Happy Days

Having just posted a heap of photographs to my 365 collection, I’m sitting here thinking what a great time we’ve had this last week.  The best sort of time because it’s shared with family and friends, without a detailed agenda and punctuated frequently with good food, laughter and lively conversation.  Oh yes, sprinkled with a bit of culture too.

In three days we packed in One Man Two Guvnors which was hilarious, the superb Bronze exhibition at the Royal Academy and braved the crowds to see the Heatherwick Studio exhibition at the V&A. 

We sampled the cooking at Galvin La Chapelle, Campania, Allans, and Delaunay, and tried Eggs Drumkilbo for the first time last evening, in a dining room appropriately furnished with a collection of signed Dick Francis novels.

At last I got to check the Columbia Road Flower market off my London list, we ticked several items from our shopping list at Zara Home and added a few more books to my Amazon wishlist along the way.  My first gel manicure in Selfridges wasn’t 100% successful, though, and I’ll be canvassing a few friends for advice before the next one!

Our days were sprinkled with glitterati, observing Paul Smith and his party to our left and Brian Cox to the right in the same restaurant on Sunday, having already spotted one assorted Gallagher bro in Sloane Street earlier in the day.  We didn’t spend all our time hobnobbing though and added the 15, 23, 47 and the 19 bus routes to our repertoire – my favourite way to travel around the city by far.

Sadly, I didn’t charge my camera fully before leaving, so photographs of this lovely weekend are few.  It didn’t prevent me taking the obligatory photograph in a certain cloakroom for my Artful Dodger chums, though!

Best of all was a super-comfy hotel to return to each night, even if last night, for some reason, the duvet wasn’t big enough to cover the bed!  As we didn’t fall into it until well past midnight, we didn’t complain, but hmmm….perhaps it’ll be recorded in Trip Advisor later ;-)

So, did we have a great time?  We certainly did.  Is it good to be home?  Of course it is!

The Season

of cobwebs

misty mornings

and many meetings.

The time for one last lunch in the garden

the last village show for me to judge

and possibly the last opportunity to wear sandals.

I love the Autumn and look forward to wrapping up warm, snuggling under the duvet and sitting by the stove for a cosy evening at home.  I looked at my journal from last year and noted that we spotted the first leaves changing on September 2nd.   This year, all was still green, until the cold and almost frosty morning earlier in the week.  Now, there’s a distinct chill in the air and the washing comes in from the line feeling cold and damp.

Lesley, I agree that sometimes, it’s more fun to live the life than to journal it.  A quiet day at home today meant that both Mary and I were able to catch up and we are both now back on track. 

For Jane

Jane tells me she’s tired of seeing the zebrafish, so this tray of tomatoes is for her.  There’s been way too much going on around here in the last few days to blog about, but please, bear with me and normal service will be resumed shortly.

The tomatoes were at Daylesford Organics this afternoon, when we dropped in on the way home from lunch at The Plough at Kingham and Whichford Pottery.

Have a peek at the yummy damson parfait I had at The Plough whilst you’re here!

Yes, I’m four days behind with the journal…

Patchwork and Zebrafish

I love my work.  I never know what fascinating things I’m going to encounter and what unexpected diversions I’m going to take in a day and yesterday, day 4 of the ongoing project was the perfect example.  This little fish was going to play a starring role.

From time to time, a large parcel will arrive, containing the work of a student taking a creative arts certificate, for me to assess.  I never know what’s inside these parcels, don’t really know the student unless, as happens occasionally, I find myself assessing more than one module of their course.  On this occasion, I opened the box to find two lovely patchwork cushions, inspired by the student’s son’s work in marine biology.  The design was based on the nucleotide sequences of the zebra fish.

What?

Thankfully, K  had explained the foundation for the design in her notes, so I was able to see how clever she’d been in choosing the inspiration for her work.  But having completed my assessment and packed the parcel up again, I wanted to know more.

I also recognised how much I’d learned about genetic sequences of this little fish already and thought I’d use it as the theme for page 4 of my journal, prepared as above.  I mulled over the possibilities and the design potential of the seemingly random lists of letters and thought they’d work well as a background.

I know I’d said that I wasn’t going to use my computer at all in this project, but I can break my own rules!  I went online and found the nucleotide sequence to print out before auditioning it on the page.

Too big.  Too heavy. 

I went back and printed it out on tissue paper instead.  (You know how to do that, don’t you?  Tape a piece of tissue to a normal sheet of printer paper and put it through the printer as usual.  Peel off the printed tissue and you’re done..)

I printed off a sheet of zebrafish at the same time, thinking that the tissue would look good over the piece of pearly card I’d glued on the foundation for this page (thanks, Jordi…that was in one of the lucky bags you’ve shared with me!)  It was finding this picture which sent me off on a whole new path of discovery.

Who knew about the importance of Zebrafish?  Not me!  But reading more, I could see the relevance of studying the genetics of this small fish and I was delighted that my curiosity had led me down this road.

Rather than use a slab of genetic code, I decided to cut it into strips, to align with those two coloured lines I’d zigzagged onto the foundation using my sewing machine.

I even tried to squeeze the strip under the stitches but soon gave up on that!

I stuck them down instead, and carried the lines of type over to the next page, because it seemed odd to cut them off mid sequence.

I mod-podged the tissue paper fish down over the pearly card, feeling cross that I not only managed to stick them upside down but also made a hole in it as well.  Grrrr. 

I auditioned a couple of wavy, watery lines created with a rubber stamp but rejected them, preferring to stick with the limited palette I’d got so far.

But I assembled the word “zebrafish” as the title for the page and tried it in a few places before settling on what I thought was the best position.

Last, I needed a little text block to explain the significance.  I’ve been using sticky labels from a packet of Martha Stewart designs, bought whilst on holiday in Utah.  But though I tried several positions, it just didn’t seem to fit.

My hero offered his opinion (when asked!) and agreed, it wasn’t right.  I quickly punched a circle, stamped a border with the same brick red ink as the title and thought it looked better.

Lastly, I stuck a larger sized fish over the hole in the tissue paper.

Finished.  Done.  Except that word “bra” keeps jumping out at me.  I might do something about that in a minute…

The creative process isn’t easy, is it?  But how pleased I am to learn more about and celebrate this little hero of a fish!

Update on Wednesday, September 5, 2012 at 3:04PM by Gill Thomas

The action I took to remedy the bra situation is my photo of the day!

Day 2 – and I’m keeping up

One of the advantages of binding those pages into a book before I began was that they are in a fixed order…each day, I simply have to work with what’s there.  I know what I’d do otherwise.  I’d spend ages dithering over which page to choose, which colours to work with and all of that.  As it was, I dithered for quite some time anyway.

The next page in the book was blues and peachy colours.  I thought there was too much white space and wanted to perk it up a bit.  The theme for the day was teaching, and though it was really supposed to be a reflection on the events of Sunday, after a day at work, teaching and learning was very much on my mind.  As a result, it refers more to Monday…but it’s my book and I can do what I want!

I added the date in a brick red, punched a star and coloured that with the same stamp pad as I used for the word “teach”.  I used the same denim blue paint for a few dots to fill that space too.  The thought for the day reflects on the discussions in my meeting; I had a good opportunity to watch, to listen and to observe – and to learn, of course.