"Inside the box": yellow

 "Indian Yellow" is one of my go-to tubes of paint. Here it celebrates the new flower on the peace lily, inside an amoxycillin box -

Something new...

...this is the first time I used packaging from a vaping product; since then I've picked up dozens from the road. They usually open quite cleanly and are a good size; a series is growing...

This shape used to be a punnet holding tomatoes - turned upside down, it (or its cousin) looks rather like a kimono -

In this box were chocolate eclairs -

More vaping boxes, auditioning for parts in the chorus line -

A King Oscar sardines box -

Studio Saturday - catching shadows

Three weeks have passed since the previous update and projects have progressed. Painting the shadows of the pencils on the window ledge got me into a routine of getting up early, taking a cup of coffee into the studio, and getting going with something or other. 

At an angle?

As the sun [earth, actually] moves and the shadows move, the colours change

With pen (worth a try!)

The first grouping

 

Closeup, showing changes in colour for each new layer

Found a good space on the wall

The blobs are an accident, and so is the running paint -
and they interact somehow

First layer; I hold a hairdryer in my left hand and mix
the next colour of paint with the right hand, by which
time the shadow has moved enough for the next layer of paint

Paint vs Pen

The more the merrier

At the top, painting on washed-off version

These two were washed off too - but in the photo I see
a strange beast, a plumed deer perhaps

Laid out in chronological order; the final one is still
to be painted, on the next sunny morning

What have I learned? 

1. Keep it simple, no need to tilt the paper, for instance. It's ok to do the same thing time after time, because each time will be different.

2. Accumulation is good. You could even say that it's enough. After a while the whole gets to be more than the sum of the parts.

3. An end-in-view isn't necessary, an important part of the process is seeing what develops.

Once that final paper is painted, is this finished? I have no more paper - these were about to be binned, they've been hanging around since the late 80s. I like the faded vintage-ness. It gives resonance, I think, that they are proofs or over-run from the printing of the Royal College of Art's cookbook (1988), bought for mere pence at an RCA degree show. I never did make any of the recipes that are printed and illustrated on the reverse of these, but another (now lost) lives on in that Gunpowder Cake is one of my signature dishes.

First project of 2020

My favourite tablecloth, the one with subtle grey checks, revealed itself in its true colours 

when I found some remnants of the fabric - the white had, over the years, become rather more grey!

I recently used the remnants (backed with recycled shirt fabric) to make placemats

but had, on discovering the sad fading of the favourite cloth, ordered some linen from Lithuania, which arrived before Christmas. Once the festivities were past, I pre-washed the linen, ironed it while damp, and set to work on making the tablecloth.

 If I'd ordered 10cm more, a false hem at the ends wouldn't have been necessary

 ... but it worked out in the end, mitred corners and all -

 Ahhh - done - and I'm not unhappy with the brown check -

Meanwhile a charity shop find was a curtain made of ticking, which will (one day!) make another tablecloth, with a jolly print around all the hems -

Seasonal segue

Christmas came early this year when I was given a handknit jumper, knit and passed on by a friend who claimed it needed a smaller person to wear it. As someone who simply cannot part with the garments I laboriously knit in the glory days of the 80s and 90s, I value the time and work that goes into handknits and was so happy to give this one a new life. I've been wearing it often.

But on Christmas Jumper Day - Friday 13th, this year - which was set up by Save the Children as a fundraiser in 2012 and has raised over £21million, I'll be following the advice to get my xmas jumper from a charity shop. In fact one such is already to hand! This handknit woollen "Nordic" beauty has been in my cupboard for some years now - I love it - and best of all, it's not specifically "xmassy", but it is special...

We should be rethinking our xmas buying practices, says this article (and many more articles) - but why stop at xmas? "Less is more" all year round, and green isn't just for xmas.

Horror statistics are everywhere, and here are the ones that got me writing this post.

