Double Trouble

This has been an ‘annus horribilis’ for my family and last week was ‘last straw’ week. It helped that I was so busy that it rather took my mind off ‘things’.

I have long wanted to go on a ‘Double Trouble’ workshop and my dreams were realised when my friend Brenda and I travelled to Nottingham to spend two days with Jan Beaney and Jean Littlejohn. We had some excellent tuition and were shown some wonderful techniques, but best of all was being able to get up close to all the samples that Jan and Jean had brought. We were encouraged to look very closely, ask questions – and ‘handle’ the samples. For someone who finds it SOOO frustrating not to be able to touch work in exhibitions - especially when it is as tactile and textured as theirs - this was a joy.

Negotiating the one-way system in Nottingham was a nightmare but fortunately we stayed in a lovely B&B in Southwell, just outside the city, which is a beautiful cathedral town.

We had breakfast in a delightful garden (first picture) and found a scrumptious little restaurant called ’The Piano’. We managed to fit in a quick visit to the Minster,

which had many features of interest to an embroiderer ...

especially the ancient door, which just asked to be translated into ‘smocking’?

A lovely workshop with Carol Naylor on Friday was followed by a visit to Woolfest on Saturday.

I had made two corsages for the IFA stand and was amazed to find that they had both sold! Sorry, I didn’t take piccies because I was so sure that I’d be getting them back … but here’s one I made earlier ...

All I wanted to do today was to lie down in a darkened room!

Sailing

I have spent three hours today peacefully sailing on the Leeds-Liverpool canal from Skipton. The weather was beautiful, the scenery magnificent, the company fun and the wild life plentiful. Herons, swans and their cygnets, mother ducklings (I want to say ‘shepherding’ but that doesn’t seem right) carefully guiding their broods through the water. Blue skies and lots of greenery …

All in all, a very colourful day.

As I am, at the moment, being very mindful of colour and its importance in my life, I thought I’d like to post some photographs of some colourful items I made for my dear friends, Mags and Adrienne.

Bags made from dyed silk …

A nuno felted book cover ...

and an appliqued one with it's own little tag ...

... and here we are enjoying an interval break from 'As you like it' ...

which we did - very much! More later ...

(Hey, the photos all came through in order. I haven't forgotten it all!)

An absence of colour

I have had considerable ‘tellings off’ about not blogging and I know that if I don’t do it now, then I never will. I hope I remember how? I suppose I haven't felt that I have had anything to 'blog' about lately ... but ...

I’ve been to ‘Art and Garden’ today - a beautiful, sunny day, the lush garden, the sound of the river and such colour on display! Lots of paintings and jewellery and some textiles and, of course, Jackie’s stall, so full of colourful brooches, books, pictures, bags and so many other gorgeous things. Now I’ve no money left but I have got three very colourful brooches.

I have had Jackie’s post about ‘paintboxes’ on my mind ever since I read it. It took me straight back to my childhood! I could see the paintbox I had, with all those wonderful names …

Yes, ‘Rose Madder’ and ‘Cobalt Blue’ and ‘Violet’, but what about ‘Vermillion’? That surely is the name that instantly transports me back sixty years. The things I actually painted with this magical box of colours have faded into the distance (I suspect that even then they weren’t ‘originals’, more country cottages and landscapes and ‘fashion plates’ – the ‘New Look’ anyone???) but it’s the colours that stay with me …

How I longed to swim in an ocean of ‘Ultramarine’ …. And wear a dress (long, made of velvet, with a ‘fishtail’?) in ‘Viridian’ (shades of Rita Heyworth?) … and what a wonderful sight a ‘Scarlet Lake’ would be? … and ‘Prussian Blue’ sounded so exotic. I could go on … 

Does anyone out there who is my age remember any of these things? The world at that time seemed such a drab and colourless place that the paintbox seemed truly to be a ‘box of delights’.

My parents had been in India before the war and the stories they told me all seemed to be steeped in colour and I longed to go there and see for myself. It was to be sixty years before this dream came to fruition but the reality was just as I imagined it. My abiding memory is of a dull brown landscape which would suddenly explode into the colours of my paintbox as the women working in the fields came into view. Full circle.

Which is probably why the piece (above) which I – finally – produced for the Embroidery 2000 exhibition at Lytham felt so unsatisfactory to me. It was ‘colourless’. Dictionary definition – not only “not colourful” but “lacking vividness or distinctive character”. I should know that I don’t do ‘subtle’. There isn’t a single piece of beige in my wardrobe - and brown and I just don’t 'get on'. So why would I want to produce a piece with ‘earth colours’? Maybe I’ll just use the same design source with the colours that make me feel alive? Schiaperelli’s zinging pink or the violet of the delphinium that trumpets that summer is here? Or the deep aquamarine of the Greek ocean …

To thine own self be true? Watch this space …

 

 

 

Just January

Goodness, how I dislike January! This year has been a particularly bad one as I have had an awful bout of neuralgia (something I am prone to) which took ages – and lots of painkillers – to shift. I hate taking tablets of any kind and the painkillers seemed to ‘fog’ my brain.

