I incesantly requested to return with Diane. She later confessed than from the name she thought I was obsessing about some three sided walkers shack - but no. It's a proper beach side cafe and gift/ book shop. We lingered there for hours, dodging the rain showers, reading, eating and taking pictures, It was such a treat not only to be back there but to be there with someone else who appreciates sitting with a pile of quilt and cookbooks, just hanging out.

The next day and a half I had to myself in San Fransisco and put another regret to bed by visiting the Cheescake Factory up on the roof of Macy's over Union Square.

I did a lot of cookshop browsing and purchasing. Although Dennis e-vetoed this kettle.

What do you think? Did I have a momentary lapse of taste or shall I berate Dennis endlessly for making me leave it behind? In any event I made up for it elsewhere. Why oh why, do we not have Williams- Somoma in the UK? Their Danish filled pancake pan ended up in my suitcase amongst a host of other gadgety things.
Coming back through Schipol airport I found the duty free selling bulbs for a tulip strain named 'Happiness'.
What a suitable final purchase!

The lights in my tap

2010-10-01T20:43:00.000+01:00

Remember my tap and how puzzled we were about the reason for the lights?
I emailed Franke Customer service and got this response:

Thank you for your email, the lights are purely a decorative feature, to make it look cool and beautiful.

Kind regards
Customer Service
Franke UK Limited

So now we know!

Computer virus warning

2010-09-30T23:10:00.000+01:00

I have just had to restore my laptop to factory settings with all the attendant hassle that entails because of something nasty that arrived on my computer which Mc Afee failed to pick up. So here is advanced warning for you:

There is a legitimate programme called Microsoft Securities which is an anti virus check. However, there is also a fake version of this circulating which looks very convincing unless you know the real programme.

Yesterday I do remember getting one of those annoying pop up adverts telling me I had won a Mini Cooper, which I closed without actually clicking on any of their buy now buttons, assuming it was fake. But I think that is where the infection came from.

When I logged on to the laptop today I got a warning screen from 'Microsoft Securities' saying that a Trojian horse had been downloaded and I needed to scan to clear it off. Now, I was surprised at this becuase I had not been aware that I had Microsoft Securities. But this was before I researched and found it to be a programme you buy and, it being supposedly Microsoft, and my laptop having come with all kinds of stuff I didn't always take much note of, I can see how it would be plausible. In any event suspicious or not I could not get further into my computer without clicking on scan now.

When you do that it gives a list of about 30 antivirus programmes which are purportedly checking for a solution. On the results page many come up as having nothing. Five do and you are invited to free install them. Alarm bells rang everywhere at this point becuase (a) Mc Afee, which I do have, was said not to have a solution. (b) it is unilkely that all the ones who do are free and (c) one of the the free ones is called Red Cross and there is no way the humanitarian organaistion would allow a software company to be using their name. So I went no further.

My research showed that the offered programmes are of course fakes themselves and are damaging. I did manage to get Mc Afee to scan my whole computer but it did not show up the fake Mc Afree Securities even though by then I had researched it on Den's laptop and had found out what was going on.

But even though I didn't download anything it killed my computer and I had to recover it back to factory settings.

So learn a lesson or two from me:

1. Don't fall for this scam.

2. Then, before you get attacked, go and back up your computer to an external drive now. I have done that but not since we moved so some photos have gone but nothing major thank goodness..... and some photos are on the blog anyway, but not all my Festival of Quilts ones! (And there was an hour or two of desperately trying to remember where we had unpacked the hard drive to!)

3. Then back up frequently.

4. Ensure your McAfee or Norton or similar is up to date.

5. Buy a storage box and dedicate it to your recovery discs and discs of bought computer programmes so you can put them all back on again speedily.

6. Go on line now and search the website of your computer's manufacturer for instructions on how to recover your computer to factory settings and print it out - unless you are sure you will have access to an unaffected laptop to look it up when you come to need it.

7. And, if you ever think there is a chance you have been compromised, go and change all your online banking passwords at once as an added security.

Then reflect that, actually, its quite nice to have a computer free of all the junk that ends up on them after a while!

Interactive kitchen

2010-09-29T23:02:00.001+01:00

Wow! thank you all so much for your response so far to my kitchen advice plea. It is all very useful indeed.

