Pick a number

I hope no-one pays too much close attention to the quality of my stitches, Janet and Karen would be very disapointed in me! I'm not sure that it even counts as a 'proper' stitch at all. This is my first version of the 'pick a number' part of the fortune teller- i'm making a series of them at the moment, each one showing a different part of the game. It's going to be fun when the time comes to make one with the whole game on it. Last night I was stitching fortunes into another hankie- of course the fortunes I picked were all very nasty so maybe I should wait a while before I share them with you? Actually I'm just saying that because I think I may need to re-do it so that the text is legible.

Today the sun is shining and I went for a walk along the beach, there must've been a really high tide as there were whole trees washed up, along with a wide variety of shoes and pop bottles. Everytime I saw a shoe I was scared it would have a foot in it, this has been a slightly irrational fear of mine for years, ever since the time I went walking on the beach the same day as a body was found washed ashore, and round about the time Richey Manic went missing. To take my mind off missing feet I tried to think of Stuart Haygarth instead, who makes magical lights from debris washed up on the shore.

Cross posted from Calm Air All Ice

I've been trying to get some photos of these embroidered pieces for you to see, but I don't seem to have mastered the art of taking good photos of my work. I think what I notice the most is the state of my hands!

These are one of my interpretations of the paper folding games that I played when I was younger, i'm not sure what they are called- do you have a name for them?

Have I told you all about 'Calm Air All Ice'? It's the name Claire and I have given our project and the title of our exhibition in May, we've a blog set up over here for it which will have updates on our progress and details of work for sale etc when the time comes.

Amy Santoferraro at Llantarnum Grange Arts Centre, Cwmbran

Anyone who knows me at all well will know that when I say I jumped up and down with excitement when I saw this work will know i'm telling the truth. I was totally unprepared to see something so utterly my kind of thing in a little gallery in Cwmbran. Alongside the Fibre Arts show was this exhibition by American artist Amy Santoferraro who uses all kinds of my favourite things to create pieces of work that I wanted to steal.

Amy had been working with the Arts Centre as part of a ten week residency, I wish I had known about this while she was over here because I would've loved to have met up with her.

Alison Mercer at Llantarnum Grange Arts Centre, Cwmbran

The other day I got taken on a magical mystery tour by my friend Lucy, we ended up at Llantarnum Grange Arts Centre in Cwmbran, just a short hop over the bridge into Wales. We didn't really know what to expect, and my memories of taking a school trip to Cwmbran in the early 80s certainly didn't seem promising, but we were in for a treat. The Arts Centre is a small building housing a cafe, shop and a decent exhibition space divided into two parts.

Alison Mercer's work reminded me immediately of Karen's, and I really liked the thought that perhaps one day Karen and Alison could show their work together- Karen's wrapping cloths and these little 'Fecund Thoughts' would work so wonderfully with each other.

The exhibition runs until March 7th and is well worth a visit if you are remotely near the area- the gallery and parking is free, the cafe is lovely and the other work on show is similarly spectacular.

A most amazing jumper

Alice was challenged to knit a truly horrendous jumper, and this is what she came up with. Click on the image above to see the rest of it, but be warned it may not be suitable for work, or for those with an aversion to brightly coloured acrylic yarn. I think it's a work of art, what about you?

Falmouth

sea view from our room

the lane from the uni

sitting outside drinking beer in february

Heligan Honey

the cat sat on the plat(form)

Well I made it to Falmouth in the end, despite never finding the train tickets and having to stump up £108 for replacements, it was worth every penny. I took surprisingly few photos, I didn't manage to make it to here+now and I didn't send any postcards. However I did get sand in my shoes, eat Mexican food, drink Cornish beer, get rained on, get over heated, walk up and down a lot of hills and fall in love with the University and the MA I went to find out about.

September is the best month

Last week the BAFTAs and the Grammys took place- I was excited to see that in both these prestigious awards people I knew picked up prizes.

