Misery antidote

My slightly mental red boots from last year have come out of the cupboard since it is so dull and grey and I am feeling low after a bout of winter flu. Need to think of some things to wear with these, I figure they should be just the ticket to lift the spirits.

Grrr...

Have just under-fired some PMC and it broke. Interesting in a way; when I looked inside the broken pieces it was still white clay as opposed to silver. Must have got ginger with the blowtorch in the whiley since I last did anything with it. Have two more pieces to fire tomorrow. Must be braver with fire...

Mum's Christmas necklace

Sterling, Ethiopian silver (no idea what that means and suspect it means nothing official at al) and freshwater pearls in two colours. Hope she likes it.

Dolly no clothes

I have been experimenting with making a polymer doll with wired joints. I made her legs a bit skewed which gives her a tendency to do a sort of jaunty high-kick when she's laid flat. She sits well, as she demonstrates here on an old flat-iron. She looks a bit 20s without her clothes on but she'll look more modern once she's dressed. I don't plan to make her clothes removable so I photographed her without clothes for my own reference. Poor dolly looks a bit suggestive (!). I am pleased with her stockings - I used to make tights like this for peg dolls when I was little with my granny's old tights.

Again there is no daylight here and so it's an awful pic.

Babushka finished

She started out life firmly as a Matroyshka but now I think she is definitely a happy granny Babushka. Laura Ashley fabric from the 60s or 70s and lots of felt.

Frustration

I think my camera is on the way out. There is no light either and so my photos are pretty dingy. So here's a couldn't-care-less, didn't-even-iron-it picture of some potato prints I did. They were just an experiment but they were fun so I think I'll do some more at some point.

Lots of craft 3...

Foxes with sockses...

A painting/collage for my friend's new baby. It is painted, collagued and embroidered on canvas. I will never emroider on canvas again because it is sore, broke two needles and went wonky since it's impossible to pass the needle through and out on the same side. I find I go very wrong when I have to stab back-and-forth.

The baby was a boy ... is Foxy too girly?

Lots of craft 2...

...a matroyshka teaset. Actually, not really a set, but a couple of mugs, a couple of big teacups and saucers and a set of (more abstract) plates. I think they are destined to head off as presents, but they look nice with my teapot.

Lots of craft...

...finally finished in push ahead of going away for three weeks. Conference first, then a holiday in Orkney and then a week with my folks.

They are...

My version of the Berserker from the Lewis chess set. These little walrus-ivory pieces were found in a sand-dune in Uig in the 1800s and promptly removed to the British Museum, never more to return. The worst bit of all is the terrible guide to the pieces produced by the museum, which states that it's difficult to imagine how precious Norse pieces might have turned up on our 'wild' and 'remote' coast. Remote from London, perhaps, but the Vikings viewed the sea as one big motorway and Lewis was an obvious stop on the way to Man and Ireland. Almost all of the place-names here are Norse. Shame on you, British Museum.

The Berserker is biting his shield to get himself in the mood. My mother says the word derives from bear sark, or bear shirt, and that the Berserkers originally wore one of these. Mine is wearing some pretty patterned fabric but I hope he looks a wee bit mad.

Writing is exciting again

I have somehow become totally inspired to start writing a big long piece and I can hardly get through my working day, I am so excited to get home and start writing each evening. I think one of the reasons I like to write is that it is such a portable activity, but now I am toting it into work and my head is too full of it. At the moment the characters in this piece are distracting me during meetings.

Maybe it is a sign that I am a bit unhinged but maybe it's just the lovely weather cheering me up. Here is a picture of happiness from the other day (hope it's OK to show the bare bottom).

Various felt experiments

These photos are really horrid but it seems there's been no daylight here for ages... I'll replace them when the sun finally decides to make its annual appearance in September :o)
The first is a babushka softy I've nearly finished. I'm quite pleased with her face. I'll take a nice photo of her soon. She has nice vintage Laura Ashley fabric on her back, apron and tights.
The second are some little cards I made in a few minutes. Again the fabrics are vintage Laura Ashley - from the 60s, I think, from my mum's cupboard where they had once been intended for a quilt which never quite happened.
The last is a panda inspired (= copied) from a print-out a friend gave me. Not sure where it came from but she asked if I could make her a version as a gift. I made it a bit more lopsided than the original, which was quite spherical. I like wonky felt. He is sitting on some lovely pink tweed I bought in a sale.
Right, out into the rain.

Craft... connections

I haven't finished done anything creative recently but my friend has discovered this in a midden (refuse tip) in a sand dune in Uist. It's Iron Age - i.e. pre-historic. We think it's for carding fleece - the end is clearly meant to be used as a comb, and the notches would allow for yarn to be wound around it. We're not sure it was actually used - a midden is where broken or unused things turn up, so that would fit - because the teeth of the comb don't seem to have been fully carved out. On the other hand, though, it could have been old and they could have broken through time and use.