Just one more question. Dennis made the mistake of leaving half way through our joint internet shopping session tonight to go and watch football. that was fine by me - I am happy to do the research and then report back with options. But he has to be aware that if he leaves me and I fall in love in his absence, all his budgetary caution shall be scattered to the wind.

I found THE tap.* Just the one I was searching for. Silly price but I am in love.

I was searching for a handsome tap with a sleek pull out hose with a rounded control that was centrally placed and which swivelled and had a good sense of humour and was non-smoking - harder than you think. This Franke one was one of three that fit the bill but - oh be still my beating heart - it is black. So it's all matchy-matchy with the black sink and black microwave and black extractor and... you get the idea! I like matching and I didn't even know you could get black taps.

So on colour alone it was a must buy.

But - and here is where I need your help again. It has an added feature, as you can see in the picture of the steel version below. LED lights in the spray. Now this is surely extremely cool and, as I assume Swiss precsion means this is achieved without the risk of electrocution, amazingly clever.

But why on earth do I need LED lights in my tap spray?

* I know, this used to be a quilt blog. Give me time and I promise quilt show photos from the US.

Pulling your weight

2010-09-28T19:49:00.001+01:00

At midnight last night, as I found myself, in my PJ's measuring packets of cornflakes and quaker oats with a builders tape measure I came to a conclusion. I have had many emails and blog comments saying how much you are looking forward to seeing our house develop and how much fun it will be to watch the process. Which is great. Because I am having great fun too and I am all for sharing the joy. But you know, along with the fun goes the work and, well, you might all be having vicarious fun but I don't see any of you measuring the circumference of a tin of beans for me, do I? So I decided that I shall tap into my reader resource a bit more.

Tell me a good and a bad thing about your kitchen. Or more if you like. What do you love - be it an applicance, a colour, a fancy gadget for turning tomatoes into swans - whatever. What would you not be without that you use all the time? What makes you happy about your kitchen? And what don't you like? What little thing niggles and annoys you. What would you change if you could or what mistake did you make when you fitted your kitchen? Or maybe tell me what amazing thing you saw in a shop that you would love to have in your kitchen. That way I can ammass all your wisdom and apply it to maximise good design and minimise regrets.

And in return? Well I shall keep amusing you with tales like how the electrician came back today. And told us that the metal lights in the bathroom - you know, that room with all the steam and water in - no earth wire. Oh, and the shower is illegal. And you know how he was in the house to do the extra sockets in the dressing room becuase the fitted wardrobes are coming soon because all my clothes on the temporary rail fell on my head.... We do realise that if we fit them he will have to unfit them to do the electrics for the kitchen below? Hence why the kitchen gets done soon. And while he was at it he told us that to rewire all our exceedingly dodgy sockets and lighting fixtures he needs to take the flooring of the upstairs out and really we need to move out of the usptairs for three days.

Problem? Not at all. I am going to give a key to the electrician and move out to California. And when I come back I will not longer have to wonder whether naked flame candles are a more or less risky alternative to my light switches..

Oh and in case, you were wondering about the cereal packet measuring. I was almost asleep when it occurred to me that if we got said electrican to move a light switch then, instead of leaving a small gap between a wall and a run of cabinetry in the kitchen ( to allow us to get our hands down the side of the cabinets to get to the switch) as the planner had suggested, then, as long as I change the radiator at the other end of the run to one 10 mm narrower we could swap the 300mm pull out larder to a 500mm. Was it worth the effort Dennis asked. Would we get all that much more in or would we just have usless space around what we would put in the 300mm cupboard? Don't really know. Turns out the answer is about 55 packets of Quaker Oats.

Accident

2010-09-26T22:53:00.000+01:00

It was an accident. I swear on my fabric stash it was.

You see, everything is temporary in our house at the moment and that includes the shade on my bedside lamp. It is slightly too big but it does a good job of temporarily replacing the one that got broken in the packing. Only, it being slightly too big, when I caught it with my hand as I tried to put the light out, it slipped and overbalanced the lamp base. Which toppled onto the water carafe, which poured its contents over the radio alarm clock.

