May 2005

1st May

The image below shows unwrapped twisty scarves from the most recent batch. These were twisted when damp which seems to allow a much tighter and crisper patterning. I wish I could keep them with the wrinkly texture, but it'll go with steaming.

2nd May

A view of the veg patch to offer another version of the infinite variety of creativity around here. The parsley planted on Good Friday (see log for March 24th) eventually germinated but is taking its time. I'm not an experienced gardener and so am pathetically grateful if seeds come up at all, and then hate to thin them out as the packet advises. But I have been bravely picking out the rocket thinnings (on the left) and will have to do the same to the parsely. The parsley was mentioned in my brother's Berrimilla Log yesterday so has now achieved international fame- I only feel it right that you should see it too, dear reader, whoever you are. On the satphone a week or so back Pete seemed very concerned to know whether I was growing the good curly English sort or the poncey Mediterranean flat-leaved variety. Soon put him right there.

All this talk of parsley will confirm the fact that not a lot has been going on in my studio. But all that is set to change this week as there should be more work going on in the garden that I won't want to look at and the appropriate excuse must be found.

3rd May

In hopeful anticipation of the Line being crossed today by Berrimilla, I include Neptune's symbol.

Today saw the return of the digger to deal with our Bronze Age Concrete cowshed. It also saw the return of the rain which has held off all week since we sent the hired vehicles back to avoid Bog Burials. Due to imminent arrival of very honoured gust (sic) tomorrow I started cooking today which meant shopping first, and so the day passed without my doing much more studio-wise than finding the calligraphic brush in Photoshop and producing the Neptune symbol. I started another of the big shawls- and am trying to be strict with myself about the colour. I want it grey and pink. But occasionally I found my hand straying towards a green or a blue bottle and the other hand slapped it back mercilessly. I seem to remember some syndrome in Rita Carter's Mapping the Mind where something has occurred between the brain hemispheres and one hand literally does things that it doesn't have permission to do. Shall look it up again.

4th - 6th May

For those following the Ground Force project, the Bronze Age cattleshed has now been broken up and removed in a skip. In the studio I have made the new shawl started on 3rd but it hasn't come out like the one I planned in my head. There is more red and purple, the tone is darker than intended - and there is no grey at all.

It's been an intensely busy week in my head with the work going on outside in the garden, a friend visiting and other business to deal with which has left me feeling mentally breathless, as if I am constantly running late. I also needed to design a kind of logo for my brother's Berrimilla Voyage T shirts. One of those projects that sounded simple, until I realised that the set up charge for an embroidered badge can be as much as £150.00, depending on the complexity of the design. So I ruthlessly re-arrranged the entire coastline of South America, Antarctica and West Africa so it is smoother and cheaper to embroider and have thus swamped vast swathes of the globe.

Hopefully, things will calm down a bit now as I need to sort out work for Artweeks in Oxfordshire and assess the workload for the summer.

7th May

This is the first anniversary of our seeing this house for the first time. Those of you who know me personally will remember what a fraught time we had moving house, and all the other troublesome factors that seemed to hover over us last year. It's been a good move and we are very happy here. This morning I walked the dog down the road and remembered the very similar light on the fields towards Dartmoor when we came to look round the house a year ago, wondering at the time if it would be a view that would become increasingly familiar. Enough of the sentimental stuff.

As the Berrimilla commemorative logo looks as though it has passed examination by Supreme High Command and the shore crew I'm putting it in here. Very rough: the lines need sharpening up. It simply commemorates the first occasion that Alex and Pete were able to see the International Space Station as a moving light at night. They had been communicating with NASA and the ISS since the Falkland Island stop. To personalise the logo I am going to stitch a small glass bead to the point that the ISS orbit intersects Berri's route.

You saw it here first, folks. Orders for shirts, dog bowls and commemorative ephemera should be addressed to me.

8th May

Began sorting work to send to Oxford for Artweeks which begins on 21st May. I have shown work there with two friends for several years and they invited me back this year. On the 27th I will be teaching at Denman College, also in Oxfordshire, and look forward to meeting some faithful students returning for further punishment. I may go up to Oxford early so I can spend some time at Bampton where our exhibition is held.

9th May

Berri-Trials again. First it was the generator for Berrimilla, then the cockpit cushions and some miraculous product called closed-cell foam which, apparently, grows on trees in Australia but is near impossible to buy in the UK unless you want to make seating for the QE2. The latest Berri-Trial is trying to obtain something called a stitch-count from three separate companies who embroider T shirts. They cost out a set-up charge on how many stitches are needed to sew a design. Sew far sew nothing from any of them.