However, that’s all gone now but the state of ‘hibernation’ didn’t completely disappear either. I have had to sit down and really try to work out why I have felt so slow and lethargic – and not at all creative.

I have finally worked it out … I was invited to join an embroidery group which exhibits and, whilst I was pleased and flattered, (it is a group I have long admired) I have also allowed myself to become totally ‘spooked’ by being in the company of artists who seem so secure in their own ‘areas’ – and totally comfortable with the design process. (I hasten to add that I could not have been made more welcome by these lovely people).

So I have given myself a really good talking to and sat down with paper and pencil. I ‘brainstormed’ around the theme and have eventually decided on something that I feel (reasonably) comfortable with. Better to start somewhere – and within my comfort zone - than not at all? I will report on progress.

Anyway, January will soon be over and February is such a short month - and a very busy one (I really am not wishing my time away!) and it will soon be March. March is when I get to return to Marrakesh, which is one of my favourite cities. This time I am going with a small group of ‘similar souls’, mostly artists, and hope to see the place through ‘new’ eyes. There will hopefully be time to pause amidst the hustle and bustle and sketch as well as take photographs. My drawing skills are rusty and I find it so hard to do something that I don’t feel pleased with – that pesky little perfectionist that sits on my shoulder and laughs at my efforts!

My photograph today is of a box I made inspired by a visit to the Bahia Palace in Marrakesh last year. Sultan Ba Ahmed – ‘The Brilliant’, the son of the Grand Vizier, built the palace in the nineteenth century to house his 4 wives and 24 concubines. My daughter and I continued a discussion that we started when we visited the Harem in the Topkapi Palace in Istanbul – what was it like to be a concubine?

We were told that the women prepared themselves in all their finery (a good thing?) before promenading in the courtyard garden. Ba Ahmed (in what way was he ‘brilliant’?) would view the gathering through a screen (sounds like a bad thing?) and make his choice from among the girls. Was it like getting ready for a Saturday night ‘hop’ and hoping to catch his eye, or did one take to lurking behind the jacaranda trees?

We couldn’t decide but, whatever the thoughts and feelings of the women involved, it was still like being in a ‘box’.

(I've quite forgotten how to use 'Blogger' so the images have come in the wrong place - it's 'Just January'!)

A Happy New Year

Well, I bet you can’t guess what my New Year’s Resolution is? Got it in one – to pick up my blogging where I left off.

I hope everyone out there in blogland has had a lovely Christmas and is looking forward to 2009? It’s a bit scary at the moment with all the talk of recession, etc. but I’ve been reflecting on how much of one’s ‘happiness’ doesn’t actually depend on money. OK, things like clothes and holidays are likely to be thinner on the ground but they’re not really the things that make us content.

Family, friends and being creative are the things that push all the right buttons, aren’t they?

There are lots more NYRs, of course – the usual ones that I make every year (and never manage to keep) like lose weight, walk more, be more organised, get enough sleep, and learn to say ‘No’ occasionally – but they’ll probably hit the dust before the end of January? But – I have been for a walk and cleared out two drawers today!

I’m posting a picture of the thing that gave me a great deal of pleasure over the holiday period – a jigsaw! (Not in the right place or the right order - need to get to grips with Blogger all over again?) Not so much the ‘doing’ of it but the fact that, for a little while, there were no ‘deadlines’ to meet. A lot of sneaky pleasure in being lazy just once in a while?

However, I’ve got something to do for Embroiderer’s Guild and I have a drawing to do and a little boy has just rung up and said “I’ll see you at the ‘White Pub’, Grandma” so it looks like I’ve got a ‘date’?

Off we go again …

The Knitting and Stitching Show

I was determined not to let too much time go by before I post again, but I really don’t know where the time goes to …

My friends Elaine and Jennifer and I really enjoyed our annual ‘jaunt’ to the Knitting and Stitching Show at Harrogate. It’s turned into a ‘mini-holiday’ and, although we didn’t spend anything like as much as last year – we all bought embellishers! – we still enjoy looking at the ‘spoils’ over a cup of tea in our room before we sally out to ‘Quantro’ for our evening meal. A glass of Baileys and ‘putting the world to rights’ before bed has become a ritual as well.

It was lovely to see our favourite tutor, Ruth Issett, surrounded by the zingiest of her fabrics. You could almost ‘breathe in’ the colour on her stand and the sheer emotion always – you’ve guessed it – makes me cry! What am I like?!

