Edinburgh Airport

Here I am sitting in Edinburgh Airport and I do not seem to be going home any time soon. Rumour has it that our flight has just taken off from Heathrow and will be here shortly, that is, we will depart in three hours. The flight was supposed to depart from here more than an hour ago. Oh well!. Added later. We left 4 hours late and were given instructions by the crew as how to get compensation!

And I left home at 6 am this morning to attend my sister's funeral in Dunfermline which was full of family but not very cheerful. Memories will be dominated by wondering whether we will be sleeping on the airport floor tonight. 

The last few days have been tidying up days and included doing the 2017 bookbinders accounts. As treasurer, I have been bleating about not charging enough for courses. This year we raised the prices a lot and have made a very large profit. I am going to get it in the neck at the AGM. Treasurers are a funny bunch. They end up treating the money as theirs to guard and do not like it being spent. Bit like Smaug the Dragon. Just sit on the gold and glare at everybody. If neccessary, crisp them. 

I have designed a draft - four colour double weave in 90/2 silk. And it is for 12 shafts. When I get home, I shall wind the warp. I have also made progress on the photography course and have nearly finished section 2. I found it a bit boring. The next section loooks more interesting.

The last section was about lighting and Photoshop. I am not at all keen on messing with a photo in Photoshop. I know people who will replace the original sky with something from another photo taken at another time. That is no longer a photo but a work of art. Anyway I have had to 'adjust' a photo and here it is.

The original

It has been darkened in some places and brightened in others. I remain unconvinced.

Still Not Weaving

The storage has been installed and things are stored in it but I have not got round to weaving yet. In fact, the computing box is still off the loom.

Last week I was at West Dean College for a Linocut course. This was very successful from my point of view. Lots learnt, lots to take home. This course was about using more than one block at once.

Both are printed with two blocks. When I came home. I immediately set about filling the new storage. As I suspected, I have put in all the loose stuff and 16 drawerfuls of yarn and a small loom, and an inkle loom and there are still empty shelves!!

Now to do some weaving!!

Off to West Dean --again!

This week has been very traumatic . First of my youngest sister died after a very short, very nasty illness. To the extent that it has to be investigated. But also it made me realise how little I knew her. By the time she was 12, I had left home and since we never lived anywhere near each other, there was  never any opportunity to get acquainted. The other odd fact is of the three sisters, she was by far and away the brightest. I do not think that made her get a lot out of life. Dorothy and I have racketed round the world, seeing and doing as much as possible but she was never out of the UK much.

Anyway we are booked into courses at West Dean College and at 7 this morning, it was snowing. It got steadily worse and, since I was driving, I decided to leave as soon as possible. Still snowing and the TV news is that Reading a few miles north has come to a standstill. So we left and a few miles on our way South, it started raining and got warmer. By West Dean, there was sunshine and blue skies.

And as a cheering bonus, I take a magazine called Print asking today and the latest issue had a printed centrefold which said 'cut out, fold along lines and glue no. No more than three cuts. ' well! It was great fun. And I have got photos to prove it but the iPad is not doing the right thing.

The Storage

The workmen have not finished yet. They will be done on Monday, only having to put in door and door pulls. But I am impressed by the amount of storage I will have. Far more than I had imagined.

I have been cut off from weaving and dress making so today I went to the allotment to put in some fruit bushes. I did lots of odd jobs including sorting out the bookbinding room. Actually this room is a teeny tiny space, hence a need to tidy up quite often. I found all sorts of things which are no use to me, lots of laserjet paper for example and lots of 300 gsm watercolour paper. That must be left over from Michael. I do not see me buying that - ever.

And I just wonder if that is going to happen a lot when I am allowed into the studios to put my stuff/stash away.

Workmen

The workmen are here today to build in my new storage. And because we had already had workmen coming in, when the plumber suggested that he install the new boiler today, I thought no harm in that. Well - - - -. Firstly both parties arrived at 0801!!!! I was in my dressing gown and was halfway through breakfast. And I rapidly realised that my problem was that I had nowhere to go! So I am working on my computer. This room has two doors  each going on to a different staircase. I cannot get out to front stairs because the plumber has the landing strewn with toolboxes and plumbing parts. I can get out the back way but not easily or all the time because the installation people are just there. Woe is me!! Actually I do have a load of paper work (design, etc) to do.

