Totally boring!

Well the blog must be totally boring to some people and not inspiring at all as when I checked it out on Bloglines I'd lost two subscribers. So I'm not being interesting enough! But its a bit in the doldrums here as I am betwixt and between and with going away next week and trying to catch up this week I'm not really writing anything very riveting I'm afraid. Oh well, never mind! I'll probably come back from Scotland to find I have no friends left! Gosh I'm feeling sorry for myself arn't I? I could be over the moon in less than an hour but on the other hand I could be feeling even more sorry for myself. Why is this? I am bidding on something on Ebay! That is why. And I am so consumed with paranoia that I'm not even going to say what it is in case one of you rush in and outbid me! Sickly grin! If I'm not overly anxious as to whether I get something or not I really like that last minute bidding when you have to try and get your bid in at the last minute without being pipped at the post. The adrenaline rushes and the heart beats faster until you are sure you are the final high bidder. I rarely buy on Ebay but Martin loves it and buys all kinds of things. Stress doesn't sit well on me!

I have been working in the sketch book and have some ideas for my next piece that isn't a sample for class or a UFO. This will be the beginning of a body of work for my next exhibition. That sounds good doesn't it....next! Except that my last exhibition was so many years ago I've forgotten when exactly! Isn't that sad! All that wasted time! I really enjoyed sketching and found that ideas came left right and centre which was good as I worried I might have dried up on the ideas front. I think it was because I had been looking through the sketch books and already had some tentative beginnings just waiting to come forth and be allowed to see the light of day plus I was quite relaxed about it all and just doodled to begin with and then expanded on the doodles.

Actually I spent some time thinking about this designing business and wondering whether it was harder these days to be original when so much work is thrown at one via the computer or whether that is a good thing in as much as it inspires one to do more and better. I don't know. I do know that I have to have a cooling off period when designing just to make sure that I haven't subconsciously picked up on someone else's style and ideas. I don't have a particular style of my own apart from using my own hand-dyed fabric which can be pretty unique. This could be the Gemini in me which means I can chop and change at will or as my daughter says be quite variable by which she means unreliable! Another sickly grin! Not unreliable in as much as I don't do as I say, but unreliable in that you can't be sure what is going to come next! I find it interesting when I am teaching that no two students work will be the same even though they are all using the same pattern and hand out notes and similar fabrics. I encourage them to put themselves into what they are doing and to be individual and not copy blindly and this means that at the end of term we will have a real pot pourri of work not lots of carbon copies. But when I first started doing creative embroidery and patchwork with free machine work it was hard to find work to look at as there weren't computers then, and books were expensive and shows were few and far between. Specialist magazines were hard to come by, that's if they were being published. So we are much luckier now in being able to see what is out there and what is going on and like everything else, what is 'fashionable'. There is nothing new under the sun but what comes round, goes round.

Oh well speech over. This is probably what makes my blog less interesting in that I go off into my own thoughts. Well this is why I write it so ....... I shall round off with another picture from the sketchbook! Just to keep it pretty!

I liked this picture of an old arched doorway and tried some experimental ideas using corrugated paper and string. The centre motif was burnt paper with felt and string. I like the shapes I've got here and this is one of the ideas that I have followed up and played with. This page in particular would work very well with the ideas I had on reflections of houses in water. And I like the idea of perhaps doing a circular piece though the hanging of it could be difficult. Have to think about that. Would all depend on what fabrics I used. In fact lots of thinking to do all round.

Got to go check on Ebay!