Prams/Toys

To cut a long story very short after lockdown lifted I threw all my toys out of my pram and have since been very slowly considering what to put back. This is easier now people aren’t insisting I keep things i don’t want.

I have been making stuff. And I intend to back post some of the more interesting stuff in the weeks/months to come.* ( i even have a list of all the Wednesdays I haven’t posted.)

Mainly I have been volunteering with a local group that raises money for local charities. They make things and either donate them to the charity or sell them for cold hard cash.
As the autumn is coming up we are getting ready for Winter Warmers and our xmas sales. Just the thing for the resent heat wave…

A shawl from donated yarn

• this will no doubt be very confusing for future people scrolling in chronological posting order

Taking advantage of the heat to do some sampling

EDIT 22sept

Finished shawl being blocked. Edge length 1 metre.

MER

Ps. It looks like my laptop top is too geriatric to run wordpress so we shall see how long i manage posting on my phone …

Hello World

You’re still out there? I am still in here!

I have been well, and busy doing creative things. Not so much with the organising my way out of a paper bag (or a piss up in a brewery). In addition I have mainly been watching book binding and ukulele videos*.

And Oh my they’ve updated the blog interface while I wasn’t looking – its been a while since May! But I hope I can find what I need and not die of frustration in the meantime.

And Lo! An actual bit of content – below are what I have taken to call my External Brain, as the one I was issued with at Birth is a bit glitchy. I’ve started 2021 early in an attempt to locate myself in reality – something that slipped a lot this year.

Top L > R ‘Array’ print project book, notes for small/ random projects, Bullet Journal Bottom L >R page per day diary kept during lock down, Travellers Note Book with home made inserts

I’ve been keeping a Bullet Journal (top right) since july 2017 and it revolutionised my life even before my ADHD diagnosis. It was, and is very important to things outside the house and studio. So at the start of lock down in March I changed to the Lemon note book which just happened to be an out of date page per day diary to keep a record – that way I didn’t have to freak out so much at time slipping by. I moved back in August to the Bu Ju which was fine…

I was not Fine in November.

The Book June ’19 (top middle) was, suprisingly, started in June 2019 and from the start I filled it with a bit of everything, Pop-ups, Flower Type Things random things that caught my fancy. It quickly became the book to make notes on one off projects; like decorating a bathroom cabinet and recording the form of a ply-split braided pot. Yes, I told you I had been busy.

The blue book with the Toy story? aliens (top left as if you care 🙂 was actually started in Jan 2017 when I was groping around looking for direction with my Printing – so many false starts! When Morley College reopen this September I picked it up to continue in the same vein. I use this book to think about What and Why I am printing what I do. Print Diary Vol.v (not shown) is used to organise/record what I actually do in the print studio; prints made, ink used etc.

Also not shown: workshop/shed diary – used to record activities and time spent on tasks, many Crochet note books, three Brooklyn Art Library sketchbooks that need to be finished and returned by mid Feb, several volumes that could be files under Flower Type things and a book for my book binding notes (which I did not make).

In conclusion, on struggling out of the hole that was the 11th month of the year, I realised that I need a place to take notes for things that fell between the “public facing” Bullet Journal, the continuous stream of IDEAS of June 19 and specific large/long term projects records. Things like shopping lists, Ikea orders, research questions, items to the ever expanding To Do list (currently at 5 pages, i note absently). Nothing precious, but something more substantial than the waiters note pads I had been using. Which brings us to the last volume in the photo – a travellers note book. So shiny. So expensive. So tempting. Then I couldn’t even bring to use it even when I actually did travel.

Then I realised I could easily make† low cost inserts and turn it in to a Stay At Home, a !Travellers Note Book. When they’re full take them out, put them somewhere safe and make a new one. It’s the indexing that’s going to be the challenge… Then I can really treat it like an external hard drive for my Brain

Well. that was my year. I did take pictures of things as I made them. And at one point was planning to post them without much text – my english is FAIL you might have noticed. My current intention is to post things back dated as if they were posted at the correct time and fill in the gaps in my the story of 2020. This is in addition to posting new stuff as it happens. [what am i like?]

So Best Wishes for the New Year. Take care. Be safe

MER

*So I have a tag to add to may collection and its not about my attempts to learn the uke.

† The inserts are about the size of the square you get from cutting down a sheet of A4. My sections are a gathered of 8 folios of cheep printer paper sewn into a pamphlet º , but you could use more. The off cut 8.5cm can be bound into a separate little book for a specific subject. Mine are Books and Shiny Toys.

º Now my foot notes have foot notes! Don’t worry only the first 4:40min is strictly relevant, I used a sheet of lightweight decorated card on the outside of the section for minimal protection.

And Now for some Mountains

For a bit of light relief I signed up for a short course in Advanced Japanese wood Cut. And then I mislaid the prints. So four months later you get half a post, because I i found the prints, but not the notes so I can’t tell you the proper names for all the snazzy techniques we were introduced to…

I ent dead

And here’s a painting to prove it

Half an orange monster

After the first monster went awol I started another. Mum chose the head, arms and legs from the pages of the Edward’s Imaginarium. I wanted to make a companion for her, but I ran out of time. And then I ran out of time to put it in her coffin.

Cactus update 2018

Some of the cacti didn’t survive the cold snap we had.

Some are so glad they did they are flowering all over.

Not sure what they think of this heat wave.

Maybe if I managed to water them regular

Pictures or it didn’t happen

Space ship fit out

I started this in September. It is an eighteen page concertina book.

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It has got to the stage where everything is coloured, but there is lots more detail work to do. There is a mixture of ink, colour pencil, water colour, gauche and the odd sticker.

I got this far in January but i’m posting it here, because I want to save the new year for new things.

MER

Book stuff, an addition to the library

This post really belongs in jan/feb 2018, but December needs all the jolly things it can get. The impulse shopper came home with half a pad of paper. Its american i think, its called parchment and in a weird size. I was wondering what to do with it, and decided to make a book – I’ve wanted to try Coptic Binding for a while now. And books are special things so it’s interesting to make them.

Map VIII -Exercises in Futility

I tried to do some new sketches for my 64 maps of hyperspace. It was hard. I even wrote some blurb, but I lost it. Anyway here are some examples of three weeks of frustration. When I’m feeling a little more relaxed about the experiment I’ll come back and comment on them fully.

Losing the Plot (a bit)

I’ve been struggling with the star charts, and so they have fallen away somewhat while i’ve dealt with all the other projects I’ve managed to involve my self with. It’s taken awhile to get everything sorted out it my head let alone on paper, so this is why this post is being written in January even though the problem arose in November.*