10th May

Labels and lists today. Each scarf has to have some kind of identifying letters and a number, which is essential to distinguish items sent off to exhibitions and galleries. It also helps me to check which scarf has been sent where, so that I don't send a scarf, or even a similar scarf, back to the same gallery. This can happen if it remains unsold in the studio for a while after having been on show and I consider it a really dumb move so try to keep tabs on what's been where and what's sold. It isn't always true that the best scarves sell. Sometimes some real crackers come back - and I ship them off somewhere else and they sell straight away. Would, however, that that was always true. Anyway, I usually have a design name in my head for the separate themes I'm working on. So there's Savannah, Grasstops, Scribble, Twist and Tussock on the go at the moment which end up as SAV, GRA, SCRIB, TWIS and TUS. I had a design called Ripple once but decided against coding it RIP.

Tomorrow I am posting work to Oxford and also a batch to Raven Press Gallery on Skye where Kathy Lindsley has a beautiful little gallery at Colbost, mostly featuring her wood engravings.

11th May

Sent out work to Skye and Oxfordshire. Earthed up some potatoes, thinned the parsley and studiously avoided the silk end of the studio. Now why is that.. sometimes I feel creatively inert after a few days faffing around with labels, lists etc which is really poor on my behalf as I'm critical of others who prevaricate this way. But tomorrow I am either going to work on some more Grasstops and / or start binding another set of Twisties as I have now cleaned myself out of them by sending work away.

Not that it has anything to do with anything, but I also thought it was Thursday all day, as one sometimes does. I have a 3-D shape for the week in my head, all the days in a circle. I can count all the way round, like stepping stones, and tell you the day of a date in three weeks but without doing the maths that would get some other person there just as fast. I think quite a few people do this; it isn't as rare or unusual as synaesthesia. On the wrong stone all day.

12th May

At last some shirt-sewing quotes. One inexpensive, the other very expensive. Cheaper set-up charge sounds fine, but then their shirts are more expensive so what one selects rather depends on the number being produced. Some challenging moments on the calculator revealed that break-even on the two quotes occurs at around 50 shirts. So then there had to be considerable e-mail to-ing and fro-ing to small boat in Atlantic to clarify what exactly it is we are doing, how many, etc.

Tied up a lot of scarves for dyeing.

The main scarf in the picture above was pre-dyed grey and pink. I am using georgette on this batch; sheer but slightly denser and with a lovely drape.This image is an amazing tribute to my camera. I have condensed the file for the website but took the pic, hand-held, on macro in natural light and you can see the weave perfectly on the scarf . I replaced my broken camera with another Kyocera (a Finecam S5R) and discovered a week afterwards that they are stopping making cameras. Where that leaves me if the camera breaks again I don't know.

Another view of the batch.

13th May

Dyed the twisties. Tried a clamped one and remembererd afterwards that the successful one I did a few weeks back wasn't folded in an M configuration but in half again. So, predictably, the result wasn't that interesting. I was able to hair-dry it to open-up point but the others must dry before I unwrap.

14th May

Went to a local charity event and ended up making a small willow basket. Very hard on the hands but very interesting to do. I will post a picture when I have finished it as I still have a small amount to weave.

15th May

Finished the Sunday Times Crossword except for one clue. More twist dyeing in between preparing veg patch for runner beans and spitting about the unsolved clue.

16th May

The weather looked unexpectedly fine, and with the garden re-arrangement awaiting The Return of the Digger we took a spontaneous day out down to Falmouth to see Trebah Gardens. What a stunning place. Luscious tropical valley desending steeply to a small beach which today was lapped by a turquoise sea. It felt as if we were on a Cretan beach - even the lapping waves made the right noise on small grey pebbles. I noticed Robin Paris is giving one of her batik retreats there in the autumn, not on the beach, one assumes. The regular reader of this log will remember I did a two-day workshop with Robin in March.

17th May

Some top-up blank scarves for Denman arrived today. This time next week I shall be all packed up and ready to leave for Oxfordshire. I'll be staying in Bampton for two days to help with Artweeks, and then on to Denman on Friday. I am beginning to think of the various things I need to do to prepare. I always need to do some fresh activities and talks because it keeps me on my toes - and also gives students who have been to me before some more things to think about.

