Back to school

Or not! This September marks the end of an era and the start of new adventures: my Girl is going to leave home to go to university! When I started this blog, she was only nine years old...

(with her great-grandmother, at my sister's wedding)

All through May and June we were both absorbed with exams: she was sitting them, I was invigilating. We were both slaves to the timetable and the alarm clock. Since then, she's been at home (or at orchestra or on tour with orchestra or on holiday) and our days have lacked routine or structure. Since our short holiday in France in August, I've started to try and claw back some sort of discipline. It's been hard, but I know that we have to get ourselves sorted out before Girl leaves. I'm a night owl, so without a routine I think I'm in danger of becoming nocturnal! She's received her uni timetable today, so that's been a bit of a kick for me to get myself sorted.

And whenever we return from camping in a tent and existing in shorts and T shirts, the return to a house with wardrobes and cupboards and furniture and stuff always prompts a massive declutter. Even though I do it every year, we still have far too much stuff. I've been very inspired by the idea of minimalist living, although I'm not sure I'm quite ready to go that far - I just like watching YouTube videos of Scandinavians living in their beautiful white houses with wonderful empty space, woolly blankets and pot plants that aren't desiccated from neglect like mine.

The other major change that will be upon us once Girl leaves, is our Saturdays. For ten years we've spent Saturdays taking it in turns to either do the orchestra/choir taxi service, or to stay behind and clean the house. Now our Saturdays will be free (if I'm not teaching...) we don't want to spend our weekends doing chores. I've tried various systems for getting the housework done in the past, and nothing has stuck. The most complicated system I ever found was the Fly Lady system, and I didn't even last a day - but that was before I found Diane in Denmark!

Via my noodling on YouTube, I came across Diane's videos. She uses the Fly Lady system, but the way she explains it suddenly makes so much sense. So far, I'm three weeks in and the house is (mostly) clean and staying clean. And the best thing is, I don't spend hours doing it. The second best thing is my YouTube feed is now suggesting all sorts of other cleaning/organising/hygge videos, so I'm wallowing in a bingefest of Scandi inspiration!

I've tweaked the system to suit me: for example, I've designated Thursday (today) as my "plan and play" day. I've just started a new Tai Chi class and (a) it starts early, so I have to set my alarm (good for getting back on schedule) (b) it's very close to one of my favourite places, Wakehurst Place. So after Tai Chi, I pop along to Wakehurst for a coffee and a walk. Lovely.

When my weekly class starts in a few weeks on a Wednesday, Thursday Tai Chi and coffee will be my reward for the next day! (The "plan" part is to sit down with Mr Gonecycling and plan the weekend and week ahead and decide what we want to eat etc.)

I'm also trying to implement my own version of the system in the studio. The key is to have morning and evening routines, and then a theme for each week in a month, and a theme for each day in a week. Let's just say it's a work in progress! I'm doing slightly better with my themed weeks than I am with my routines: I decided last week was newsletter, and this week is blog - so here I am!

The main thing I've learnt from Diane in Denmark, is to avoid the temptation to do everything at once - start simple and build the habit first - which is why the routines are so important. The first and most important thing you do is to "shine your sink". That way, even if wheels are falling off all over the place, your kitchen sink is shiny and clean and you feel at least some measure of control!

I've been trying to work out what the "shiny sink" equivalent is in my studio - is it to draw every day, no matter what? Or is it to stitch every day? What ONE thing can I do that will make me feel as if I'm on top of things? And it has to be very very easy to do...

It probably should be stitch, because that's what I do...but stitch means getting stuff out, and switching on the machine and so on. Whereas drawing/sketchbook is as easy as picking up a pen or pencil. Or is it the literal equivalent of shining my sink - tidying my desk? That's tricky! I still wouldn't be creating anything! I'd love to know what your ONE thing is, your "non-negotiable"? Let me know!

So far I've managed both the sketchbook and the stitch, but certainly not everyday. Here's what I've achieved so far:

Six little paintings based on a method suggested by artist Louise Fletcher

A little card

It's not a lot, but at least I've created! The card was a bonus from the painting - I saved the masking tape that I used to divide up my sketchbook page, et voila, new material to play with. I sealed it with acrylic wax, because I'd used charcoal on the paintings.

