Work in progress....

I am working through a knotty stage of creating the Aphonomantes' Box just now. It feels as if it will NEVER be done, and as for the sketchbook that has to go with it? Yes, well....

So, as a perfectly legitimate distraction from the box, I have been working on CD sized art pieces for an annual exhibition at a fairly local gallery: Inchmore Gallery

Top "Flotsam" | bottom "Lost on the Tide

"Flotsam" is a felted and beaded piece with a lovely tangle of genuine flotsam that includes feathers and skeleton leaves.

"Lost on the Tide" is made from a gathering of found objects with felting and embroidery.


This has been a fun distraction from all the other things I "should" be doing - however it's time to get my nose to the grindstone and really work on the sketchbook for The Aphonomantes' Box. After much stomping round and round my extremely chaotic work table yesterday (accompanied by much grumbling and scowling) I began to see some progress in making sense of my back of the envelope sketches and jotted down ideas. I have this bad habit of trying ideas out in my head rather than actually making a mock-up of the possible techniques. So now I have to go back and show my different stages and discarded design elements in order to fill out my sketchbook.

Remind me next time that I want to start at the beginning and do the design brief first? It would make life SO much easier! I am already thinking about the next project - I really want the accessory to be a pair of boots. Perhaps I really have gone mad?
And the one after that? Oh, just a 6 ft span pair of wings. That's all. Or perhaps a tree house...

Or perhaps I shall just go and sit in a dark and padded room for a while?

As a light relief from all the intensity of mad creativity, I have been enjoying tending the hens every morning, letting them out for a run before we feed them and move their run to a new patch of the lawn.

They are officially my sister's hens, and this is her with them, but I seem to be enjoying the care of them at least as much as she is!
It is a very lovely and calm time, early each morning, pottering round the garden with the hens in tow, raking up their mess from the day before, fetching the food with them flocking round your ankles, watching them peck and scratch among the leaves and grass. they are surprisingly individual with Sol, the black one on the bench being the bravest and tamest; Goblin, (don't ask, I don't know why that's her name!) the grey disappearing round the bench, being very bossy of the others but very shy of us; Luna, white,( not in this photo due to being busy laying an egg) being very sweet and gentle with us and distinctly hen-pecked by the other hens; Ginger, hiding behind the bench, is not very distinctive yet, she is perhaps the most generic 'Hen' of the lot; and last but not least is the lovely speckled grey who somehow hasn't got a name yet!