Looks like world production of the Berrimilla Shirt is shifting to Australia with some to be posted here to the UK. It means that -sob- I have relinquished my design into the hands of others and will now have lost control over what happens to it. Not a great problem ego-wise but hope they don't mess with it too much... it came from a line of a poem I saw somewhere once years ago and wrote in my sketch book

diverse orbits keep rare the bright collisions of coincidence

18th May

Prepared scarves for steaming. With the twisties, I have to iron before steaming as although I'd love to retain the wrinkles, I have to put them in the steamer flat once they are unravelled. I also ironed out wax from a pair of big shawls. I did a preliminary sort-out for Art in Action to see what basics I have.

19th May

Did a steam today: 12 twist dyed scarves. They came out looking good. I had looked through my stock of work and decided I have quite a good batch in the making for Art in Action but need something else. I am going to experiment with using parts of letterforms on a smaller scarf so have dyed the backgrounds ready.

And the garden.. Well, if I were to say we shifted a load of hardcore today I don't want a visit from The Vice Squad. If porn is the answer to stop the milk-lorry getting bogged down at a farm down the road, who are we to argue? The Bronze Age cowshed has now morphed into a farm track. The completed patio is so large we called it La Terrazza and it's just waiting for the jolly umbrellas, bustling waiters and expensive coffee.

Tonight I started making some more handmade cards. This is one of last year's batch. I use re-cycled sweet papers, Christmas wrapping and handmade papers and scraps. Sometimes I print on the top or use guttas and liners.

20th May

More cards today. I can keep myself sane doing them as long as I don't go on too long. I exhaust the idea / subject within about 12 cards. So I print 12 of something, cut 12 fish, birds etc, and then finish them, let them dry and pack them with an envelope in a see-through bag. Then I walk the dog, have a coffee, argue with the parsley or procrastinate elsewhere before resuming cardmaking activities. Handmade cards are just a gesture to allow people to buy something small and don't honestly pay off in terms of time spent.Very satisfying looking at a bright shiny stack of them when they're finished, though.

21st - 24th May

Busy few days in the garden and the studio. Despite my liking for ye rusticke look of bean poles neatly lined up waiting to support Jack's seedy acquisitions we decided to opt for a metal frame with a net on the basis that over several years the cost would probably even out. The thing duly arrived without instructions, which is ok because there isn't much to it. But the nylon netting supplied emerged with a certain reluctance of attitude and it took one Cambridge degree in English and a Diploma in Art and Design (Illustration) to finally set the thing to rights - although each educational discipline saw an individual way through the same problem. Need I say more. Personally I think qualifications are more trouble than they're worth when it comes to such things as bean frames.

I started preparing for Denman and sorting out gutta applicators, frames, teaching handouts, etc etc. This process usually takes about two days. There's a further day to unload at the other end, so in fact three days' teaching means more like 6. But as always I am looking forward to teaching my course at Denman. Lovely facilities, always a good group of students, beautiful surroundings.

In response to a topic of conversation on a yahoo group (complexcloth) to which I belong, I started a group of my own called Creative Thinking. I was amazed to find there seemed to be nothing like it on yahoo although there may be elsewhere, and there are certainly creative discussion groups which centre on just writing. Anyone reading this who is interested, please go to http://groups.yahoo.com/group/creativethinking The intention is to draw together creative minds not just from the visual arts but from other areas such as theatre, dance, music. I'd like to be able to share ideas and approaches, discuss books, websites, courses, latest thinking, psychology and the understanding of what happens when we create; to see what is the same - and what differs. . Please note that if you join now, while I am away, you will not be able to post a message until I am back home as I have decided to approve every first message from every new member to try to avoid Spam and Porn Dumping. (That sounds like an Olde Englishe Pudding, doesn't it, so I've added the capital letters..)

So no more here from me for a few days. By the time I am back Berrimilla will either be in Falmouth, which would be annoying as I'd like to see her / them come in - or very near, in which case we will be shooting down there to throw streamers and act irresponsibly with bottles of champagne. See you all on 31st or later.

31st May

Back home after exhibiting and teaching. Hot weather hit as I left Devon and we had a lovely few days in the garden at Bampton for my time at Artweeks followed by an extremely hot starter-temperature at Denman which, happily, didn't continue through the weekend with the same enthusiasm. Lovely students and I think, a successful course. I am putting my studio back together, trying to stop the rampaging rocket going to seed, planting up tubs with the weekend profits and anticipating the arrival of Berimilla at Falmouth on late Thursday / Friday. I will put some more in here when I have some time and post the student pictures. For now, here are my group minus Fiona - but I have another one of her which I'll slot in. Thanks to any students looking in here: you were a very hard-working and rewarding bunch to teach!

The Denman group showing their newly unwrapped twist-dyed scarves

Fiona acting as a human clothes peg for students twisting up scarves.