Studio Saturday - finding time to create

This week I seem to have been "oddly busy" - busy doing odd things, things that shouldn't take long but do, and somehow not getting started on many or all of the things on my Long Lockdown List.

I did give the cooker knobs a very thorough clean, and smile when using them now -

 A thorough scrub of the bathroom -

 Keeping the kitchen counters, and table, clear -

 And revelling in the afternoon sunlight in the living room -

Odd things need to be done to maintain a sort of basic tidyness and cleanliness, some every day and some occasionally. Things that I've tended to put off, and off, and am staring to get round to. Washing the windows is the next big one, needing a lot of furniture moving - only possible after a good night's sleep. 

It's of concern that maintaining this deep-down tidyness could just take over - obsession? - and other things wouldn't get done.

Fortunately the phone goes Ping and something needs replying. Which is another odd arena - keeping in touch. I fantasise writing cards, to put in the post, to friends not seen for ages and won't be seeing for a while. It's so nice to get something in the post!

Food takes up an oddly huge part of the day. Cooking something nice "for one" with what's on hand, and keeping a list of what's needed (my son is the go-between). My aim is to gain back the couple of pounds lost a little while back, to eat "enough" protein and calcium and fibre, and to enjoy meals. So I play around with setting the table and take a photo of each meal.  Another project on the list is to collate these lockdown meals.

Also I'm oddly busy with daily exercise (those 10,000 steps) and am taking cliche photos on my walks - views and closeups of spring blossom, quirky things in the neighbourhood, series and collections of this'n'that. In the early days of having a digital camera, after the 7/7 (2005) terrorist action, I started recording the everyday things around me, in an uncertain time when it seemed they could suddenly be taken away. (Re-photographing those locations, or at least those I could walk (= exercise) to, would make for an interesting project - another for the Long List.)

At this time we're back to uncertainty and again it seems that the everyday life we took for granted is irrevocably changing, slipping away. Fortunately I have no job to lose, and financially am ok for a while longer. That most precious thing, health, is very much in the back of my mind, but paradoxically there's that feeling of having all the time in the world. It alternates with a kind of despair that each precious day is slipping by, with nothing to show for it. As if a concrete achievement were needed, or busyness was necessarily a good thing! 

Which brings us, finally, into the studio. The ceramics studio is out of bounds, none of us are going in at the moment, we're doing as we've been told and Staying Home. How fortunate it is to have a studio at home too, even a crowded and chaotic and overwhelming one. (Instagram offers glimpses of others' studios and how appealing they look, so organised, so tidy, the workspace obviously in use ... sigh ...) And other people work on the kitchen table and must clear up before every family meal. 

The weekly drawing and woodblock session happened, as they jolly well should, so some "studio" work went on. At one point the "studio" threatened to move onto the dining room table -

... if only to escape areas of chaos like these -

 However, the studio has areas that are under control -

 ... and there's a view of greenery out the window -

 Currently the workbenches are clear and there's fabric laid out for a short project -

What a difference a year makes!

Google Photos, which my phone automatically downloads to the laptop, offers a "revisit this day" option, which I usually ignore. But during the rest of August I have a little project to (here we go again...) organise my photos -- or at least, delete the duplicates and a few others, and make albums on the most important themes.

So today we can revisit Rathcoole Gardens, the unreconstructed domicile, newly inhabited, of the Domestic Carpenter and his lovely partner.

The weeds in the back garden had been hacked down and the ground covered to try to prevent them regrowing. We'd just been to the garden centre, but I'm not sure what this measuring was about -

The patio got quite a bit of use, but the kitchen was so tiny! At least it got a cheery windowbox -

These were waiting to be planted in the front garden -

and in window boxes -

The weeds had been removed, and I was sifting the pea gravel out of the soil and replacing it, and it was starting to look more cheerful -

A year later...... after this

... and this ...

the front garden still has some bare patches, mostly in the shady areas near the house -

 The back garden is smaller but coming along nicely -

And now the focus is inside.......

