Raggy Rugs and Raggy Thoughts

I'm having one of those weeks where nothing is going quite according to plan.. The good ideas are there but I'm not managing to execute them them in quite the way I envisage in my head!

It started with some very sumptuous looking cushions I found in a posh magazine which I thought "oh yes I can emulate them - in fact I can IMPROVE them" ha ha ... In my defense I want to say I am writing a report about being confident so I am being extremely enthusiastic and practicing confidence in large quantities... what I really need is patience and a steady hand or at least some one else with a restraining order!!

So back to the cushion... basically it had fancy sides and I thought yes I can do fancy sides!! I decided to see if I could follow through my concept idea and incorporate traditional and fancy - a bit rough and ready and with that thought, started a sample for raggy rug type sides for my own version of a posh cushion - how to refine raggy rugging? still not sure - still working on it!! The problem with raggy rugs is exactly that they are raggy and they fray - I've made a fun colourful sample - battled to pipe round the edge to tidy it up and everything we have been near is covered in bits of frayed cotton not exactly sumptuous!!

I'm not giving up - I shall investigate non fraying fabric and continue to have a little play - the texture is really nice both on the front and the back.. its not a wasted effort as I think I might scan the back in and use it somewhere.

The raggy rug remains a project in the working out period... meanwhile back at the Hartlepool ranch better known as The Northern School of Art we had a very inspiring (if a little intimidating) session on how to do hand rendered repeats - and my week continued to go slightly awry.... the tutor made it look so easy - I even rolled my eyes a couple of times -more fool me - after a skillful demonstration with clear instructions I put my very best patient mode on and set to - in the first instance really excited and enthusiastic - that lasted about an hour...... I had a little moan and then a wander and was inspired by another students work which being a bit further down the project looked tidier and made my current feeble effort look like it might improve on the next stage.... ha ha hah!!!

Basically I don't have the patience, precision, or currently the skill to make this work- doesn't mean I wont keep trying but I spent many frustrating hours placing and tracing and making endless corrections to my every grubbier tracing - finally covered in graphite and silently weeping I tried to convert the tracing to a final drawing.

I knew what I wanted it to look like and it came nowhere near! and I realise I need to PRACTICE!! but... its sooooooo time consuming and the end result was fairly dreadful - no really dreadful!!! somehow I had misplaced everything - time to start again but first several gins and an break doing something I feel confident in.

This, surprisingly, was repeat designs on Photoshop - minor panic when somehow I managed to loose all the tools down the side but staying calm I eventually recovered them... more silent weeping ... and I have made a reasonable start to some digital repeats - using my line drawings I have copied them and then cut them up and rearranged them to make some very abstract patterns I have managed to make some nice repeat backgrounds - more to follow - watch this space... So in the end the week is not lost - just part of a frustrated creative experience!!

Alesund

Our final destination stop was Alesund. This is a very pretty town in southern Norway built on a peninsula. All the houses are painted pretty colours and a lot of the architecture is all very Art Nouveau based. This is because the town itself was completely burnt to the ground In 1904 by a fire for which they never found the original cause. The whole town had to be rebuilt and this became a huge National Effort and a lot of prominent and up and coming architects flocked to the town to stick there 20 pence in. Consequently the town is very heavily Art Nouveau which was very fashionable at the time. There is this wonderful Museum just off the harbour which is a very beautiful Art Nouveau house. It has amazing panelling, doors, wallpaper, and it's all furnished with beautiful art Nouveau Furniture. It also house a collection of of enameled Art Nouveau Trinkets,boxes, spoons, jewellery, very very beautiful. There is an interesting collection of old books and paintings a...

Autumnal Garden Days

I love these (rare) warm sunny late summer days and there is all sorts of lovely things going on in my garden... I counted 12 red admiral butterflies whizzing around the over grown ivy which I had been about to hack down but then left until the flutterbies have finished with it... The late blooms add a dash of colour and the daisy strewn lawn is littered with autumnal leaves, debris from my brief half an hour of slash and burn and the stone wall is covered in glorious soft moss all shiny and tactile with a few late nasturtiums loitering. I've hacked out the brambles for this year, sadly I missed the fruit as we were away, ditto the strawberries, we never seem to get the fruit before the birds so I've made space and moved the plants that were getting swamped and so not performing to their potential - hopefully next year they will literally blossom now they have light and room to flourish.

Goodbye Dissertation!!!

The dissertation is finished... it took me ages to do all the detail stuff Harvard referencing ect... the simplest tasks were starting to drive me mad!! I cant believe how long it took me to work out how to number pages excluding the first two pages aagghhhh... I suppose I should be grateful that its not like the olden days where you had to get it typed and bound before hand in - this essay has been a hard slog, a subject which I felt was interesting - how the digital explosion is ruining traditional creative methods turned into a fairly unexciting - pretty boring unexceptional topic! there will never be a next time but my advice is think of something funky - does Danny Boyle like garden Gnomes - Racoon meets Lady Gaga - anything that might surprise you but not too grown up!! I have worked hard and will be rewarded with a mid grade because there is no passion in this essay - the hard slog is evident as is the lack of enthusiasm - C'est la vie you cant win them all....

Planet Ruby Starrs

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