Yesterday was my first day working in the allotment. I planted raspberry canes, rhubarb and broad bean seeds. Put in a few other plants and laid down black plastic weed-smothering stuff.  I need to go back sometime today to finish off a bamboo structure to tie the raspberries to and put down more black plastic. I ran out of weights yesterday and came home and rummaged in the garage. In the end I settled for old containers of bird food which I will fill with water. I do not have to do much in our garden these days, all the shrubs are filling out and any annuals I plant in 2018 will be planted out in the allotments for cut flowers.

There are strict rules for the allotment, for instance nothing higher than five foot and no sheds. But I desperately need something  to hold tools, canes etc up there. So I looked at them on line and in the flesh so to speak and have written asking for permission to install one!

The Louet Kombo has gone to a good home, my nephew took all the timber from the demolishing job, I have returned the two Burco boilers and suddenly the garage is usable again.

Given that I can do no weaving, I have been bookbinding. In particular I have put a lot of work into the cover of an opera libretto. I made a lino cut. When I was satisfied, I printed them on linen from a 1920s tablecloth. And when I cam to investigate further, the print was too big and had smudges in ti. So I scanned both front and back, tidied up and will print using the Inkjet printer. In the meantime, here is the finished artwork.

The back cover was too large to scan in as one piece so I made two scans and carefully, carefully amalgamated them in Photoshop, then cleaned up. All I need to do now is print them - but not with anybody else in the house.

I have just discovered that the installation people have piled up furniture against my door to the back staircase. Trapped!!!! I hope no one comes to the door!

Allotkment Inauguration Day

We took over the allotment a month ago but have not even visited it since the first photo.

I am realistic enough to know that, if I cleaned up the grass and prepared the soil for planting, I would be very slow and would probably do damage to me> So We got the gardeners to come in for the day and I met them there at 0800 hours this morning. It was bitterly cold. I drove in stakes to mark things out , explained it all and left for a warmer spot. When I return at 1100, the grass was gone, only as far as an immense heap at the end of the allotment.

Taken from much the same spot as the first photo. You can see the heap of turf in front of the Scout hut at the top left. They rotated it several times then added a trailer full of mushroom compost and incorporated that.

You can see how dark the soil is with the mushroom compost included. When I left, they had laid down some of the central path. We found we had 35 paving slabs looking for a good home since we had the whole of the front paved. So these have been used. Any plant is going to be happy to reside there. I have ordered cordons of pears, apples, one greengage and one cherry and several soft fruit bushes. I have the raspberries already, carefully put into very large pots so they can be easily transported. I will plant them next week. I gloat.

And while all this was going on, we had someone in my studio, ripping out walls, taking off doors and then making good. It is all ready for next week when they come to install the new storage.  It is very awkward having everything wrapped in plastic, limits what I can do.

The Studio is wrapped in Plastic

This morning we stripped out my studio. Well a bit extravagant, we took out everything we had to, and shoved everything else into a corner. Then wrapped that corner in plastic sheets and spare cloths. It all took time , in fact till lunch time. Then I started in on the bookbinding stuff. The book I made over the weekend has worked out well. In fact it is probably the best book technically I have ever made. The design of the cover is based on graphitti I saw from the train coming into Paddington.  Just chuffed in fact.

Other things I have done? Well I brought home all the prints of my latest Lino cut. Lino ink takes some days to dry so the technique is to print on Friday and leave them in a drier in the print room. This one is good and I decided to use it for my Christmas card. So today I scanned it in and printed it out on various sorts of paper (i.e., weights, finish, colour) until I found perfection. In my eyes at least. Tomorrow I will try to make another book like last weekend's. I have copious notes and, when I had spare time in London, I transcribed the notes onto my iPad. First thing tomorrow, I will add the drawings and then start in on a new book.