That's coming along too. The plastering is pretty much done, and the internal walls are going up, defining the bathroom, second bedroom, and kitchen/dining areas -

It's a big project to fit in beside the day job. A busman's holiday. 

What's needed now, urgently, is a good tiler - they seem to be thin on the ground, or booked up for months ahead! Otherwise Tom will have to teach himself yet another skill (as you do).

Studio Saturday

This past week I've settled in to the ceramics studio, a bit. Brought my clay and lots of "bits", ready to get going on Monday - but every day I find there's something I desperately need, and it's at home. So it becomes a matter of improvising: "Do what you can with what you have..."

Things to bring from home

How nice to have people around, chatting away. I'm having to concentrate on getting back to knowing how to rig up the pots for dipping and drying, so I'm as quiet as a mouse at the moment.

The kiln is being loaded and there's space for some of my little pots, so I'm cracking on with getting as many ready as possible. Drying time and drying speed is an issue - the first lot have lots of cracks, possibly because they dried too fast. Possibly this can be remedied with a paste of paper clay and a little gum arabic - I've tried it out on the larger cracks -

At this point I need to see which of the various "gold" threads found in the thread drawers are actually metal, ie will leave a dark mark. Plastic will be no good at all, just give off fumes when fired. The test pieces went into the kiln in sagars, "just in case" -

Three possibilities for showing their metal

Most of the pots already dipped show the texture of the sinamay - and I don't particularly like it. It will make a thin, fragile pot - thin is good, but having it crumble when you pick it up is not good.

Thinking about ways forward with both the texture and the fragility... Certainly the pots made with sinamay keep their shape and "stand on their own two feet" immediately after dipping, whereas those made with floppy fabric, even double layers cut on the bias, need support till they're dry.

First day's dipping done

 Every pot is still an experiment, often because of the type of stitching -

Vertical stitching leaves holes in the fabric -
well, let's see what happens....

Another batch ready. The wheels (sprockets?) help the pots keep their shape during dipping, not so crucial with the sinamay but very important with floppy fabric -

Second day's candidates ready to dip

... and dry pots still needing their bases trimming

 This lot is being dried more slowly -

"Floppy fabric" needing support

Nine little pots are in the kiln ... now I can stitch thoughtfully rather than hurriedly, and even draw out a few ideas. For instance I recently saw these (large!) pots by Dan Kelly at Contemporary Applied Arts, and started thinking about the "dark decoration" in a different way -

As I gather tools etc, my table is becoming more of a comfortable place to work. Some shelves would be useful, perhaps cubbyholes at the back of the table -- the table can't be put flush against the wall because of a big pipe just above the floor. 

A little notebook acts as my "external brain" - but already I'm slipping into evil ways, forgetting to write down a summary of the session at the end of the day. Will try harder next week...

More journal quilts

The theme is "Gridded" series; the first two quiltlets are here. The next two were made during the afternoon of Deadline Day and uploaded to the requisite website with a couple of hours to spare. No sweat...

Gridded: Camouflage

Although I used my thickest embroidery thread, the carefully-couched squares rather disappear ... hence the title. I had the pleasure of hours of hand-stitching (and catching up on podcasts) with this one. The black/white fabric was already quilted - it's the back of a sample made towards the CQ "Elements" challenge in 2015. So in terms of holding all the layers together, the couching functions as quilting.

Gridded: Illusion

Perhaps you've seen the large grid, the slipped rectangles, in a couble-page magazine car advert - I immediately appropriated the non-car page, thinking ahead to a JQ. The background has a strip of self-fabric added (with invisible stitching) to give a further illusion; with that ready, and all the layers carefully aligned I invisibly stitched round the edge and only then couched the paper onto the background.

