Gimme Shelter

A wee small shelter, fit for one.

One and a half man shelter

A workshop and symposium with Deveron Arts. 

This workshop really interested me as it had such strong echoes of my own Shelter degree show piece. It was really interesting to listen to another shelter builder talking about his whys and wherefores.

We fitted six in here!

Building Shelter

 Degree show set up with my wonderful mum as a second pair of hands

Very Wild Berry Mead

Raw local honey
Blaeberries (Vaccinium myrtillus)
Brambles (Rubus fruticosus)
Geans (Prunus avium)
Ling Heather flowers (Calluna vulgaris)
Water
Wild yeasts from all of the above

The alchemy of wild fermentation transforming and interweaving these wild ingredients into The Blood of Life

The smell wafting from the airlock is promising, the outcome utterly unpredictable and unrepeatable... Only time will tell if this is something wonderful or something minging!

Blaeberry Mead step 2

Straining off the must

 Fermentation is properly under way and I have strained the the juice out of the berries. It's smelling good, looking good and bubbling through the airlock convincingly...

First ferment with airlock

New Highland Contemporaries 2

My loom and film installation is on view in the New Highland Contemporaries 2 exhibition in Nairn this week!

 For details of times and dates please see here

Nothing to wear!

The other day I had one of those moments... You know the sort - I looked in my wardrobe and there was NOTHING to wear!!!

Nothing that is except things I didn't feel like today, or were too thin and light for the dubious Scottish weather with hail and sleet mixed in with the lively glimpses of sun. Nothing that felt like it matched my mood that day. Nothing interesting or new.
So I put my darned jeans on yet again, and grabbed the least worn-out jumper yet again, and headed out for uni. All day in the back of my mind was the question of what to do when you are buying nothing new (not even just "new to me" from a charity shop) for another year and a half….
That evening I had a good dig through my stash of "not worn out but not wearable" things (jumpers shrunk in the wash, shirts that don't fit right, trousers that are too big or too small and so-on) and also my "worn but beloved" basket and tried to come up with something inspiring!
Two identical green lambswool jumpers caught my eye. They never fitted flatteringly so I had felted them in the washing machine and saved them to making into something as I love the colour.

Time to get the scissors out!
I think if I combine the two I can make them into a tunic top/dress. Watch this space for the next steps!
I am also working on mending my favourite jumper, a lovely natural brown homespun that was my very first big knitting project. The elbows wore out because the yarn was too thin on that section of it. So I undid a throw I crocheted that had some of the same wool in it, and am re-knitting both arms from the elbow down. I can't wait to be able to wear that lovely jumper again! I am finding that I actually quite like knitting too, I used to find it such a drag, it took toooooo looooooooong………. But now I find it a good way to wind down at the end of a busy day. I hope to finish one sleeve today or tomorrow, and if I do some every day I may have my jumper back up and running by next week. Something to wear that is fresh and "new"!
Maybe I will find some time to piece the green jumpers into something new this weekend too! Two times "something new" in one week! That should keep me happy for another six months ;)

Musing

Sorting through my fabric stash I re-found a bag labeled 'cleaning rags' in my Nanna's handwriting. Several of the pieces have holes worn right through, some have obviously been recycled several times prior to being consigned to the cleaning rags bag - I found pillow slips mended round the edge with a slightly different fabric; ironing board covers hand made, presumably from old sheets; lengths of fabric with a 'sides to middle' seam up the centre. Many of the pieces of fabric are fragile with places worn right through and many other places that are almost see-through.

I am touched by both the fragility of these fragments and by the careful frugality of my Nanna who used every little thing to it's full potential.

I tried darning the white piece above and later printed on it with my walnut ink. However, I felt my stitches were large and clumsy (just for scale - the black thread is sewing cotton). When grumping about this to one of my class mates, she suggested that it was my way of looking at the world that made me see my stitches as large clumsy - she reckoned they were TINY and tidy! So as an experiment I took a fragment of torn fabric from my old quilt and darned it onto a bit of calico. At first as I worked my stitches looked tiny to me, but as I went on they looked bigger and bigger…. It's an optical illusion caused by my state of focus. When I go back and look at this wee bitty scrap the stitches look like fairy work!

I am off to do more fairy stitching….

Walnut Ink

I am determined - I am going to do a silk screen print with home made walnut ink.
 So far I have tried two mixes of colour extracted from the green walnut husks I gathered on campus at Moray School of Art. The first try was far too liquid; although the colour was good and intense it just ran through the screen into puddles on my paper. So then I tried mixing some with acrylic silk screen medium. This worked to an extent, but the colour was too pale now.

So I have spent the evening pulverising more husks in an old coffee grinder, soaking the resulting powder in a wee bit of water then straining the dark juice out with a sweet old tea strainer. Although green walnuts (husk and all) are edible as a pickle, I am being cautious and only using tools and equipment that I reserve for dyeing.
I have the nearly full enamel milk pan simmering on my wood stove now to try and reduce the walnut ink down and make it thicker and stronger. It smells rather interesting! I'm not sure if I like it or not....
If this simmering doesn't make my ink thick enough, I have plans to try thickening it up with corn starch or gelatine, or even seaweed! Lets hope tonight's experiment works - I'm running out of time, we only have three more weeks before we have to hand in our work for the printing block!