It's amazing to hold this in your hand. My mother teaches history and she always told us that we should be annoyed that schools in Scotland are so busy teaching Ancient Egypt and the Romans that they often don't teach children about their own ancestors. They lived good lives - nothing they left behind suggests that they practiced slavery or human sacrifice etc etc. They seem to have eaten a good diet, had plenty of free time, adapted their buildings perfectly to the environment, had indoor toilets and generally to have had a pretty good time of it. We are very lucky in that Stone Age sites like Skara Brae in Orkney are remarkably well-preserved and we can see almost exactly how they lived. The Iron Age is a wee bit more mysterious but discoveries like this throw a little light on the fact that people were quite like us, really.

It's made of bone and it will have to be declared and sent off to the government but until then holding it is a joy. I found a hammer-stone and that was much the same - you know noone has held it since the original owner more than 1,000 years ago. And it fits so nicely in your hand!

Random acts of craft

A bad day, several even worse meetings and all a long way from home. So to cheer myself up I made some earrings to match a ring I was given with some cheapie wire, a few beads picked up in Edinburgh, a pair of children's scissors and some tweezers. I quite like the way these turned out; this is my favourite colour combo at the moment.

Writing Goes Badly (or, Gits and Geese)

I have had a very bad writing experience. A commission for a big television piece has been entirely rewritten by a director without an ounce of cultural sensibility or integrity. The commissioners and producers don't see it as an issue that he doesn't speak the language the script is written in, which perhaps should have given me a clue as to the likelihood of any support being forthcoming from that quarter. I am in mourning for the characters. They have been in my head and my fingers and on my screen for so long and they have been reduced to poor, stereotyped versions of themselves by this man. My favourite spunky, punky girl has gone and I miss her particularly.

The dialogue is so wrong I can't even begin to describe it.

I have been cheering myself up with a CD of Jim Reid and wishing I had written the Wild Geese:

'Oh tell me fit was on your road
ye roarin norland wind
as ye cam blawin fae the land
that's never frae my mind?
My feet hae trevelled England
but I'm deein for the north.'
'My man, I saw the siller tides
rin up the Firth o Forth'.

'Aye wind, I ken them weel eneuch
and fine they fa and rise
and fain I'd feel the creepin mist
on yonder shore that lies
but tell me, as ye passed them by
whit saw ye on the way?'
'My man, I rocked the rovin gulls
that sail abune the Tay.'

But saw ye naethin, leein wind
afore ye cam tae Fife?
There's muckle lyin yont the Tay
that's mair tae me nor life
'My man, I swept the Angus braes
that ye hinna trod for years.'
'O wind, forgie a hameless loon
that cannae see for tears.'

'And far abune the Angus straths,
I saw the wild geese flee,
A lang, lang skein o beatin wings
wi their heids taeward the sea
and aye their cryin voices trailed
ahint them on the air.'
'O wind, hae mercy, haud yer wheest
for ah daurna listen mair.'

Maybe I should take up Scots.

A new project, but...

...perhaps not a project destined to be finished any time soon. These matroyshkas are going to decorate a cushion or a bag; haven't quite decided which. The patterned fabrics are vintage Laura Ashley and had been cut into hexagons by my mother long ago for a never-finished quilt project. Hopefully they are not destined to be incorporated into two unfinished projects.

Fairies and first steps...

... O hì, o hò, crodh an tàilleir, siosar is meuran is snàthad...

There is a Gaelic lullaby about the riches of a tailor. He doesn't have any cattle but he does have his scissors, a thimble, and a needle and thread. I like to think that he found a lady willing to look past his lack of four-legged bovine charm who accepted his proposal and lived out her days in glorious silk and satins, ribbons, braids and seed pearls.

All of which is a rough intro to the fact that I live in the Western Isles of Scotland and spend about half my life speaking Gaelic and the other half worrying about its chances of survival. When I need to escape I turn to to my back bedroom which is stuffed with paint, fabric, clay and just about anything else I can get my hands on to craft with. So I thought I might try to write about these twin obsessions in one blog, and see how it goes.

This first picture isn't even of my own crafting, although it was done entirely through Gaelic. Here are some fairies spotted in Baile Sear in Uist - rather nicer than the fairies which turn up in Gaelic stories. Perhaps I'll tell a Gaelic story next time. These lovely ladies are from a craft kit I picked up as a present on a trip to Edinburgh, from an American company called Klutz. It is inspired - after making two with help this six-year-old artist managed to produce another two entirely on her own, and they are really fiddly. I am very impressed and will be looking out for more - tapadh leat, Klutz!