For those of us who need to turn over embroideries etc, here are the backs of the first four JQs of 2017 -

The coffee table has become my "studio", spilling over with threads and complete with snacks to keep the spirits up and fingers busy -

 In the background, intensive and prolonged filling and sanding of bookcases, to make a perfect surface for spray painting -

Much progress was made on both the sewing and carpentry fronts.

With the change of month, it's time for a fresh JQ - I was on a roll and had enough fabric bits on hand to start another -

Yet more podcasts and stitching - it's ready to upload as soon as the album on the website is available -

Gridded: Off Grid

The black/white fabric is left over from previous JQs and the circles were made from threads that fell off the torn edges of the previously-prepared black backings and from other fabrics. Lots of careful, invisible, pleasurable stitching on this one, but ... I'm not happy with the rumpled look of the top section. Machine quilting might have worked better, but my machine is currently inaccessible.

Still, one of the aims of JQs is to see what works and what doesn't. 

On to the next!

Domestic rearrangement continues

A few days ago I mentioned the change from studio to carpentry workhop. Today was taken up with completing the transformation: making the room-within-a-room dust tight ... and convertible into a place to sew, if need be.

Let's start with the minimalist view -

Tom needs to be able to open the window so that paint smells can disperse. He'll be spray painting, hence all the plastic sheeting.

A lot of "stuff" got sorted and moved off the counters -

Boxes of tools are lined up ready to be taken to the next job -

 and cutting tables etc are at the ready -

There's just about enough room to swing a cat, metaphorically at least. And the carpentry equipment can be moved to one side, and the plastic "walls" rolled up, to allow access to sewing machine etc.

But first things first: with any luck, shelves will be cut and painted this weekend. Bookshelves are about to be born (somewhat overdue).

Elsewhere in the flat, walking space is somewhat restricted. It usually gets worse before it gets better, doesn't it?

As the long weekend continues, I shall be sitting comfortably on the sofa, using the coffee table as my work space. Less is more!

A major change at home

My Domestic Carpenter, who runs a carpentry and decorating business, has an amazing collection of tools, and it was the need to store them that got the "home renovation" project going, which has a few items yet to be finished (Bookshelves!!). In his top-floor bedroom, which has a dormer window, he was able to make storage space under the eaves either side of the window, and has been keeping his special boxes of organised tools there. The saw table and such large items are stored flat under the bed, into which he incorporated a hydraulic system. 

But the top-floor bedroom is up a lot of stairs, and tools are heavy to lug up and down between taking them to job sites, so Tom had the sensible idea of using my studio - which had already become a store room - to store his tool boxes between jobs. Then the under-eaves space in his room would be free for storing what's piled up in the (former) studio, and the process of organising it to fit efficiently into the new storage would give me a chance to see what's there and let that information percolate in my subconscious until I can act on deciding what needs keeping and what can GO. 

We spent three Saturday hours on the reorganisation. At the outset, the studio was crowded and chaotic, and the portfolio stand was always in the way  -

The portfolio stand is now for sale on ebay. Smaller items have been consolidated into boxes (mostly labelled) and are efficiently packed onto rolling pallets for easier access. And there's still room for more!

The floor emerged, and also some clear counter space -

It made a big difference to empty "the Halifax trunk" of paint pots and unnecessary objects and lift it, and the spare microwave, onto the counter (the microwave will be moved into its proper position later) -

Out went the grotty carpet, revealing a vast expanse of grotty lino -

As tool boxes started appearing, the counter started disappearing -

Keep your eye on the poles, they're part of the painting booth; the paint sprayer is on the floor behind them -

 The booth is set up, ready for use ...

 ... and by late afternoon various boards had been sprayed and laid out to dry -

Behind the plastic is the sewing machine ... having it less accessible makes me want to use it more! The booth can be dismantled easily and won't be in use all the time.

Another interesting consequence of this conversion of hell hole into paint booth is that, to minimise the smell of paint throughout the flat, the door of the studio can now be closed. 

I hope that soon the bookshelves will be painted ....