It was lovely to see Ruth - and Chas - looking so well and just enjoying the admiration instead of beavering away as usual. I’m sure that Kevin and Viv missed her demonstrations but I suppose the ‘finished product’ across the way was just as much an inspiration and selling aid?

The other stand I spent time at was the ‘Art 4 Cloth’. Lots of encouragement from inspired tutors who made their work sound ‘easy’ … it probably is for them after a lifetime dedicated to producing such detailed and elaborate surface decoration – Complex Cloth indeed.

As usual the Graduate Showcase attracted a great deal of attention. It’s great to see these young people who are just starting out in the textile world getting to show off their work to an appreciative audience. My particular favourites this year were Eleanor Feddon, Sara Baccucini Meadows and Linda Marie Young with her intricate, beautiful boxes. I was entranced by Victoria Geary’s ‘wrapped rings’ – lovely fabrics, threads and tiny, tiny stitches. Gorgeous.

On the way home we had such a wonderful sunset coming over Beamsley Hill. It started off as pink and pale blue, through purple and orange to scarlet. Very Ruth.

Catching up

Well, here I am again – wondering how you pick up the pieces and start to blog again after such a long time! The Croatian holiday was such a disappointment that I threw myself into a whirlwind of activity – and the dust has only just settled. I haven’t even looked at my own blog, let alone anyone else’s!

I have made a fervent resolve to stay home this week and try to catch up on some of the things that haven’t been getting done whilst I have been ‘gadding about’ - as we say ‘oop north’. However - and I don't know why? - I can't get any of the photographs into my text so - for now - I'll have to remain 'undecorated'.

I’m going to rattle off a few of the things I’ve seen and done over the last few weeks – bearing in mind that hardly a day has gone by without some little diversion!

I went with my friend Julie to see the Matthew Williamson exhibition at Urbis – pretty much the ‘Emperor’s New Clothes’ as far as we were concerned. Yes, the colours were vibrant and the pattern striking but in terms of cutting and construction the garments left a lot to be desired. We resolved to go home and sew … and so we shall.

The Platform Gallery Open Exhibition was a treasure. The highlights for me were Joan Newall’s ‘retrospective book ‘At this moment’ – a real punch in the solar plexus! Gilly Cowan’s layered pieces were so colourful and beautifully stitched. Two of my all-time favourites were also exhibiting - Janet Browne’s ‘journeys’ and Jacqueline Smith’s collages are always a delight to behold and both had lovely pieces on show.

I’ve taken part in two concerts – and all the rehearsals leading up to them – ‘The Armed Man’ again and, last Sunday, ‘Fauré’s Requiem’ and four ‘Motets for Christmas’ by Poulenc. Very challenging but thoroughly enjoyable. It’s a relief to be doing Christmas carols once again - but it feels like it ought to be August still! Where did the year go?

I’ve been to the theatre twice to see Chekov’s ‘Three Sisters’ and my own very favourite play ‘Antigone’. This last was a stunning production and reduced me to tears by its intensity and passion. I’m a bit of a Greek tragedy ‘nut’, I have to confess. (My friend, Barbara, a true romantic, who was hoping for a happy ending, reduced me to giggles as she gasped with horror as the bodies piled up!)

The other trip to the Royal Exchange was to hear Sheila Hancock talking about her book ‘Just Me’ – a sequel to ‘The Two of Us’ about her marriage to, and the death of, her husband, John Thaw. I feel a special affinity to Sheila and had the opportunity to tell her so afterwards. I could identify with her experiences of going abroad on your own without the presence of the loving companion with whom you have long shared your travels. You’ve just got to get in there and do it – or sit at home and go into a decline?

I enjoyed the ‘Fashion and Embroidery Show’ at Harrogate, though possibly not as much as in years gone by? I particularly liked Jessica Abraham’s work – it gets better all the time.

Preston Embroiderer’s Guild took part in the Arts Society exhibition in the Minster and my felt pieces were finished in time! Just! I've managed to bring these in through 'Picasa' but it doesn't work for all the others. Why? Anyway, these are 'The pool at the Jardin Majorelle' 1-4.

I've done several courses/workshops - one at Cedar Farm with Sheila Smith and Joanne Eddon, using painted silk to nuno on to felt and one with Sandra Coleridge using the embellisher, both very enjoyable.

Most of all I enjoy the felting group that I belong to. The members are so kind and generous and happy to share their expertise one with another. Our inspiration is Fiona whose wonderful work you can see on 'Fiat84'. She kindly came to give me a personal 'tute' on 'Paint Shop Pro' which is - at last - beginning to make sense. We are all indebted to her for sharing her techniques and tips and inspiring us with her sense of colour and stitch.

As well as Jackie keeping us 'in tucks' with her stories, we have CAKE - how could it help being my favourite way of spending a day?