Poetry Thursday

Sometimes there isn't a poem demanding to be shared. Sometimes poetry is the last thing on your mind, maybe because there's so much else going on you're in a spin and can hardly stop to breathe. Sometimes  time pressure paralyses you, makes choices impossible, sends strategies skittering to the sidelines. Sometimes it's time for lateral thinking...

I offer you, instead of someone else's carefully set-down thoughts, a moment for your own reflection - two windows - make of them what you will. Haikus, anyone?

Wordless Wednesday

Drawing Tuesday - Petrie Museum

This is not the Petrie Museum - it's another building at University College London, overshadowing the courtyard where we had coffee ... and very glad of the shadow, as it was a bright, warm afternoon.

Inside, the temperature was cool and there were lots of pots to draw, some with intriguing breaks, joins and holes -

I started with a well-repaired one, attracted by the patterning -

and moved on to this one -

Mags also drew pots, using a variety of media (see her post on this for explanation, and better photo - all that shade got the camera confused)-

As did Sue -

Janet B drew a skeleton in a pot -

Jo's figurine was also fired clay -

Surely Janet K's lamp-bearer was clay too? -

Carol drew tiny alabaster vases (life size) and then discovered drawers to pull out, full of treasures from tombs -

Technique of the week comes from Mags - using the tip of a mechanical pencil, without a lead, to score the paper before adding marks/shading. That leaves white lines -

Parquet at Somerset House

 

Photo-op in St Pauls Cathedral

The special evening opening filled the cathedral with hordes of visitors and their cameras.

Outside, crowds waiting for ... something ...

 Waiting for the Domino Topple that re-enacted the spread of the flames of the Great Fire of 1666.

 As the clock struck 7, it rushed past the cathedral, unlike the conflagration that burnt up Old St Pauls.

And the crowds ran after it: 

As gravity did its work, onlookers were drawn helplessly on, unable to resist the satisfying clunk of block-on-block physics. (videos here)

Inside the cathedral were all the usual grand subjects -

There's a personal story about the dome, which is actually an inner dome within the outer dome. You can climb up to the whispering gallery (256 steps) and then up to the stone gallery (376 steps) and go outside to see the view. After that you can climb between the inner dome and outer dome to get to the golden gallery (528 steps, most of them grillework, and narrow, and steep). Beyond the golden gallery there is a further stretch - it was open to climbers in the 1970s, the good old days before Health&Safety, and I was young and brave/determined/foolish enough to carry on up those steps, or rather, ladders. At the top stood a bored old [it seemed at the time] man, having a cigarette and listening to Radio 3 on his little transistor radio. We caught our breath, looked out of one or two of the round windows under the golden ball and lantern, didn't have a long talk with the warder, and made our way back down, which was every bit as frightening as going up. It hardly seems possible.

In the crypt, acres of mosaic floors -

and memorials to musicians, poets, artists

John Constable and Philip Wilson Steer

As well as military greats -

Nelson

The audioguide noted the change in war memorials, from glorifying the leaders to representing the multitudes who lost - or gave, depending on your viewpoint - their lives, such as the two crosses by Gerry Judah in the nave -

Once again my camera turned to a favourite subject - feet moving over floors. What was underfoot went unheeded as people turned their cameras upwards. (A favourite ploy was a timed shot with the camera laid on the floor, pointing upwards at the centre of the dome.)

I clicked merrily away -

trying out different places -

 and found this "river of light" with feet stepping across and into it -

 Call it "research" ... perhaps one day there'll be another "Museum Maze" book?

One boxful at a time

Decluttering is hardly everyone's favourite activity, and it's hard for some people to see how it could be pleasurable ... though I do know people who effortlessly manage to keep their things under control. They don't seem to be able to share how this happens for them; perhaps they were just born "different"?

After enrolling on a short ceramics course in hopes of porcelain-dipping and firing some of my "chimneys", I realised it would be a good idea to make some more to add to my "stash" -

Now that I'm back to stitching on The Daily Round, I realised that why it works is because all that's needed for the project is contained in its box - the work, the threads, the strips, the inked (and uninked) colourcatchers, the scissors. Take the box to the garden, to the tv, and just start...

A box for the chimneypots was needed. A shoebox was to hand - but it was filled with scraps of fabric. The devil on my shoulder whispered "oh just get rid of it all" but I didn't listen - it's my scraps that are the most useful part of my fabric collection. Most of them went into bags with labels: "Scraps - for crafting" and went outside into my giveaway box. Some time later they had gone, maybe to a new life somehow.

And during the sorting I had found bits that can be sewn into interesting "chimneypots". They are to be photographed before and after firing, so even if details like colour are lost under the clay, there is a record of them, a life story recorded.