If like me you're fascinated by how other people organise their time, this is a great book: Daily Rituals: How Artists Work.*

So there's a couple more weeks when I can indulge myself in all this, but then I'm going to have to crack right on, new routines and timetables ready or not. I'm just trying to retain a sense of some calm and space for as long as I can before life gets hectic again!






(*this is an affiliate link, so if you buy I'll get about 2p for recommending it!)

Slow Burn

Sometimes it takes me a while to get round to things, but I think 26 years is my record so far.

In 1992 I went to Harris and Lewis in the Outer Hebrides. It was fabulous. Desolate, wild, beautiful. We were wild camping in a tiny tent. Wild, because there were very few campsites, so we pitched wherever we found a flattish dry-ish spot - usually by a beach with an outstanding view over the Atlantic. From what I remember, we survived on porridge, baked beans and crisp breads! The weather was pretty wild, too.

This is the view across the interior of Lewis:

And here's me - I wasn't married then, so my surname was different. Can you guess what it was?!

My aunt had been to Harris and Lewis the previous year, in her tiny caravan, and she gave us three invaluable tips:

1. Take a trowel...

2. You can get a hot shower for just 60p in the public toilets in Stornaway

3. You can visit a Harris tweed weaver and buy direct from the maker.

So I did all three.

1. Like I said, wild camping...

2. A m a z i n g !! Best shower ever, particularly after camping for nearly two weeks with no facilities.

3. I drew out some vague plans, made some rough calculations, and bought about 5 metres of the stuff - genuine Harris tweed from a genuine Harris weaver in his little weaving shed. I was even given a little label to sew onto whatever I made. I think I was going to make a cloak.

Since when, The Harris Tweed has been carefully stowed in a bag (protection from moths) wherever I've lived. Whenever I think about making something and buying fabric, Himself mutters "...well, there's always the Harris tweed you could use...."

So when I found a pattern for a tweed wrap at the Knitting & Stitching Show on Friday, I just had to text home to let him know.

Even more remarkably, I actually took the pattern out of the packet, found the tweed, cut it up, and stitched up the wrap. It was so easy, I probably didn't need the pattern - after all, 26 years ago I'd already worked out what I was going to do...

I found the big buttons on the same stand - love them

I even stitched on the little label - also kept safe for all those years.

PS...and I stitched it on this machine, about which more news in the next installment...

Hardware

Hello again.

Hardware, on my desk. Literally.

My hard drive. 

I finally accepted the inevitable and retired my old laptop yesterday, replaced with New Shiny silver laptop which doesn't crash when I edit photos (the reason getting the Etsy shop up and running took three weeks!!) and doesn't keep losing internet connection or logging onto the neighbours' wifi instead of our own.

So this is being typed on a lovely new machine (admittedly with my older wireless keyboard) and the old hard drive sits here on my desk, awaiting its fate.

What should I do with it?

And my files are all safely* stowed on a separate hard drive, so next begins the long slog through them all, deciding which to keep and which to dump. The computer shop offered to transfer everything over, but I wanted New Shiny to come with new shiny and empty folders - why start with clutter already!!

*There was a brief sweat-inducing pulse-elevating moment yesterday afternoon when I needed to email two documents to a Guild for workshop information, and couldn't find any of the relevant folders. Turns out they were there all along, but hiding. Phew!

But because this long slog through the files is my next task, I'm obviously not doing any of it, and I'm playing with a different sort of hardware.

Do you know how hard it is to find new things that rust these days?! These have been in vinegar for two weeks not really doing anything. I think they're starting to go now, exposed to the air. But I need them to hurry up because I want to do some dyeing!!

I'm going to leave them in the kitchen to get their act together, while I go for a run in the woods.

And at some point, I might even do something textile-y.

Oh yes, before I go, to explain the previous post, in brief:

1. Usual post-holiday shock of moving from a tent to a house, and everything else to do with coming home from a fabulous holiday to our favourite place, this year with our favourite people to share it with
2. We had our front garden dug up to pave it and create a wider driveway, to accommodate our two cars.
3. Skips, rubble, dust, men, noise. The whole thing. 
4. The paving blocks are lovely - see previous post.
5. We didn't use the new driveway straight away, as our little red car was poorly and didn't move from the road for two weeks until we could get it to a garage to be fixed.
6. As soon as we brought little red car home, to park on lovely new drive created especially for little red car, we realised we had a problem.
7. We can't park on our new drive. The pavement slopes up, the drive slopes down. The crest between the two is too high (by about 3 inches) and so the car scrapes the ground before you get anywhere. 
8. We now have a highly decorative, excessively wide, block path. It's a delightful path, and we love our new front doorstep, but still...
9. We are going to have to pull up half the blocks to install some raised beds on the slope, and make it look (a) deliberate (b) not like a driveway. We could apply to Highways to lower the pavement, but a brief look through the criteria says we would have our application rejected.
10. It's all very embarrassing, having to explain to the neighbours why you are not using your lovely new driveway! 

