monday

Started work on printing my wedding invitations today...

It's hard to draw neatly when someone is kicking the table from inside your belly...

wintry workshop

Lovely workshop at the Stanley & Audrey Burton Gallery today, pop up Christmas cards inspired by some of the paintings and prints of wintry scenes in their current exhibition. A real mix of people, both adults and children (and even a 2 month old baby who was very cute indeed), and some fantastic cards made. I'm always so excited to see the results at the end of these workshops, they're always so imaginative and carefully done and individual, they put my examples to shame!

My shocking quality photos don't do them justice by the way. My camera has broken and phone pics in a subtly lit room are never going to come out very well :( Oh well, still a good day. Now I'm off to thread fuzzy balls on a string as my house is looking distinctly un-christmassy.

Last day of teaching before maternity leave. I still have a week or so to go but there'll be no students around, so it felt like a last day, that strange feeling as I walked out the door. And apart from a late start due to a fall on the ice this morning (baby's ok, I'm ok) it's been a good day. A reminder-of-what-I enjoy-about-my-job day. I hope when I go back in a year I can remember how to do it!

Anyway,  I've got thoughts of how I want to spend the next month before the baby arrives. Thoughts of tidying and organising; so many unfinished jobs around the house, so many brown stalks in the garden, a room full of books and paper and cloth and whoknowswhat that needs turning into a room full space for a new person. I'm a massive hoarder but I can feel a purge coming on, and that feeling doesn't come very often so I want to take advantage of it. I'm feeling inspired by the fact that the total worldly possessions of this small person inside me can currently fit into one medium box, and whilst I'm fully aware that these things change drastically it's made me wonder how I've accumulated so much stuff in my life. Its too easy isn't it. So off it goes.

I'm on a precipice.

ps spot the chicken

Today I will take a walk through the woods, to look at the leaves and to breathe the air. In February you will be born, and before then the leaves will turn yellow and orange and brown, and fall to the floor, and maybe snow will come and cover everything. But it will melt and you will be here. Here to see the leaves return, little green buds on bare branches.

Through the darkness into the light. I can't wait to meet you.

soft ground experiments

With time to spare in the workshop today I decided to try some experiments in soft ground etching. Soft ground has always been my favourite way to create etched images but as we are a 'non toxic' workshop the traditional method of melting wax onto the plate is out. I read that Graphic Chemical relief ink can be used as a ground; soft when it's wet and then also as a hard ground when it's dry, and thought it might be worth a try...


I tried various thicknesses of ink, applied with a roller, and various different tools to draw both through paper (which lifts off ground) and directly (which displaces it). I tried drawing on the plate as soon as it was coated, then at 10 minute intervals as the ink dried. Unlike my previous attempts with a different acrylic soft ground, this ink seems to dry quite slowly giving a large window of opportunity for drawing... top image drawn through paper after 5 mins, bottom drawn after 35 mins...

I also tried painting with various consistencies of the ink directly on the un-coated plate, and used water to dissolve parts creating the opposite effect...

I didn't get chance to etch the plates as the ink takes up to 24 hours to dry depending on thickness, but I can't wait to see what they all turn out like as it feels quite promising. Now I've just got to work out the etching times...

P.S. I like the little mono prints made with the removed ink too :)

5 trees

A new book...

on bags

A bag for my lovely friend Emily.

I seem to make her a bag every year (2007 2008 2009...) and as I had this upholstry weight floral Cath Kidson fabric I thought why should this year be any different. A girl can never have too many bags right. And the more I sew the more I learn and the more I think I can do better than the bag I made before. So, sorry Emily, you are the recipient of the evidnece of my learning curve ;)

The design for this bag just seemed to come together one day, as these things sometimes do. I saw a bag with a woven strap (on the street, on the internet, who knows where) and when I was thinking about a present for Emily that image popped into my head, and it seemed to suggest a curved bag, to follow the line of the strap. So I cut out some shapes, a front and a back and a flap and a gusset, and sewed them together with thinking about it all too much. Kind of like having an image of a finished thing in my head, then closing my eyes and moving towards it without worrying about going of the track. A kind of intuition? Of having had enough sewing go wrong to get a certain feel for the right direction? Certainly a feeling of freedom that could perhaps get quite addictive.

I just looked back through my archives, looking for a bag I'd made in the past to compare this one to and realised I've actually made quite a few... Perhaps all this bag making practice is starting to sink in...