The award for the best short film went to Esther May Campbell for her film 'September' which lots of my friends helped work on, and for which there is a celebratory party tomorrow night. It's free and if you head to the Cube Cinema you'll be able to watch the film, dance to some music and impress people with your BAFTA outfit. Hope to see you there!

The very same day I heard the news that my friend Kimya won a Grammy for soundtrack of the year, for Juno. It's weird and exciting to think that people I know are winning major awards, maybe next year someone I know will be up for the Turner Prize...unlikely but still- let's aim high!

Anyone seen my train tickets?

Tomorrow I am due to catch a train to Falmouth to go and visit the MA Open Day and find out a bit more about the MA in Curatorial Practice i'm interested in. I'm a bit of a scaredy cat so I persuaded my friend Jackie to come along as well, she's going to find out more about the MA in Authorial Illustration. She took charge of booking us somewhere to stay, I took charge of getting the train tickets. All was going very well until I looked in my wallet this morning and discovered they were missing. I've spent the day not being able to focus on anything other than trying to find the missing tickets, which means retracing my steps, phoning a whole heap of lost property offices and discovering it's going to cost £108 to buy replacement tickets if I don't find them by tomorrow. Not only have I lost the tickets but i've lost my rail card, bus pass and numerous other things that will cost money to replace.

I'm much calmer now i've done everything I can to find them, I also did some breathing exercises that i've been taught for just these sort of situations, and it seemed to work really well, so now i'm back to looking forward to going to Cornwall tomorrow and just thinking that i've got to just ignore the fact this is costing me close to £200 now!

While i'm in Falmouth I really hope I get the chance to visit here+now, the sister shop to here, I feel like here+now must be some kind of distant step child of mine, i've no real relation to the place, but without me being around helping set up here several years ago maybe here+now would'nt have been conceieved.

A mini project for February

Last year I tried very hard to take a photo a day for the full 365 (366 actually) days of the year, I got as far as week 26 before I gave up. This year I decided to skip the project and just take photos when I feel like it, or at least that was my plan, however my friend Jason is trying to beat my record from last year and so I keep getting the urge to go back and start all over again. On the train back from Southampton last weekend I decided to set him some challenges for his February photos, and then he decided to set me some as well, so it looks like this month i'll be taking part in a photo a day, even if it does only last for 28 days!

The first week's results are what you see here- I gave him the colours of the rainbow as his task, and these are my photos- for most of them it seems that I didn't have a real camera on me, so they are taken with my camera phone, which means they are pretty terrible quality, but at least I completed a week...unlike some people...

Top to bottom:
red clothes hanging on my door
orange ikea fabric
yellow lights on the back of a snow plow
green dish
blue monitor
indigo jeans
violet scarves

Eleanor Hardwick at here

Eleanor Hardwick is showing a selection of photos at here this month, rather sickeningly she was only born in 1993, meaning I have items of clothing older than her! She's been interviewed in the Independent, BlackBook and Dazed and Confused and is all over the internets. Her photos can be found on flickr here...lenaah. The show runs from the 5th Feb to 9th March.

Under the snow

The snow's nearly all gone now- I took these photos while there was still some left on the sky light. They remind me of the still images from Anna Peach's under water explorations. They also reminded me of the piece of work by Katie Paterson that allowed you to call a phone that was placed inside Vatnajökull glacier in Iceland.

Paper planes

I can't remember how I ended up on Jen's blog, actually I think it was via Andrea, but i'm glad I did because I discovered this sweet little animation from her, and the accompanying post with a photo of the paper plane tattoo she has to match it. Since I last visited I see there's a hot air balloon animation too i'm kind of hoping she gets that tattooed on her foot to match!

Snow day!

Well, like pretty much everyone else in England the site of more than a millimeter of snow has got me a bit over excited, so my update about my visit to Southampton will have to wait. Here is a snow creature that we made today at my sister's house.

here's a very strange rabbit that enjoys the snow- I think he must have some arctic hare in him maybe?

the lane I walked home down- so lovely and crunchy underfoot.