My second favourite pastime

This post was going to be a sharing post with loads of photos of students' work. But seeing as my husband has "borrowed" my laptop for the day, and uploading and formatting photos takes forever on the ithing, perhaps tomorrow....it could be a Teaching Tuesday post.

Meanwhile, back at today, I am indulging in my love/hate/favourite/detested pastime: a spot of procrastination! On the surface, I am having a lovely time. I'm now winding up threads and stranded cottons. 

I rescued this lot from the bin early this morning, having chucked them out late last night as I couldn't be bothered to sort them.

I had already sorted this lot, while watching a telly programme about wolves...I know I will always associate these threads with wolves and buffalo now...that's how my brain seems to work (I listen to a lot of Radio 4 while I work and cook,  and can always remember what I was listening to when I look back at finished work, or my stash of marmalade...)

Yesterday I sorted all these drawers of thicker threads, sari silks and rainbow-dyed wools. I've acquired the Girl's old bedside drawers, so three more drawers for my stuff! And with a lot of thread and fabric being decluttered and charity shopped, those drawers are wonderfully organised and uncluttered. Fabulous stuff.

But underneath, deep down, I know I shouldn't be doing this. I should be designing and stitching. I have an exhibition over Easter, and as my husband keeps insensitively pointing out "before we know it, it will be (Girl's) birthday and the end of term". YES I KNOW! 

Funnily enough, I've just read a fantastic book about procrastination, the best one I've ever found. Apparently the three reasons we procrastinate are: feeling (or fearing being) overwhelmed, fear of failure, and fear of not finishing. I know the strategies suggested will work, it all makes so much sense - and yes, I am fully aware that I am choosing not to implement them right now! But I will, when I've finished winding my threads....

Five on Friday - (k)not work

Right, better make this quick - this has seemed like a long, dark week - and I need a glass of something restorative and a sit on the sofa! 

(I'm undecided - I will welcome the lie-in on Sunday because all week our 6.45am reveille has felt like getting up in the middle of the night. On the other hand, I hate hate hate the dark afternoons. Bring on Solstice and the lengthening days!)

1. Still no progress on the seascapes and knots. No surprise there then, as I have no definite brief at the moment. Not like me to work without a deadline!

2. I have, however, gathered lots and lots of source material. Our local charity bookshop was the source for all this lot and more, for the princely sum of £7.

3. I have also spent a week creating texture and colour swatches for my seascape project, and while this has been a wonderful procrastination, I am now thoroughly bored of it and not sure I like the result! It was also a bit worrying to realise just how much of this stuff I have in the house already to be able to do this:

4. On the subject of all the stuff I have in the house, as you know, I don't have my own room. YET. There have been mutterings - the same person who swore that he could never "work down the end of the garden" has been thinking that he might like to, what with his desk being surrounded by a sea of fabric, laundry, paper and other people's sewing machine trolleys and what-not. I have always dismissed the idea of taking over having the office as my studio, as the ceiling is split level and lower towards the window, which I think makes it hard to consider working in there standing up - and I spend a lot of time on my feet. 

But himself then had the utterly BRILLIANT idea of moving the GIRL into the office, and the Girl's room becoming a studio. (I have no idea why this hadn't occurred to us before - maybe because the Girl absolutely detests change of any sort??!) Anyway, he immediately regretted saying anything at all, as of course I have now spent the last week perusing the online catalogue of a certain Scandinavian furniture outlet and drawing little plans on graph paper. Such fun! We have to demolish and replace the summer house with a bigger one, which we can't afford to do yet, but still - you have to plan these things!

5. Finally, but by no means least of all - I did finish some work. This started out as a teaching sample, then went drastically wrong and I considered chopping off the offending lower portion. I have been dreading tackling it, as I wasn't sure how to rescue it. But I'm now VERY pleased with how it has turned out. Hooray.

Have a great weekend everyone, and thank you for reading!

