week ten: stitching

It's been a quiet week making wise but I did rekindle my interest in embroidery a little for a new project with my students. I forgot how much I enjoyed stitching! 

p.s I'm in love with these collages. Beautiful! 

week nine: knitting and stamping

There's been something about the last few weeks which has left me with little time to actually make stuff, but this week I managed to finally make a start on this jumper. I've got a long way to go, I've never knitted something this substantial on such small needles (3.25mm) so it will be quite the challenge. Hopefully next week I'll have some other knitting to share which is quite the contrast to the tiny ness as it'll be with chunky wool and my own pattern... will have to see how that goes! I also got a rather wonderful stamp kit from Muji. I'm looking forward to stamping some lyrics and slogans. I made a postcard for a friend this week that said 'my back teeth are floating' we're thinking of doing a collaborative type project this year and we're gathering odd little expressions like that, suggestions very much welcomed!

I also went out and got inspired at David Shrigley and Jeremy Deller at the Hayward Gallery this week - both were amazing! I went last weekend to check it out before taking my graphics students to it on Wednesday. I think it may actually be the best exhibition I've ever been too. There was lots of interactive qualities to it and you could even have a free cup of tea in the Jeremy Deller section, you can't get better than that! Definitely a must see if you can, it's on till May. 

week eight: blogs i adore

On none other than the day of love itself, valentines day, the lovely Debbie Hill. I find her blog particularly delightful it's filled with just the right mix of adventures, cookery, craft and art.

"The aim of the award is to give recognition to exceptional up and coming blogs with less than 200 followers that deserve more readership, and spread the word about them"

Upon accepting the Liebster Blog Award, you must abide by a few simple rules: 

1. Show thanks to the blogger who nominated you for the award by acknowledging them and linking back to them

2. Reveal which 5 blogs you would like to nominate for the award and let them know by posting a comment on their blog. 

3. Post the award on your blog

4. Bask in the love from some of the most supportive people on the internet - other artists and writers

5. And best of all - have fun and spread the karma 

So here are my nominations for the award... 

Laura Donald (Dropstitch) - crafter extraordinaire who avidly documents her fantastic charity shop finds, she also makes the most wonderful craft kits

Katie Briggs - one of my dearest friends has moved to the other side of the world! New Zealand! I miss her greatly but I love reading her blog which she updates with adventures, top tips if you are thinking of travelling and sketches she's making along the way. 

Hermione Rose - I met Hermione on my undergrad degree she is lovely! Her work is also lovely lots of beautiful drawings and crafts inspired by her surroundings down in the wonderful cornwall

Fabrications - I did an internship with fabrications right after finishing my masters - Barley is simply wonderful and her blog is too! If your ever in London Fabrications is a must visit shop/gallery/studio! 

Zenobie (Queen of Carrot Flowers) - I recently discovered Zenobie's blog and I'm always delighted with each update. Handmade crafts, cookery, gardening and wonderful discoveries all photographed beautifully. 

I hope you enjoy my recommended blogs as much as I do!  

week seven: wearing art and making collages

Copenhagen was great! A touch cold (there were frozen rivers and even some snow!) but a really wonderful city. There was a wonderful amount of textile based art/design shows on whilst we were there - me and matt even got to wear some of it at The Perfect Body exhibition at Galerie Pi. The work was made by artist Malin Schonbeck you were allowed to touch and interact with a lot of the pieces, a very unusual but very exciting prospect. If you want to see more of the exhibition have a look on flickr. We also got to add to some art at the Danish Design Centre...

When I got home from Copenhagen I had some exciting news from a colleague. An article she wrote for the Guardian teaching network has been posted, you can read it here. It's all about the blog we do at college for our department and includes a resource she made too '10 ideas to make your department visual arts department digital'. I was also pleased that the screen grab they took of the blog featured some installation work I'd been doing with my applied art students. We looked at Quentin Jones and made collages and painted wood cut pieces to create the installation and the students made animated gifs from photographs of the installation -  I really do love my job! I got involved making some collages myself... 

more on flickr!

week six: busybusy

This week has flown by, there's been lots of exciting bits and pieces going on including a little snow here! Friday marked the start of half-term and I'm afraid my post is going to be quick as I'm leaving for Copenhagen shortly. Luckily I started/finished knitting this hat during the week so I can be sure that I can wrap up warm and be colour co-ordinated at the same time. Have a lovely week all! 

week five: new projects

This week at work I made some sketchbooks for my students (35 in total, I felt like a bookmaking machine!) they were really simple, 10 sheets folded and stapled but I think they look pretty good so I made myself a couple too. A colleague/friend gave me a good talking to in a friendly but serious way and said come on! You should be doing your own work! It made me think yeah! I just need to get going and start something. I've had ideas about doing something typography based for a while, I sort of made a start back in November but it was nothing really so last night I got my new sketchbook and started coming up with ideas...

I've got this idea that's based on a game me and my family play called 'name that tune' we play it in a few ways, naming a track from watching the video, on the radio or from the lyrics. It's the lyrics bit that I'm interested in using so I started writing down cool, interesting, odd and funny lines from songs. I tend to remember lyrics and they seem to be something that often draws me into a song more than anything else. I also love ridiculously funny lines from 'pop' music, such as, 'I'm gonna miss you like a child misses their blanket' an absolute gem by Fergie of the black eyed peas, it makes me laugh out loud! Anyway I soon found one page wasn't enough so I've spilled over onto a second... 

What I like about it is I feel like I have a theme, concept and exhibition idea before even starting which is something that normally happens through process for me, it's a nice change. I like the idea of putting together an exhibition that has a quiz night for the private view, the quiz element of my work being 'name that tune'. I feel really motivated and excited about it all! I woke up early this morning and for the first time in ages worked at my desk on my own work for a good few hours and here's the results... 

I love the song that this is from, I struggled a bit to decide  on which lyric to pick but I went with 'I watched the clouds as they sadly pass me by' can you name that tune?

week four: lomography

more pictures here

Our department recently got a few Diana Mini Lomo cameras which was quite exciting, so I took one out last week and got the film developed this week. It was relatively easy to use, although one draw back was it came with no instructions so I had to use the site to work out what all the buttons did, but perhaps this is because I am very amateur when it comes to photography. Once I got going (oh I forgot to wind on the film for the first... ten shots, oops!) I got the hang of it. I think the double exposures come out really well so I want to have a go at doing some more of those + the flash comes with colour flash gels (little coloured acetate strips!) to tint the pictures with different colours which will be fun to experiment with. 

It has the option to shoot square frames and half frames too which is quite interesting, although I couldn't get mine to switch over to half frame it was incredible stiff to slide over! So although some of my pictures look like half frames they aren't, I'm not sure what happened when they got developed but a lot of the pictures came out with part of the picture missing (despite the full picture being on the negative!) but perhaps that's more a printer issue than a square format one. Oh, I just looked at this page and noticed the recommendation of developing the negative at home, which would be fine if I was super into it but perhaps a little over the top for just experimenting.  However the example for a panoramic shot mixing half and square formats does look amazing!

So my first adventure with lomography was not perhaps as exciting as I'd thought it might be but there's definitely something intriguing about it. I'm in two minds about recommending the camera at the moment,  I think I need to shoot some more film to really play about so watch this space! On a slight side note though I don't think I've ever had so many people look at my camera before, you will most definitely get a few stares if you take one out!