Oasis of calm

This is definitely the best time of year for my little garden.

(BBQ thing is ugly, though - and I keep thinking it's a "person" doing a spot of weeding)

And this morning's rain has perked things up, made the leaves shiny again, and will hopefully be plumping up the courgettes. Yes, I know there is a dead thing in a terracotta pot, but apart from that I think it's all looking good. Even the rambling rose has made it as far as the roof of the little house, which itself is nearly completely lost in the shrubbery...the little house which is no longer pretending to be a studio, btw, and now houses Mr G's midlife crisis/desperate clinging onto youth miniature train layout.

Looking out over the garden at breakfast is my oasis of calm at the moment. Everything else is a "bit mad". For example, this is my actual studio space. 

It looks like this because I've only been at home long enough to dump stuff down, then go again. That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it. I have, however, spent a lot of time in here this week:

The conference room full of City & Guilds work to assess and grade! Yes, bribes in cake form have been promised to the students in return for such a wonderful collection of work. Cross everything that the External Verifier thinks it's wonderful too...

Once this madness is over on Wednesday evening, some sort of normal creating and blogging service will resume. It had better do, as Art Trail is in less than a month...

Back soon!

The staple gun's day out...

It was my birthday last week, where I set aside all shoulds and oughts, and do just what I want to do (for most of the day, anyway!).

This year I was struck with a sudden urge to peruse a charity shop for a flat picture frame, rip out the staples, glass and back board, and turn it into a screen printing frame:

I've been meaning to do this, like, forever! (as Girl would say...)

I also found one of these in the shop, which was a bonus.

My very own twisted-cord-making-device!

Then of course to test drive my new screen, I needed to make a proper printing surface. Staple gun, wadding, calico - check.

Large piece of chipboard? Not to hand, no. So off I went again, to the DIY shop to buy some board, then on a whim I popped into another place on the industrial estate and persuaded them to cut it to size for me, for the small fee of £2.40. Genius! Quicker than asking Mr G to do it, by several weeks at least...

And so a "few" staples later....

Ta da!

I even glued an extra cutting mat onto the back. How snazzy is that?! Happy Birthday me!*

Unfortunately life has now got in the way again, and it's back to the shoulds and oughts with no time to test it out - but at least I can now screen-print things when I have the time to play again! Meanwhile, it is a handy portable ironing board just for textile stuff, and I've even broken out the "extra" table space on my desk to use it:

* This wasn't all I did on my birthday, a large quantity of strawberry meringue and Prosecco was also consumed but I couldn't take a photo of that as it didn't sit still long enough.

Themes emerging

The past few weeks, I have been collecting bendy twigs from the woods.

And then doing this to them:

Some of the stick circles are for other things, but I've also made some felty pots

with the intention of doing something like this

minus the string, natch. (How long until they will stay coiled and I can cut the strings off??)

Meanwhile, still thinking sticks and nests, I found this in a charity shop:

And then this twine-wrapped ball:

Hmmm...

And inbetween these musings with sticks and pots and felt, I've been trying to finish this:

Put it all together, it looks quite coherent! There may be hope!

Whisper it, I'm even managing to devote some time to sketchbook experiments...

But then the amazing Di Buttenshaw came to talk to our Guild and brought some incredible work. Wonderful texture, very clever felting techniques, including lots of pre-felt and cut-through bits and pieces, including stitch. A lot of feltmakers don't use a lot of stitch but Di does.

Just love that bag, with the dangly beaded yarns felted in, and the lines of that rug...

So I now have more ideas for the decoration on my felty pots, and will try a bit of inlay/cut-through - but I definitely feel that I've only ever scratched the surface of felt making. Sigh!