Is the sun shining yet?

Today I am blogging from my sick bed. I seem to have spent a large part of this year feeling distinctly under the weather until last week when I well and truly hit the wall and under the weather became 'flu. Like proper grown up 'flu. If I wasn't feeling so ill I would be quite impressed at my body's ability to completely floor me in this unexpected way. I started January in such high spirits but the last few months have seen me forced to slow down a bit. Like everyone else, I am blaming the weather. Has there been a winter quite like this in recent memory?

 

I am feeling a bit better today and just wanted to post some images of the work students did on my Handmade Art Journals workshop a few weekends ago. The weather was freezing but everyone made it in and we had such a fun weekend playing with paints, inks, fabric scraps and found imagery.

One of the very best things about teaching these workshops is how inspiring I find them. For me teaching isn't about me imparting information and students copying what I do; it's more like an exchange of ideas. They take the techniques I show them in whole new directions, they filter them through their own unique skill set and come up with things I would never have thought of. I always leave these workshops completely amazed at the beauty of the work that's produced as well as buzzing with new ideas of my own. It highlights one of the things I have always believed: that creativity doesn't exist in a vacuum, it needs feeding and watering regularly and teaching does that for me.

 

A stroll into the recent past to make a silly hat. With feathers.

I meant to blog about this earlier in the week but last Saturday I went to a workshop in Deddington to learn how to make fascinators. Deddington is lovely. I used to live there (with the useless ex). I lived in a small terraced farm cottage complete with beams, open fire, pokey corners and cobwebs. It felt, for a while at least, exactly how life should be. Deddington has a brilliant butchers and deli called Eagles, they sell a sort of cheesecakey affair called Jamaican Lime Crunch, slabs of bread and butter pudding, homemade brownies the size of house bricks and homemade sausage rolls which are, especially if you catch them just after they have come out of the oven, heavenly. Oh, and lobsters. Real live ones, in a tank, just inside the front door. Deddington is quite an upmarket sort of place really. I used to sit outside the pub on a Friday afternoon with my white wine and soda cataloging the smart cars that cruised through the market place. Black convertible Audis. The odd Porsche. Those loud, polluting twin exhausts.We used to call  it tw*t-watch.

Anyway, back to fascinators. Below are various members of my wayward family modelling theirs. Left to right, my cousin Katie, other cousin Gemma, aunty Jean (Beanie) and aunty Sarah (Cowbags). The workshop was taught by the talented and thrifty Mary Jane Baxter, she has book coming out too, which you can see here.

This is my effort. A bit Ms Marple but I like it. The little green rosette was made using a piece of ribbon and doing something to it called Petersham Pleating. FYI- it's really hard.

There are no photos of me wearing it because a) I take a terrible photo and b) it keeps falling off, my hair being too slippy for the clip.

The show is up!

Below is a photograph of the fabulous work done by members of the Cherwell Valley Embroiderer's Guild at a workshop I taught on Saturday. Despite having a show to organise, mount, frame and put up, I was more frightened by teaching a workshop out of my normal surroundings than of finishing my exhibition! I need not have worried though, it was a great day and thankfully the weather was good for drying pieces of printed fabric and paper.



Here are some images taken of the gallery space at the Mill with my work on the wall. Just over a year ago when I planned the show and booked the slot it felt like a really big deal. Today, however, I just feel a bit deflated. I think this might be tiredness talking though. Tomorrow is the private view so just a little bit more to do and then I can really relax and take it all in. On Friday I plan to take myself off window shopping somewhere nice for things for the flat; I have been too busy painting and prepping work to even think about nesting. I came home on Monday night and it felt so empty with all my paintings gone! It's really a bit too big for just one person to be honest, I need to make it feel a bit cosier some how.