November 2006

I am repeating last month's final entry so it makes sense. I have grouped all the pictures at the end of the text.

29th - 31st October

Something from the dark side, appropriately for the date. In researching what fungii I'd found, I discovered something about Shaggy Ink Caps. Were I to have been an illuminating monk I might have used ink made from them . So, being me, I just had to try the ink-making (not the monk bit) and was instantly pounding off down to the Moor to find more Ink Caps.

I owe the ink recipe (number 3) and the delightful word deliquesce to Regia Anglorum on their page here (recipe number 3). I do not have a cauldron and so a plastic pot emptied of E numbers has had to suffice. As you can see, the fungii are deliquescing well. They aren't particularly smelly do but look pretty spooky. Shaggy Ink Caps aren't poisonous, although I don't think I shall be ink-drinking.

November 1st - 2nd

The increasingly wet Ink Cap mixture has been lurking in a corner of the studio and I realised today that it had begun to make its presence felt via the olfactory route. Putrid, earthy, mouldy and very unpleasant. So I poured the mixture through a mesh at arm's length and manufactured a cooking pot out of an empty bean tin. If the smell was bad before, a truly hellish smell excresced upwards from the pot once I put it on the stove. (Recipes I've found indicate one should reduce the mixture and blacken it further by boiling).

The mixture obediently reduced by thickening to black mucus worthy of The Scottish Play. The smell was so bad I had to hold my breath to stop myself gagging. To hell with research. I poured off the mixture and, still holding my breath, found a large paintbrush and some paper. I had at least to see what depth of colour it produced.

The conclusions the Ink Cap Escapade are:

1.That the recipes I found are incomplete, or some additional ingredient neutralised the decomposition and the smell. As the fungus is only found in the autumn, there must have been some way to preserve the ink through the year without knocking out the entire monastery with the smell. Or maybe I've stumbled across a new cause of the Reformation.

2. A lot more Ink Caps would be needed to make a good black.You couldn't use the snot-like it stuff I made with a quill and it was too thick for a small paintbrush. Maybe I boiled it too hard.

3. Perhaps monks had no sense of smell.

4. Left to me, the Books of Durrow and Kells would have remained unilluminated, which, probably, is why it wasn't.

November 3rd - 8th

Several days of hard frost and bright blue skies turned to fog yesterday as the temperatures rose again. I walked up the hill as high as it's possible round here, to see if I could rise through the mist. It was just possible and I could see a fleecy ocean stretching below me across the valley to a long hilly island, which was Dartmoor, rising at the far end. You can just see it in the picture below, which was taken on my mobile phone. Nothing if not hi-tech, me.

Would it be cynical of me to assign some relationship to my soaring site visitor stats (highest ever daily figure this week) and the vastly increased amount of spam I'm also getting? Have the crawlers been unusually busy? Apart from the usual mob wanting me to send all my bank details to West Africa, there are now more and more companies offering me jobs, great deals on financial undertakings, and endless offers to improve my sex life with pills, enhancements and a jolly sporty-sounding Russian girl called Irina.

Deciding Irina might be too busy to help I finished another run of clamped scarves which now need a steam and I sent off two parcels of work to a gallery and an exhibition. Today I need to do another - and that leaves one more to put together for the end of the week.

I have been invited to teach at the International Silk Painting Festival 2007 (October 5th - 7th ) in Chelmsford, Essex and will put dates on my Courses page as soon as details are confirmed. I will also be teaching at Plas Tan y Bwlch in Wales in February 2008 from February 22nd - 24th. It sounds a lovely place. Again, details will be posted when they are available.

November 9th - 12th

I have been feeling creatively jaded this week. I actively don't want to think about scarves, silk and dye. It happens sometimes. Maybe I should spend a week drawing instead. Or take up golf. On second thoughts...

November is carnival time. Hatherleigh's is visually brilliant, with steeply sloping narrow streets and an air of something not quite so ordered and English at work, hovering behind neat floats, little princesses and shiny tractors. Some brilliant pictures here from the Hatherleigh website team. The highspots at both ends of the day are the two tar-barrel runs and it's these that I feel are largely responsible for the indefinable atmosphere. See here for last year's pictures. The day starts at 5 am with the first run, which is more exciting than the Risk Assessment Health-and-Safety version that takes place in the evening after the carnival procession. In the morning the streets are eerily empty of parked cars and the run starts at the top of a hilly street as the barrels burst into flame. Three flaming barrels are pulled on chains by the front team and steadied by a back team who control the barrels' forward slide down the hills. In the past there was no back team and I think the barrels were just towed behind a running mob; clearly this isn't allowed any more for all sorts of sensible reasons, not least that the town still has a large proportion of thatched houses. As the teams approach the long upward slope in town and have to gather momentum for the ascending run, you look down on silhouetted screaming, shouting figures pulling and following the moving fire. Without coming over all Wicker Man, it does feel for a moment or two as though something ancient is still being re-enacted here. Fire ceremonies have long been associated with the celebration of the Celtic calendar and variations still take place all over the UK. You can see Hatherleigh pictures here: I didn't get good ones this year except for the one below.