Five on Friday - Distracted by Dye

1. Dyeing

One of our many charity shops in town is having a "yarn event". I didn't even realise, as I only popped in quickly before meeting Mr Gonecycling, and he doesn't tolerate delays due to yarn...so when I saw the huge wire bin full of massive cones of wools and threads, I just had to dive in there and retrieve what I could without thinking too long.

Which explains why I now have large amounts of cotton thread that need dealing with in some way. Dyeing, that is the answer. Use it myself, take it to class, sell in the etsy shop? The possibilities are endless. Ahem. So I set to and started to wind it off into skeins. Which then sat on the end of the table until Wednesday.

On Wednesday morning I spent an hour trying to wash them. (There must be an easier way - how do you do this, people? How do you wash skeins of thread without them getting in a huge tangle??) 

Then in the evening, after class, I dug out the as-yet-untried tub of swimming pool grade sodium carbonate, and soaked the threads overnight. On Thursday, I wrung out the skeins and drained off the soda, mixed the dyes and splodged it all over (getting technical now). And then had to run around looking for more things to dye, as I still had nearly a litre of soda sitting there looking like it could be useful. This always happens when I dye...

Then Thursday after class, I spent an hour or so rinsing and rinsing the threads, and wondering how the heck to dry them all - so here we are finally, this morning, with my rainbow threads drying on a piece of string in the garden. 

The miscellaneous soda-soaked fabrics are now in a kitchen tub looking a very dubious shade of purpley blue, and the tray is full of threads again - this time with blues and greens. And I still have 800ml of soda. Sigh.

I don't think I'll be setting up my own hand-dye business any time soon...

2. Hiding

Mr G had a good idea the other day. Well, he often has good ideas and luckily gets paid for them, but this one was just for me. Fed up with me complaining about not having my own space, and either having to shut my work away in a cupboard or leave it out for all and sundry to see, and being interrupted all the time because I work right next to the kitchen, he suggested I use some sort of screen. Like this:

Genius. It folds up and sits next to the cupboard (or quietly behind an armchair when the cupboard is open and I don't feel the need to be screened off). And you can still see through to the garden, without looking over my shoulder to see what I'm up to.

And it doubles up as a screen across the bottom of the stairs, to direct people into the kitchen rather than across my yoga mat - should I feel the need to do some bendy things without being interrupted. What a star.

3. Sampling

I continue to stitch teaching samples for class, and to be honest, I like them as they are - hardly any stitch, so not what I had in mind for them at all. Do I need to start again?!

4. Painting

As well as dive into the charity shop to liberate the wool, I popped into the decorating shop next door for some F&B tester pots - completely on a whim. I had heard good things about one of the greens, and I'd also read (those 59 seconds again, see last week's post) that green is a fantastic colour for creativity. The room I work in is pink - is this where I've been going wrong?! But I'm not sure about painting the dining room green as I've also read somewhere else that it should never be used for a room you eat in, something about casting a pall over your food. Thoughts?

5. Procrastinating 

What I should ACTUALLY be doing is finishing these samples - which I started in August, sitting outside my tent in Brittany. Hmm, finishing things - what's that like?!

And if anyone could answer my burning questions (how to wash yarn skeins, and whether to paint the dining room green) I'd really appreciate your thoughts! I always reply to every comment if you leave an email address, so the replies won't show here but in your inbox :) 

Thank you for reading! Back on Monday with a different sort of post, courtesy of Hilary.

Taking procrastination up a notch

Make Christmas presents? Finish start stitching colourful creative thing painted two weeks ago? why do that when you could do this:

Woah!  Discovered I had a star-thingy-tool and wanted to use it. I don't recommend doing this, but (a) my machine is out of warranty, and (b) it did allow me to get a load of crud out of it. But honestly, what on earth possessed me?!

Maybe I was dispirited because I'd done this to the Christmas cake:

I think we were slightly "under-tinned".

I have now redeemed things slightly, and got something done on the creative thingy:

(actually two thingies)

A start, definitely not a finish.

There will be some pics of student work as soon as I've sorted the photos - they've been mighty busy!

Insights

I've been reading up about procrastination lately

(and crying with laughter reading through that website - which in itself was procrastination - go figure, as they say).

 

I used to think I was perpetually "blocked" and when I wasn't blocked, I was too busy - things to do - people to feed, dogs to walk, house to clean, garden to erm, weed? anything anything, I will find a busy thing to do - just not stitching.  Mr Gonecycling finds it all a bit bemusing, and says that ever since he's known me I've always complained "I want to make something but I don't know what or where to even start".

