Mushrooms, more mushrooms and ghostly children

So, can you guess what we were doing in class last week? That's right. Mushrooms. I'm having so much fun with the watercolour students right now, just painting things you find in the fridge. For the next session I have asked them all to bring along two objects from home to paint. The only stipulation is that it needs to be non perishable as we will be painting these objects over two weeks. I wonder what they will bring...

Below is what I have been making with the ton of mushrooms I had left after the class: mushrooms stuffed with Danish blue and goats cheese, toasted walnuts and thyme served with rocket salad and toasted date and walnut bread finished with a drizzle of garlic oil. I've had this three times since Wednesday and I'm not even beginning to get tired of it.

In other news I'm still reading Wolf Hall (loving it) but did take a brief break to read The Small Hand, Susan Hill's new ghost story, mainly because the library had a queue forming of people waiting to read it after me. The Woman in Black remains one of my all time favourite winter reads and I hear Hammer Studios are filming it with Daniel Radcliffe in the lead role. The Small Hand is only a little book but thoroughly creepy and great for a rainy afternoon, under the duvet, with chocolate.

I also have a lot of new ideas for art projects, like making some mini stitched concertina sketchbooks using up all of the layered, painted wallpapers I made as class samples last term. I also want to try a Citrasolve image transfer- I read about this recently (I'm afraid I can't remember whose blog it was) and it seems to be quite a good technique for transferring images to fabric without the mess of using a gel medium. They seem to look quite distressed and vintage too, I will post the results when I've tried it which will be after I've figured out how to get Citrasolve in England as it's an American cleaning product.

Season of mists and mellow melancholy

Sorry I have been away a while. Since starting this blog I have had a couple of unscheduled breaks from it because sometimes I find I have very little to say. Or I stop thinking that what I have to say is very interesting. One or the other.

Since the show went up (and came down again, yesterday, very sad) I have found that I don't want to start anything else just yet. There are a few projects and ideas bubbling away under the surface but I have given myself permission to not do anything this autumn other than go to work, teach my classes (apples and onions this week), nest, enjoy being around my lovely family and maybe bake a few things. I made rye bread on Wednesday. Hilarious. Lobbed deftly it could kill someone.

I'm sat here at the moment staring at the rain and feeling a bit sad about being single. I'm not one of those Bridget Jones types (really) who constantly whinge about not having a boyfriend but at this time of year I seem to miss the ex the most. Right about now we would be getting excited because the pub in our village has just lit its first fire of the season, praying for a good frost so we could legitimately light ours, snuggling up to watch telly on a Sunday night and planning crisp smokey walks to pick up leaves and conkers and spot animal tracks. Of course I need to remember that there is also a real possibility we would instead be having an argument of epic proportions about money and his lack of commitment etc. Rose tinted glasses and all that.

Weekend frivolity

I am pretty sure that for the whole of my life so far my poor mother has dreaded my tendency towards boredom. As I have grown older I have found productive ways to fill my time; little projects here and there, painting, generally making a mess, but, even now, in my early thirties, Mum still gets the occasional phone call: "it's my day off tomorrow, shall we go out somewhere nice?"

Friday saw us traipsing off to Oxford where I purchased a small set of seasonal candles from Culpeper and some poppy seed heads. I love seed heads and I love the Covered Market in Oxford where you can find all sorts of wonderful things. At Christmas the butcher hangs out whole deer carcasses and rabbits and pigs and I love it! I know that sounds terribly blood thirsty and carnivorous but it does feel so festive and Dickensian.

I also have home grown tomatoes ready for brushetta this evening and two vintage pillow cases purchased from a car boot on Sunday. I don't usually go in for second hand bed linen but these were so lovely and look and feel so old and of such good quality that I couldn't resist. The lady on the stall had a remarkable array of goodies; glass bottles of rose scented linen water, old perfume bottles and original oil paintings of small french villages. I go to enough car boots with Mum to know that these kinds of stalls are few and far between, it makes it worth wading through all that Primark and Matalan crap.

Term starts next week and I still have a huge amount of prep to do for my classes but for now I'm just happy snuggling into my sofa with my candles burning and a good book- there are two on the go at the moment depending on my mood Inkheart by Cornelia Funke and Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel.

The show is up!

Below is a photograph of the fabulous work done by members of the Cherwell Valley Embroiderer's Guild at a workshop I taught on Saturday. Despite having a show to organise, mount, frame and put up, I was more frightened by teaching a workshop out of my normal surroundings than of finishing my exhibition! I need not have worried though, it was a great day and thankfully the weather was good for drying pieces of printed fabric and paper.



Here are some images taken of the gallery space at the Mill with my work on the wall. Just over a year ago when I planned the show and booked the slot it felt like a really big deal. Today, however, I just feel a bit deflated. I think this might be tiredness talking though. Tomorrow is the private view so just a little bit more to do and then I can really relax and take it all in. On Friday I plan to take myself off window shopping somewhere nice for things for the flat; I have been too busy painting and prepping work to even think about nesting. I came home on Monday night and it felt so empty with all my paintings gone! It's really a bit too big for just one person to be honest, I need to make it feel a bit cosier some how.

Some more book covers...

The exhibition goes up in just over a week and I feel that panic should be setting in about now but it isn't yet. I have done the foolish thing of having all my work ready and ready framed for about a week now. Foolish because it has given me plenty of time to find fault with it.

In an attempt to fill the time I am making more books...

Love in the Mist

This is a work in progress, I'm using a new type of paper and, though it is lovely and allows the paint to granulate and create wonderful effects, I'm not sure it's getting on very well with the masking fluid. Every time I try and peel it off, some of the paper comes away too.


This is my painting corner. I still think I need to have a bit of a move around of furniture but last night, sat here with the candles burning, felt good. The flat has been well and truly man-proofed with flowers, fairy lights and bits of fabric draped everywhere.

Yesterday afternoon was spent at another family do, this time saying goodbye to Jenny and Ben who are off to Hong Kong to live for two years. It's going to feel very strange without them. There was too much food as per usual but where we really excelled ourselves was with the puddings; Boozy Chocolate Mousse, Chocolate Mousse Pie, Eton Mess, Carrot Cake, Apple Pie, Red Velvet Cupcakes and, best off all, cupcakes made to look like panda bears. Consequently I spent most of last night slumped on the sofa in a sugar and Prosecco induced coma. I even dozed off during Sherlock.

A busy little bee

Last Thursday my cousin Jenny got married. Three weeks ago we had the most relentless, scoffothon of a hen do i have ever been on (i have resisted the urge to publish the photo of the naked play doh man) complete with the required amount of silly games. One silly game involved every hen bringing along a pair of her knickers; these were strung up on a line and we had to guess whose pants where whose. Every body got mine right. Even people i don't know very well guessed mine. Apparently they were "my kind of colour", all sort of muted and pale, which is generally how i dress. If you look at the inside of my wardrobe, one of the first things you notice (apart from my obsessive tidiness) is that everything is greyish (greyish pink, greyish blue) or beige.

I love that my paintings are completely different. This must be where all my colour goes.