August 2006

July 27th - August 1st

Last Saturday an unprecedented number of outdoor events were confidently arranged for the locality. Charity sales, fêtes, outdoor appearances by the Hatherleigh Silver Band, evening birthday parties, summer drinks on lawns, moving in celebrations - all were expected to take place in the certainty that the heatwave would persist and guests could wander amongst glorious borders kept herbaceously alive (at great expense) with metered water.(Yes, I made that correction from metred. Thank you, Editorial Department). Those wearily familiar with Murphy's Law or the British summer weather pre-global warming, will know what came next.

Once the events had been ruined one wanted it to rain harder so that obvious justification could be made for all the arrangements made to rehouse sales, bands, parties etc. and, of course, to get the gardens properly watered. We've indeed had a few inches of rain, the stream on the moor has regained enthusiasm (see below) and is no longer a set of pools linked by scum.

The temperature has dropped at least 10 degrees so I feel comfortably capable of work again. I have produced a new set of small Meadow scarves, some larger versions, and a small run of clamped pieces. Since Art in Action, where I sold a good proportion of my very best work, I have sent new scarves to three galleries. This means that about 14 weeks' work has left the studio in under two weeks and there are serious black holes in The Stockroom...

I am investigating buying some more professional brushes for use with wax. Work with wax is the way I am going and I feel I am limited with the marks the present (very cheap) set are making. To an extent, I always like the challenge of finding possibilities in whatever's available, and I have found ways of manipulating the scabbiest brushes so they will make interesting shapes. Here is my current lineup of workhorses: only the three on the right cost me anything significant.

But I know there are some marks they can never make (drawing long, fine and sinuous lines, for instance). So I am not going tobe able to move ahead without further tools. More anon.

August 2nd - 5th

New clamped scarves are steamed and washed out and I am preparing for a few days away. Thinking of this establishment as The Scarf Factory with various departments all operating one hopes, in mutual support, reminded me of my ten years' working in industry many lives ago. Life could be a little more political than one might wish. I went away on holiday once, having left everything chugging along very nicely and, I must emphasise, totally under control. As soon as I had gone my immediate and more than ambitious arachnoid superior was on the pick to find out what I was up to with my work, phoning here and there and checking up on what arrangements I'd made for print production, sourcing, artwork etc. When I got back all hell had been let loose and my name was as Mali mud. She considered my plans had been woefully inadequate as deadlines were slipping. I was furious, because my suppliers had been upset, the changes she'd made were unconsidered and directed to her personal glory, and worst of all she didn't have the full picture of what I had arranged and why. That's partly why I didn't thrive in industry. I hated that kind of competitive interference and there was a lot of it about.

On that basis, when I return from this trip I shall find that Maintenance will have moved in to the Creative Director's room, which will have been tidied up so that Technical will be able to find nothing, ever again. Editorial will have corrected all the grammar on the website, and IT will have stepped in to make it look professional and like everyone else's and the homepage buttons will have disappeared forever. Meanwhile, Financial Planning will have swooped on the paperwork to scrutinise what I laughingly describe as costings and as a result serious discussions will have taken place well into the evening hours. PR will have contacted gift houses with my latest grass design and I will be required to mass produce sets of light habotai foulards in three shades of green and, moreover, compete with the Far East. I don't even want to consider what Stock Control might do.

I think I will need to leave this space with a light hearted image in view of the traumas to come, so here's something I photographed a few months back, not knowing what I was going to do with it.

Not Drowning, but Waving

My favourite song about inappropriate interference in other people's lives from Judge Smith and his CD The Full English

6th - 15th August

I've had an emotionally tricky and tiring week for reasons with which this blog will not concern itself. I took three books, one of which (Stendhal, Scarlet and Black) nearly defeated me, not because it was too "hard" but because its mood was so black I felt almost imprisoned by it. Books can offer somewhere else to go in the head, and on this occasion I needed a lighter alternative. I shall try to read it again when I am trying to escape some hysterically happy holiday larks and need a taste of illicit goings-on, hypocrisy and nineteenth century doom.