Mending mending mending

The mission to keep my jeans wearable continues... Gradually the original fabric is disappearing beneath a layer of boro style mending stitches and a few surface patches. As they develop, I am loving them more and more, they have a really sturdy feel and are beginning to look really loved and real - like the velveteen rabbit " Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."
That kind of says it all about my jeans :)

February

Sunlight on Water

There have been some beautiful bright days recently. I sat by the Findhorn River and watched the light dance on the water and listened to the birds singing as the sun warmed my knees. It was a brief but much needed respite from the chaos reigning in our studio at the moment. We are having a huge change around and there are builders at work removing one wall and making another. We have had to pack EVERYTHING from one room into the other so that dust and grit doesn't get into all our baskets of fibre...

Last week I had a lovely sunny day for my day off so I went for a beautiful ramble through the woods out the back of the house and gathered rushes to make something special...
At the beginning  of February is St Bride's Day, traditionally celebrated on the 1st of Feb. It's an old Highland and Irish festival with strong Celtic Christian/Pagan roots. I have only been aware of it since I moved to this area as it is celebrated in the Findhorn Foundation.

 It was like coming home to someone I knew to find the Goddess/Saint Bride or Bridget, and her celebration has been an important part of my year ever since. On the Western Isles one of the old, old traditions was to make a Brideag (Little Bridget), a doll-like figure of straw.

Bride's Niche

Over on the East and in the present day I was introduced to the Brideag (sounds like Bree-og) as a guardian figure made of green rushes and wrapped in a cloth. Blue is sacred to Bride and I use a blue silk scarf that belonged to my beloved Granny.







Anyhow, what has all this got to do with creativity? Other than the obvious fact that I spend a blissful hour or two gathering and plating rushes in a very creative style!  I find that time spent doing a gentle yearly ritual, like this re-creation of the Little Bride, is exceedingly nurturing. It anchors me to the year in a very natural way and I find such obscure festivals easier to relate to than more commercialised ones like Christmas or Valentine's day. This year I missed the story telling and candle-lit festivities in the Universal Hall at Findhorn , I even missed the day itself as I was so busy with changing the studio round that I FORGOT that it was St Bride's Day! For me this is almost like forgetting that it's Christmas! When I remembered, a few days later, I also remembered that all the old Celtic festivals were originally anchored not to a specific date but rather to the tides of the natural world. The Snowdrops were only just coming out in my garden, so hay! it's the right time to celebrate!

I leave you with a snippet of sound and sight from my interlude by the Findhorn river.

The Key to the Kingdom and the hunt for inspiration.....

Trying out ideas

 Once upon a time I saw the title to a poem in the front of a book: "This is the Key to the Kingdom, Of the Kingdom this is the Key". It made my heart leap in anticipation and hope, and I raced to the right page to learn, well, SOMETHING magic..... Alas, it wasn't what the title promised, rather, it was more like "This Is The House That Jack Built". What a let down. I closed the book in a huff. For years that first line/title has haunted me with it's promise and has hovered round me tauntingly. If only someone had written the REAL poem that belongs to that phrase. Then one day, with those lines floating and flaunting themselves round my head, I curled up in bed with my favourite pen and writing-in book and I pinned them to the page and followed them to the end of the poem that should have been. This is what emerged:

This is the Key to the Kingdom, of the Kingdom this is the key
This is the Door that the Key unlocks in a high stone wall that none can scale
This is the Garden behind that Door, all tangled and wild with vine and briar
This is the Well at the heart of the Garden, deep and cool and clear
Neath the lip of the Well all hidden in ferns, lies a Box of gold all covered with jewels
Within that box there is a key that unlocks the way to worlds untold
This is the Key to the Kingdom, of the Kingdom this is the Key

I was extremely chuffed with myself over this wee poem at the time, then one day with the lines dancing  round my head as I worked on a stubborn commission I had a realisation. This poem tells of the impossible situation of an artist trying to grasp the inspiration (symbolised by the key) that is locked away behind that stubborn door - all you can get by peering through the key-hole is the barest glimpse of the wonders beyond, and to open the door to that magic realm, you need that blasted key that is INSIDE!!!!!!! So this is the posture of the artist - on bended knee with eye glued to the key-hole of the magic realm begging the key to open the door wide. And some times, some wonderful, magical, mind-blowing times, the door opens a crack and you get this wondrous gust of inspiration washing over you... The only thing to do then is RUN! as fast as you can, to the drawing board, the paint brush, the fleece and hold on with all your might to that fading dream and do your very best to pour it out onto the work table so that you can share it with others. And then, if you are lucky, it all flows - magic happens. It's worth all the hard work, the times that are like kneeling before the key-hole trying to make out a glimpse of something worth showing to the world.