Making chimneypots in the conservatory.
The tablecloth dates to the 90s, printed in a workshop with Liz Nilsson;
it's worn thin, and faded, and been patched with appliqued fish

 Of course some scraps went into the big scrap box, which sits practically in my line of vision at the computer. (I've become skilled at ignoring its mess and muddle.) The next evening I started on that -

Before (or rather, during)

After

One bag for the giveaway box, and a few scraps left for me, including a lot with fusible web on the back. A bag of rags (for eventual lino and monoprinting cleanup.) And the wastebin full - am I getting better at this?

The morning after -

Daily stitching at the ready on the table, and on the shelf, the scrap bin so tidy, so minimal ...it really does make me want to do more.

Playing paper dolls

While researching the concept of Ladies Drawing Night* I came across this image

which filled my head with memories of "playing paper dolls" in the 1950s. What a treat to have a new book of paper dolls and cut out the clothes, with the little tabs that held them onto the doll. Usually the doll was on heavy, shiny paper, and had a slotted stand so she (or he) could stand up. There might be several in the book, the shape the same so the clothes were interchangeable, but with different hair colour etc.

One summer - I was 7 or 8 - the family set off on holiday to "the interior", probably a weekend at Shushwap Lake. At a stop along the way (it was a six-hour drive in those days), the store we stopped at had a book of paper dolls and I pestered my parents till they gave in and bought it ... only to find that we hadn't brought scissors along. Fortunately there were nail scissors in mother's handbag, and I had to make do with those, which rather took away the pleasure of cutting out. I prided myself on my good cutting out, and wanted to get the entire book cut out immediately [how early are our characters formed...] but didn't really get the hang of making the tiny snips needed, didn't like the look of the results, and the earnestly-desired, disappointing book languished.

That was a holiday treat and family finances didn't stretch to all the paper doll books I ever desired, nor was there much selection in the stores that a child living in the country could get to. So we made our own paper dolls, using the underwear models in the Sears or Eatons catalogues as the doll

Perfect for a paper doll (1955; via)

cutting a half-circle at the base, and another from cardboard, for the slotted stand. It was wise to glue the page to cardboard before doing the cutting out, to get sleekly-finished edges.

Then we traced around the outline and used that to design costumes for her. Or him ... though I did find men in underwear deeply unappealing, and why would men need "designed" clothes anyway?

Anyway, they never had legs (via)

Finding full-length children could be difficult. Sometimes you had to resign yourself to making all the clothing in the shape the "doll" was wearing in the catalogue -

Use the one at bottom row right (via)

Ah, nostalgia...

Mother and daughter outfits! (via)

Wardrobes for a variety of activities (via)

*Other sites for Ladies Drawing Night (thanks, Tina!)

http://www.leahgoren.com/ldn/

https://www.instagram.com/explore/tags/ladiesdrawingnight/?hl=en

http://samanthahahn.com/blog/2015/03/05/ladies-drawing-night/

Poetry Thursday - Sonnet 17 by William Shakespeare

Who will believe my verse in time to come,

If it were fill'd with your most high deserts?

Though yet, heaven knows, it is but as a tomb

Which hides your life and shows not half your parts.

If I could write the beauty of your eyes

And in fresh numbers number all your graces,

The age to come would say 'This poet lies:

Such heavenly touches ne'er touch'd earthly faces.'

So should my papers yellow'd with their age

Be scorn'd like old men of less truth than tongue,

And your true rights be term'd a poet's rage

And stretched metre of an antique song:

But were some child of yours alive that time,

You should live twice; in it and in my rhyme.

William Shakespeare: Sonnet 17

To mark 400 years since the death of the Bard, here is one of his 154 sonnets. 

He was born in 1564 - we know he was baptised on 26 April, and it was usual for baptism to take place three days after the birth, so it's surmised his birthday is 23 April - and it was on that same date that he died in 1616. In between, not much is known about his life, but Bill Bryson has spun those few facts (and the conjectures) into the historical context and come up with an enjoyable Life of Shakespeare.

It's a bit of a sidetrack from poetry, but here's a bit from the book that I found particularly interesting:

"Sumptuary laws, as they were known, laid down precisely, if preposterously, who could wear what. A person with an income of £20 a year was permitted to don a satin doublet but not a satin gown, while someone worth £100 a year could wear all the satin he wished, but could have velvet only in his doublets, but not in any outerwear, and then only so long as the velvet was not crimson or blue, colours reserved for Knights of the Garter and their superiors. Silk netherstockings, meanwhile, were restricted to knights and their eldest sons, and to certain - but not all - envoys and royal attendants. Restrictions existed, too on the amount of fabric one could use for a particular article of apparel and whether it might be worn pleated or straight and so on, through lists of variables almost beyond counting. 

"The laws were enacted partly for the good of the national accounts, for the restrictions nearly always were directed at imported fabrics. For much the same reason there was for a time a Statute of Caps, aimed at helping domestic capmakers through a spell of depression, which required people to wear caps instead of hats. For obscure reasons Puritans resented the law and were often fined for flouting it. Most of the other sumptuary laws weren't actually much enforced, it would seem. The records show almost no prosecutions. Nonetheless they remained on the books until 1604."

(via)