Acrylic, a plastic fibre, was found in 95% of 108 garments currently on sale from 11 high street and online retailers

Acrylic releases nearly 730,000 microfibres per wash, five times more than polyester-cotton blends, a recent study found

Two out of five Christmas jumpers are only worn once over the festive period

One in three adults under 35 buys a new Christmas jumper every year

Especially that last one. How many over-60s buy a Christmas jumper ever??

Christmas is, of course, "a time for giving". A time for buying useless stuff for people who have too much already, in my bah-humbug view. Then comes the post-xmas letdown and the darkest, coldest weather sets in and thousands of kids go to school without breakfast, not to mention all the other evils brought about by lack of, or poor distribution of, resources.

If you've got financial security, how lucky you are. This article, about someone who gives away a huge proportion of his substantial income, was a wake-up call for me. I know I can now afford to be more generous, though this is very different from the decades of frugality growing up in an immigrant (post-war to Canada) family, and then as student, wife of a student, and single mother; you get in the habit of holding on to what you've earned.

But which charities use their donations most effectively?

This article pointed out that charities with less than £5000 of income don't need to be registered - news to me! It has good information about how to assess the effectiveness of a charity, and how to find local charities.

It also points out that if you're a higher rate taxpayer, you can claim back tax on part of the gift aid added to your donation ... ah yes that's the rich taking care of the rich, bah-humbug...

Projected projects

After a busy weekend at the "tea and textiles" sale of artwork in aid of MSF, it's somewhat strange to have the entire day stretching, empty, ahead. And this Monday is off to a gloomy, rainy start...

Wandering round the sewing studio with coffee in hand I immediately dug up some projects, or rather, they suddenly jumped into view.

First project: continuing with (goodness, perhaps finishing!) a travel-bag - red handles for the Central Line -

Second, gathering fabrics for a cushion cover

to add to this collection (ignore the sleeping baby, it's the fabrics we're looking at) -

On consideration, the search for the right fabrics needs to continue. The cover is needed because the current one has words on it (very annoying, seeing the same vapid words day after day). All that's needed is some "ethnic" fabric to cover those words.

The project has changed - find some blue(ish) fabric to applique onto the existing cover, over the words.

Third project is to use this bit of applique, made last century but it keeps hanging around ... I don't know why I can't bring myself to put it into the bin ....

It never did get turned into a Bookwrap, but with a bit of piping and something plain on the back, it could become a small rectangular pillow, useful for the neck or for the small of the back. 

Fourth project is to gather fabric scraps and wadding scraps to stuff it with. Actually, that thought makes me feel rather tired!

Two ongoing projects also beckon - sock knitting (not done much of that lately) and the fabric pots. It's time to get back to the ceramics studio.

Reuse is not abuse

A rubbing on tracing paper, from the 100 Drawings in a Day course last week

Mark making with an eraser

Rubbing away the rubbings

But some traces are left

 And now for the design work. (There was no particular reason for doing it on tracing paper, just that I knew I'd enjoy the erasure process! Trying out various types of pencils on the paper was fun too.)

I drew eight rectangles and marked five divisions on the top and down each side. The aim was to "connect the dots" ...

Much more rubbing out as better ideas emerge

Tidied up, and the best candidate moves to Round 2

Redrawn to fit the purpose - transfer to a fabric sample

Fabric pinned behind paper, then sewn along the lines, on the machine

Removing the paper is easier if the lines are perforated
with a dressmaker's tracing wheel

Et voila, it's going to be a ceramic pot! ... in the fullness of time
(yet another experiment)

The five spots on the sides match up so that the lines are continuous, and the threads at the top will be used to suspend the pot during the dipping process.

The machine stitching (large stitches) is easily threaded with the frizzy, thin metallic thread, unravelled from a very scratchy scarf. It makes an interesting line when left to its willful ways, but sometimes breaks during sewing, so threading it on the surface is worth a try.

Making a container out of a "work in progress" (started last century!) -

Before - it measures about 45cm x 35cm (20" x 14")

During

After