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.

Small landscape studies

A whole week has gone by without access to the Internet. I had a week booked off work to get on with the painting and planning for my show and, of course, I have been relying on Mum and Dad's laptop for the last year. It's astonishing how much time can be frittered away just by dithering around on the Internet. I have spent the week painting, reading, making bread, planting foxgloves, lavender and chocolate cosmos, snacking almost constantly, having a sofa delivered, sending it back because it didn't fit through the door, feeling embarrassed, making the stressful pilgrimage to Ikea to buy a smaller sofa, realising that over the course of 7 years I have accumulated many, many throws, buying another one from M&S anyway and, of course, watching daytime TV.

As predicted in my last post, there is a small fly in this particularly girly pot of ointment. Turns out my upstairs neighbours keep strange hours and like to watch their TV with the volume up. So the above list has all been undertaken with the low level hum of exhaustion in the background.

My Fabulous Life

So, after 4 months of looking around grotty hovels I have finally moved in to what feels like my dream flat. As is usual with someone of my temperament, I am waiting for things to go horribly wrong.
I feel like I should be cooking lovely, nutritious food, buying flowers and decorating in a shabby chic sort of style ( I spend too much time on interior design blogs) whilst twirling around in circles and blogging about my fabulous life, but instead I am eating mainly Toblerone and last night saw me slumped on my loaned beanbag (sofa arrives next week) watching Glee whilst feeling vaguely melancholy.
I promise to post pictures soon of the paintings I have been working on, this is supposed to be an artist's blog after all. Tomorrow I am off to Art in Action at Waterperry gardens so a report on that coming soon!