I then read The Bookseller of Kabul and understood more about Afghanistan in a few hundred pages than I have ever learned from the news on the telly. It has a strange and well-selected mixture of the sordid and sublime and left me incredibly grateful for the freedoms I enjoy as a Western woman.

One of the other freedoms I enjoyed was a trouble-free flight back to the UK in which I was actually permitted to hand-carry my third book, The Buccaneers by Edith Wharton, along with my bottle of water, mobile phone, keys etc. I had watched the Heathrow chaos developing on 10th with a growing sense of despair for all the people waiting in sad lines, and then remembered seeing more police on my outward journey than I have ever remembered in the past. I am old enough still to find it shocking seeing our police carrying guns.

I managed to start a collage while I was away and will post an image of it here when it's nearer completion. I am now back in the studio dealing with correspondence and publicity for Nine Days of Art and tomorrow will plug in the waxpot once more.

Here are two images from my return journey:

August 16th - 18th

The waxpot has fired up and I have started a new set of work. I am doing some scarves in the Stalks series (see below).

The end result is that the scarves have blocks of stripes with darker-toned areas between. It is based on the idea of rows of stalks in a field. The next one I start I will photograph in stages, as it's high time I updated my wax pages. My website has some dusty corners which haven't been updated for some time.

Autumn on the way

19th - 21st August

I am working away in the studio as I need to complete a large enough batch of waxed work to merit a dry-clean. On the left is a Stalks scarf in progress. There is a background layer, a layer of wax, a second dye layer and now the second layer of wax which can be seen most clearly on the outer edges. I have recently learned that there is a new wax-removal product under development and I hope to be able to try it: the dry-clean process uses perchloroethylene (Perc) which is a very unpleasant chemical for the environment. Unfortunately I have found nothing else except a Perc dry-clean that will remove the wax residue after steaming my silk. Boiling out wax is not an option with silk and acid dyes, as the dyes will release or run if the temperature is raised high enough to melt the wax.

Hatherleigh's Contribution in Tracking the Ocean's Currents

I found this Beachcombers story so interesting a week or so back I tried to work it into the blog, without success. Now is my moment. Those readers glued to current (ha ha) affairs may take some interest in the contribution that our town is taking in tracking the ebb and flow of our great oceans. Last Saturday a large flock of plastic bath duckies was to be seen passing under our main bridge - see the images below. Curiously, they were drifting downstream, which will be deeply disturbing data for the scientists at Southampton who are conducting the main research and will certainly assure Hatherleigh a place in scientific history. Beachcombers and other scavengers may enjoy this related site called Things that float. And no, my duck didn't win.

21st - 30th August

I am not dead, just haven't been feeling very verbal since I exhausted myself with recent tales of plastic ducks and ocean currents. I have painted, dyed and steamed a good number of scarves which currently (there's that word again) languish in the dry-cleaners' awaiting a dose of nasty Perc. I've also had a birthday and sowed some rocket seeds, although not both on the same day, and am planning the next Arty Event which is setting up a show for West Devon's Nine Days of Art. My Private View + general invitation has been printed and distributed and the front looks like this:

I have even bought wine for the event (not the sort that removes fillings after one swill and you then need to spit out around the corner) and as I have no idea who clocks in here to read all this nonsense, any local reader wanting an invitation should contact me fifthwith. They shall be invited to the ball.

Anyone who has been following my log for more than a year will know about my brother Alex's marathon voyage with shipmate Pete Crozier in Berrimilla last year. They also might like to know that Michael Morpurgo has written a new children's book called Alone on a Wide, Wide Sea. The core of the novel is an e mail narrative about an inspiring and life-changing voyage which was partly based on Alex and Pete's adventures in Berrimilla.