Now I did scoop it up quickly, but the first dribbles seem to have seeped into the base. And caused the radio to come on. Which ought to be a good sign of me not having drowned the thing. Save that it was on even though it was turned off. And would not turn off, whatever buttons I pressed. Radio 4, on and on and on. (Dennis likes us to wake to the Today Programme. For myself, I would choose something more serene or upbeat. But I will give you that having to listen to John Humphries interupting and hectoring a politician who is intent on ignoring both question and reality in their desperate attempt to convince me of the sense of whatever inane policy they dreamt up overnight does get me up quickly. Newshound Dennis manages to snooze serenely through the first twenty minutes or so of the baracking and slimey avoidance). Of course, the radio turned off when I did the electrical equivalent of smacking its bottom for tantruming and pulled its plug out. But when I plugged it back in, it started again. Not good.

But not a disaster, because a little while ago my Dad won an ipod docking station/ alarm clock and a large bar of chocolate in a raffle. Dad having no real need of (or idea what to do with) a docking station, I was given it the day before this happened. My ipod-less sister got the chocolate. So I get up and go and get it. It has four pages of instructions. All of which have large simple diagrams for 'quick set up'. None of which tell me how to tune the radio. And of course I am only reading the instructions after I have spent time trying to fathom it out myself. It suggests I download the manual online. At gone midnight? Not good.

But not a disaster, because it is after all, a docking station. So I dock my itouch, set the alarm and go to sleep.

And at 6.41 am ( because this, like all other digital clocks you or I have ever set, skips the time you are actually trying to set it to by one minute) I start gradually to rise out of my sleep, eased out of it painlessly by the gentle and interesting tones from the ipod. I snuggle down and let myself have a couple more minutes to enjoy....

Or I would have done if Dennis had not, within five seconds of it going off, sat bolt upright and demanded, "What is that?"

That, my dear Westminster-Village-wannabe-resident-political-conflict -thriving husband of many years, that is Annies Smith's quilting podcast.

It was, I swear on my stash, an accident.

PS. By the time I got home he had fixed the original alarm clock and asked me,"What is Patchwork Tsushin anyway?

Going backwards to go forwards

2010-09-20T21:28:00.001+01:00

You remember how I had taken over this warm, decorated, equipped dining room as my studio?

And how I was dissatisfied so we moved so I could get a better studio?

Well, this is it.

(Gerrie you asked to see a photo of the guest room. It's the same place.)

The plan is that next week my brother-in-law and husband will be hiring a van and going to my former barrister's chambers to retrive my desk and book cases which will go in here as a temporary studio solution. In around March/April we anticipate starting work in here to create me a dedicated studio and second bathroom. Then the temporary studio becomes the guest room.

Well when I say we start work, I mean the builder starts work. After he does our bathroom and kitchen. And finishes the neighbours loft conversion - he waved at me from their roof today.

Spending some of my time as I do hearing Small Claim cases, I am aware that choosing a builder can be a tricky business. No-one knowingly chooses a cowboy so how do you know if your builder will do a good job? Well recommendation is a good start - this builder has already completed a full refurb of the bungalow opposite us including a loft conversion there too. But I do think gut instinct and an assessment of the character of the person is part of it.

This builder came to visit to take his first look at the jobs we had planned. He walked into the lounge and stopped talking when he saw my quilt over the sofa.
"Did you do that?"
"Yup"
He picked it up, examined the back.
"That's really neat machine quilting. " He fingered it some more. "And these feathers are really good. I like the colour combination."
Now excuse my total prejudice but I didn't expect that. Turns out he used to be a sail maker. And he gets why I need two studios. (The second will be the converted garage which will be a smaller wet dying and printing studio but thats 18 months to 2 years down the line when the rest of the house is done.)

I think he's worth a punt on don't you?!

Bath revisited

2010-09-20T20:59:00.001+01:00

During my blogland absence we snuck in a trip to Bath. As we stay in this flat at least three/four weeks a year I have become lax about photos as it is all so familiar, but this time I took some especially for you.

At the moment Bath is full of Lions. First these statuary kind. Most are actually quite naff but this was the prettiest.

And this the one that made us laugh the most. Isn't he delightfully arrogant?

Then there were the human kind of Lions.Although not all humans pictured are Lions a goodly number were. Applause and impressed acknowledgement will be lavished upon any North American reader who can tell me (a) what a Lion is in this context and (b) what this position is called.

When I was a child I liked to sit in the bottom of my wardrobe with my library books. The flat in Bath has two perfectly good sofas but my penchant for squeezing into small spaced to read/write has not diminished!