The fish tank

Once upon a time, (less than a week ago), there was a little common goldfish called klaus. He lived with many other little fish that looked just like him but he didn't like any of them. He just pretended. One day a big giant net came and hoisted him out of the big tank of water and placed him in a little bag of water, just a puddle really. And then everything went dark. Not long after the light returned and he found himself living in a lovely new big glass house. Klaus was surrounded by fake trees and plastic ornaments. The floor was made up of so many pebbles with so many different colours he had difficulty counting them all. As luck would have it Klaus had only one other fish living with him in his new house. They didn't talk much or swim around together but it was nice to know he wasn't alone.  A massive stream of water would push Klaus around in the water if he swam too close to the top, but of course he always forget this because he had trouble remembering things. All in all Klaus liked his new house. What he did find rather unusual though was the giant girl that spent hours sitting at the big blue table across the room constantly cutting up pieces of unusually shaped fabric and putting them back together again. The machine that helped her with this process made an awfully frightful noise but with time Klaus realised the girl and the machine were no threat to him. Occasionally she would press her face to the glass and smile and place some nice dinner into the glass house through the roof and then wander off and that would be it. Klaus liked his new life. The end. 

The Hour

I have to wake up incredibly early for work tomorrow but my body refuses to go to sleep before a certain time. I had an hour to kill so I decided to spend that time doing some sketching. I used my good old 5B pencil and some mono printing. 

The scrap heap revisited

So. A few years have passed and I am still making curious little stuffed squares and triangles with faces on them and toys resembling animals. What has changed is the way I am documenting them. Instead of just placing them on a chair, taking a photo and calling it a day I am trying to add context. It would make no sense to depict a cup cake flying through the clouds in a hot air balloon basket just for the thrills, a kitchen work top will do just fine for that photograph. But seeing as I am a grown up without children of my own, drawing a little house with chalk and placing said scrap animal inside the drawing of the house would make sense for the photograph of a child's toy in context. 

 

P.s I would like to retract my earlier statement about Hot air balloons. This would be an excellent way to document cake. 

The food colouring

So, halloween is approaching and curious as ever, I wondered what would happen if I emptied an entire bottle of black food colouring into a Victoria sponge cake mix. Obviously I knew the cake would turn out some shade of dark. But is it possible to find black cake not only visually pleasing but edible? Answer. No. And to further the level of grossness I mixed a gloriously grotesque shade of orange into butter icing and slapped it on top of the cakes. Wow. 

The vacation

So, last night I drank an entire bottle of champagne (minus one glass) to celebrate having a week off work. I woke up (not to the sound of an iphone xylophone) but various street noises at roughly 11am. (I have not slept past 7am in about a month.) I then sat on my kitchen floor and watched my chocolate chip brioche toast under the grill whilst I sipped my coffee. I decided I was going to have a productive day so set about planning the various bits and bobs I wanted to do. Firstly, I ignored the pile of dishes, and like a good wife washed a mountain of clothes instead. Next, I collected squares of fabric from my craft room and ironed them into a nice little bundle so my friend could experiment on her new sewing machine. Then I drew space invaders all over my shower door whilst I was doing bath time. (Like you do.) Then I made a cake fork pouch my mother had requested as a gift for a friend. Then I made a giant piece of "paper" with calico and sewed an extract from the story I am writing (complete with illustration) all the while raiding my fridge of pickles and yoghurts and listening to caravan palace songs and dancing round my house in intervals. Then I cleaned up my mess, had some dinner, read my book and now its the end of my first vacation day. 

The Scarecrow

Whilst methodically upholstering a footstool, I realised I was undoing the handy work of another person before me. I started to notice similarities in the avoidance of the arduous tasks of un upholstering. This person hadn't removed the staples that held the fabric in place but simply cut it out from the base structure. When putting the new fabric cover back on they had used staples for half the edges and little black tacks for the others. As I worked my way deeper to the core of this little old footstool I found myself making new discoveries. I became tremendously excited upon realising the stool was stuffed with straw.

 

The table

Since moving out into a completely unfurnished house; six months later, my "crafting" table is still being used as my dining table. In my defence I do eat at the dinner table daily, so it's not going to complete waste. But now my spare room has slowly become a well frequented pile of mess. The moral of the story. Eat on the floor and craft on a table.