 

(my general-purpose carry-all bag, that I've miraculously finished de-and re-constructing...)

 

But it's slowly been dawning on me (these things take a while) that I'm not perpetually blocked, I'm perpetually procrastinating, and have done my entire life.  Apparently it's something that is quite common to those with overbearing and controlling parents - ha!  Thanks Dad...

 

The reason why I have a shed-load of samples and pieces to show my students, is because I spent 10 years doing City & Guilds, and I had the deadlines to meet, but now?  Procrastinating heaven.

Partly it's a perfectionist thing (again, Father....) but mostly it's a crushing and paralysing FEAR.  Of what, I'm not sure, or I do know but haven't admitted to it....

 

(close up of bag front, for some light-relief from the introspection...)

 

But this week, since starting this no-added-sugar thing, has been a real eye-opener to just how ingrained my bad habits are.  On Monday I had a free morning, I'd finished my book experiments and my bag, and obviously didn't know what to stitch next.  Or where to start.  At all.  Previously I may have footled with some mild chore-ing until 11am, then had a piece of the weekend's cake..pootled some more, then oh look it's lunchtime, dogwalk etc....

 

But of course I can't do that now.  Oh dear.  (I hadn't realised I was that easily distracted or inclined to eat randomly - interesting, interesting...)

 

So instead of wandering into the kitchen, I had to just start SOMETHING.

 

I started with my sketchbook, and felt OH SO SILLY I just didn't know what to draw.  So I got that out of my system for starters:

 

and then started to doodle - anything, just to be doing SOMETHING

and then I got a bit bold, and added some colour

Thus inspired, I grabbed this little bit of collage I made last year, had a think and stitched a leaf (my default leaf, if you like): 

 

 

Then I stitched another two leaves on another bit of collage. 

 

 

Then I cut out bits.  And added some trailing leaves.  And next I'm going to add some handstitching and beads and whatnot.  I don't know what they're destined to be, but what's important is that I DID something new.

 

I loved the colours, and as they were just sitting on my desk still, I grabbed a bit of time later on to try another book-related experiment

 

I own several books on how to make handmade books, including one on embroidered books, but can't find any instructions anywhere for exactly HOW to attach a stitched cover - without using glue on everything.

I had a go at stitching the above to a piece of fabric-covered card, and added tapes, to pretend it was for a book with a taped/stitched spine, but I've no idea how anyone else goes about doing this!

Anyway the point is, I know it's not much, compared to what I could have achieved in the time, but it was the first time - I think ever, really - that I've been aware of how I was FEELING while I was creating. 

And doing those leaves, I felt physically sick - my stomach was churning (and not from hunger or thinking about cake!), I was fidgetty...it was horrendous.  But I carried on despite it, and I think I've made a bit of a breakthrough.

I had no idea things had got that bad, and I was that scared. 

Inside out and upside down

I've been trying to beat procrastination, and just getting on with stuff that's sitting on my desk staring at me...

I started this a few weeks ago, without any plan in mind.

It wasn't supposed to be a picture, but it sort of became one.  I had to unpick the green triangular clouds, but I'm getting very bored with it.  I've struggled on with it today as I'm not the sort to chuck something in the bin when it isn't working - but I was starting to get despondent about the amount of time it has sucked up.

But as I struggled on I began to notice that the back was far more interesting than the front...

And then I wondered what would happen if I inverted the image in Photoshop...

Now then, that's much better!

Now what?!

Do as I say not as I do

While I've been redecorating my kitchen tiles with pomegranate juice

("that's not a fruit, that's an autopsy": Mr Gonecycling)

colour-coordinating my lunches

rummaging around in charity shops finding a pirate costume for a 10 year old

and stitching away at my little procrastination project

my students have been a bit more productive, so I thought it was high time I shared some of their fantastic work.  It truly puts me to shame...

Carole has whipped up a cuff (sorry the photo is a bit blurry)

a bookmark

a seascape

and a rather magnificent landscape

And so has Jane!

And Jane also cunningly saved and used her offcuts to make this delicate beaded piece of work

The others have done magnificent things as well, but either have the "lurgy" and didn't make the last class, or haven't yet given me permission to post their work....and I'm too shy to ask again! 

PS Hello to new follower!  Hooray and welcome!