Playing with different ways of using a motif

I have been on my knees an awful lot recently as I struggle with finding inspiration from a source that doesn't inspire me. But it has worked I think, that door opened the tiniest crack and something beautiful slipped out and into my mind. And I caught it too! On the 5th of Feb I have to show my client the possibilities that I have come up with and let her chose what direction she would like me to take the commission. Scary. But at least I now feel I have something worth showing her!

Creative meanderings and Happy New Year!

Winter Hearth

My creativity seems to be hibernating, perhaps it's the cold and darkness; I always find my self wanting to curl into a dark warm nest at this time of year. I should love to write a long and entertaining post about the importance of giving yourself creative time off, but I'm  too busy curling up by the fire and reading  'Wintersmith' by Terry Pratchett! This is one of my favourite books by one of my favourite authors, and like all books I love, I can read it again and again and find more and more depth and meaning each time I read it.

Yes, time to sit and dream, poke the slumbering fire and read good books is vital to replenishing creativity. I have always found fire to be restorative and nurturing, and never more so than in the deep dark of winter. Here in the North of Scotland there seems to be an awful lot of dark - the sun doesn't manage to climb above the southern hills till after 8:00 in the morning and it's away back down again by 3:30

It's New Year's Eve and the sun has gone down and the wind is blowing colder now, my little white Christmas lights are reflecting in the windows as the last of the light drains out of the day. I like to spend some time on New Year's Eve musing about the past year and weighing up my progress against what I hoped it would be. The tally isn't too bad this year, I have been pushing myself to grow and learn, trying to leave behind the patterns I have grown out of (or should have grown out of but haven't!) and learning new tricks as I'm definitely not an old dog yet! As an artist one of the big challenges is organisation and orderliness, and although chaos runs rampant around me on my desk, I do at least know where most things actually are! I am gradually training myself into putting things back where they belong once I have finished with them - it makes life SO MUCH EASIER if tools and materials have a place to belong and are to be found in that place! I think that is my biggest New Year's Resolution - try and be tidy, put things away! If there is too much chaos in my life I find it clogs my creativity, my joy and my motivation. It takes less time than one would think to put shoes away as you take them off, or put the pens back in their pot once you have finished drawing.... Yes I may wear them or use them tomorrow - or I may not! Either way it's better now if they are where they belong.

My favourite walk is just two minutes' stride from my studio

Another resolution - I am going to spend some time outside EVERY DAY. Even if it's only 10 minutes, I need daylight and fresh air as much as I need to breathe. Some times I get so involved with creativity that I forget to stop and go for a little walk, rest my eyes on the green distances and MOVE! BREATHE! I need to look after my physical self - as I ask such a lot of my body it's only fair to be a good owner. And after all, you only get one, it's a precious resource. I have had a habit of ignoring it as much as possible and far more than is sensible - injuring my hands by continuing a job until it's finished even though I have wrenched something badly; crouching over my work table with my nose 6 inches from what I am doing for so long that I can barely stand up once I have finished 3 or 4 hours later; forgetting to drink any water for a day or two then wondering why I have a head ache... Yes this year I need to learn to take care of my body or it will clap out on my well before I have finished with it! There are just so many interesting things to do that I want to keep my body in as good a working order as I can for as long as I can. I am aware that I want to learn and do more things than I can possibly fit into one life time as it is! This is such a wonderful world and there are so many exciting things to learn!

Now I am going to go and stoke the fire, mull some home made elderberry wine and fish out some bees wax to do an intriguing old bit of fortune telling with! At Midnight we will open all the doors to let the Old Year out and the New Year in - and so we will welcome 2012. I wish you a beautiful New Year yourself, and may it be a blessed and wondrous year for the whole world.

This is Craig Valley - Home - and I hope to re-visit this, my favourite place in the whole world in 2012

Introducing Ebony and my scattered life

Ebony sleeping.

Ebony is blind, has been since he was hit by a car as a wild and adventurous teen. However, this doesn't seem to stop him from having a fantastic life. When not curled up blissfully in a prime spot, he is out hunting and keeps my garden clear of rabbits and makes a big dent in the mice population.
Now why is a cat an important part of living a creative life? He keeps me grounded, sometimes going as far as to hook a claw in the back of my leg to bring me back to earth! He makes me laugh and reminds me of the importance of enjoying the little things in life like a spot by the fire, cuddles and play time.


Just now I really need his reminders as I have far too many things on the go at once. I am working flat out at the studio, trying to keep up with all the things that need making, to keep our little shop and gallery full - and at the same time I have my head full to the brim with my second year City and Guild's Craft and Design projects. Then there is the house and my large garden, time to spend with my lovely family and time needed for solitude to refresh the creative well. Yes, I am needing reminders to keep my head in the now and my feet on the ground.

Exploring Runes.

This is a page from my sketchbook for my next art piece. I am making a box that is inspired by collector's cases and apothecary's boxes. It belongs to a different kind of collector and doctor - one who collects silent songs and wordless stories. I will write more about "The Aphonomantes' Box" next time as it's now time to go and buy hens for my little sister's 18th birthday present!

This first post is short, I have no idea what my style will develop into or what I shall write about. Things will become clear no doubt! I just hope some of you will read and enjoy.