Later on there was a meet of a local hunt. Nowadays hunting with dogs is banned in England and the remaining hunts must continue within the new legal framework.

And today, Sunday, I wandered down to the town to watch the Remembrance Parade come down the same street as the tar barrels the day before. Among those led by the local silver band were old soldiers, sailors and airmen. I always get a lump in my throat when I see old men marching. The names of the dead from two wars were read out before wreaths of poppies were laid. Local names, all still local.

Parade entering the churchyard

November 13th - 16th

I'm back in the studio after a week of not feeling ill exactly, but not feeling very well either. It's very odd when I actively don't want to work in the studio. I have put it down to some sort of bug as one afternoon I felt better, and suddenly annoyed I hadn't dealt with some loitering candidates for overdyeing. They are now done. The next project will be to make the fabric length (first mentioned here) which has been approved for go-ahead after I showed the samples.

For the samples I started by making a "fabric" from the scarf photo the client liked, knowing even as I converted the design on the fabric that it wasn't going to work as a length for a garment. It was just a process I needed to go through, exploring the way a design on a one-off narrow scarf length worked as a kind of repeated texture. And the answer is? It's too fussy, too busy, too tight. So I am loosening it up and making the colours more homogeneous. (I checked homogenous because I didn't know how to spell it correctly and found this for other word-nerds who drop by here).

AND

FANFARE OF TRUMPETS ROLL OF DRUM

Welcome Home to an Old Friend

Maybe 30 years ago I bought myself a Sheaffer pen, which I cherished until its nib housing split around 20 years ago. On being told it would cost as much to replace the nib as to buy another pen, I bought a new one - a similar model. I like the heavy weight and feel of it as it's mostly mostly made of metal. I write with it, but also use it to draw. Many times I have been asked if I could lend my pen to someone to write a note or sign something and faced the outraged affront when I've said, "No, sorry". No matter how light the touch, someone else always writes at a different angle or with different pressure and it takes days to get right again.

So when Sheaffer II started to leak ink, I despaired as these days it isn't easy to replace the innards. The Research Department knew better, however, and provided me with a couple of links to people who clearly love pens, have spares, and take delight in repairing them. I chose this one run by Peter Twydle, and despatched my trusty old friend to a little seaside holiday in Yorkshire. I have to report that my pen returned today looking fit, refreshed and ready for anything- especially a refill.

The plastic container used to send the pen back safely is clever. The inside barrel twists out on an ingenious plastic thread to accommodate the pen inside. It can then be twisted back just as far as is needed enough to trap the pen immovably, and this of course works for many lengths of pen. Thank you Peter Twydle for a brilliant service. It's worth reading more about Peter and his special father here.

November 17th - 24th

I have completed the fabric length. Out of courtesy to the client I am not going to show it here until she has seen it. But I think it's ok to show some images in progress and outline the procedure.

My studio, although well over three metres long, wouldn't have accommodated the apparatus I needed since I wouldn't have had space to move around it. The studio isn't wide enough. So I worked in the garage. I stretched the silk between a workbench and another heavy object and basically pulled them apart until I had sufficient stretch. I manufactured side support when needed with masking tape and pins fixed to yet more immoveable objects - such as the wall, or my car! If I were to do more of this work I would need to buy shinshi.

Although I had 145 cm wide silk (which would have meant I could prepare a shorter length of fabric) I cut this to about 1 metre wide, wasting a strip of silk. Working on a narrower width enabled me to access the centre of the fabric without losing accuracy in brush strokes. I didn't have time to order narrower fabric.

November 25th - 28th

Here is the completed fabric length. Grateful thanks to my client who has given her permission to reproduce it here. I still have to take a few more photos before handing it over. It will be made into a large, loose shirt.

Above: completed length (just under 4 metres) of 14 mm crêpe de Chine

Above: detail from the fabric. Note the lighter areas. If you look back at the construction sequence in pictures 2 - 4 in the previous entry you will see how these were made

I am preparing a layout plan for the dressmaker as I noticed a weave fault just too late to cut the fabric to avoid it: but it will not show if the pattern pieces are laid out in a certain way. I want to make sure the pieces are all cut in one direction. Although the fabric looks an "all over" design with no right or wrong way, the brush strokes were all made in one direction and I want them all to appear consistently that way on the garment. I'd also like to have them cut from the top surface of the silk as I made it.

I have to admit I am really pleased with this silk length. I know when something has worked because I look at it and it has taken on an independent life of its own. I look at it and think, "Did I really make that? How did I do it?"

November 29th - 30th

Tidying up some loose ends in the studio and doing paperwork. Last batch of scarves to a local gallery because next week is Late Night Shopping with Santa, mince pies and what-not.