Journeying to Norfolk

It has been a very quiet time since I last posted. But June saw me making a rather long journey from our little patch in Shropshire, near Wales, to Norfolk, on the far east side of the country. Suddenly I was catapulted into the 'real world'. Norfolk isn't an area of the country I know, so I took several snaps from the train.

It is, as many people will know, extraordinarily flat. There are wind farms and windmills. Canals and dykes. A vast, open landscape with big skies. It must be a bleak expanse in the winter, though I imagine still beautiful.

But this was high summer and it was looking very pretty,  especially the nice little station of Acle.

I stayed at Great Yarmouth, at the pleasant and friendly White Lodge Hotel. I have to admit I was shattered after several hours of traveling, and had just enough energy to find some chips and fall asleep.

The workshop was at the studio of Sticky Prints not too far away. I took my usual picture of the calm before the storm.

It was one of the hottest days of the year, possibly not the best weather to be needle felting baby hares. But our hostess, Sarah, had laid on a lovely keg of chilled elderflower cordial and I for one drank my weight in it.

Despite the heat and a long working day, everyone made lovely little hares and a good time was had by all. It was nice to be out and socialising again, after such a long time. 

Back at the hotel, I treated myself to proper fish and chips and had a potter on the beach which was almost across the road. At this time of the evening, it was fairly empty, apart from a couple of people who had set up stall near the edge of the tide.

I haven't been near the sea in a few years, so I took my sandals off and had a little paddle.

The Sunday return was a ghastly day of constant hot and crowded travel, via three trains and a coach. I did manage to get a better snap of the windmill while I was being kindly ferried to the train station. 

So a last glimpse of Norfolk, the large agricultural fields full of pickers and workers. By the time I returned to Shrewsbury I was dropping with exhaustion, but Brian-next-door was waiting to pick me up and take me home to Joe. Back to the quiet cottage to recover from all the excitement and to start preparing for my next workshop, which was to be at the Stoke Potteries Museum.

Pitta breads and frugal eating

Frugal living is a bit trendy now, but it's not so much fun when it's done out of necessity (something to do with having the choice, I think). However, it's nowhere I've not been before and even food I ate when I was cash strapped student can be made nice, with the addition of some thing like...home made pitta bread. I used the recipe from the BBC recipe site here. If you don't like clicking on links, I've popped my tweaked version of the recipe at the end of this post. (It's really just a basic bread formula).

As I don't have a large kitchen work space, I used a little child's rolling pin to roll them out with. Which did the job nicely. They have to be rolled out very, very thinly, to get the magic 'puff'. Otherwise you end up with proper flat breads.

Personally I'm not too fussed about getting equal sizes, as you can see. I also dust the tray with just flour, no fat or oil. A very hot oven should make them puff and form the handy pockets.

They take about 5 minutes to bake, depending on your oven. Mine's a bit dodgy and is nick named 'Dante's Inferno', for good reason.

I used two packs of very cheap savoury rice (25p each) to complete the meal. As we couldn't possibly eat all of it, there are leftovers. The cost of the meal is under £1 per head, for two. And of course, if you're feeling flush, you could also add chopped sausage, chicken bits or anything tasty to go with it.

Basic Pitta breads (UK recipe)

250g bread flour

1x 7g sachet instant yeast

1 tsp of salt

a good glug of oil (I used olive oil)

160 ml of warm water.

Mix the dry ingredients, then the glug (1-2 tablespoons) of oil. Add two thirds of the water and bring the dough together, adding more of the water if you need it (I always do). You should have a soft dough which is not sticky. Leave it to rise until it's a good size, the usual 'doubled in size' is a good bench mark. Split the dough into 6 or 8 bits, depending on how large you want your pittas. Roll them out very thinly, using spare flour for dusting. I bake mine in batches of two, in a hot oven. They should take about 5 - 8 minutes each, depending on your oven. That's it. Then add them to something nice. 

Pet sale!

This trio were designed for the sadly now discontinued 'Craftseller', and were featured in April 2015. They were made specifically to a tight design brief, which is why they are a little different to my usual work. Anyway, the time has come to clear out some of my old designs and raise some funds, so I am offering them up for sale. They can be found in my  Etsy shop here, at low prices as I am clearing the decks.

 

 'Toby' is  4 x 4½ inches (9.5 x 8cm). He was my favourite.

'Bunty' was named after my favourite magazine when I was a little girl (which puts me at a certain age). She measures 4 x 3 inches (9.5 x 7.5cm).

And 'Daisy'. Just 'Daisy'. She measures 3½ x 3 inches (9 x 8cmm). I'll be adding more discontinued designs to my sale in the coming weeks.

Nearly thirty years ago

I've managed to keep nearly every sketch book and piece of artwork I've created since I was twelve. This makes for a lot of paper, the majority of it pretty awful and very much in the learning curve category. I was never really very good at drawing, I simply had a fertile imagination, a doodly way of sketching and an immense drive to become 'an artist'. Whatever that meant.  Anyway, today I found this sheet of sketches while rummaging through a pile. I was torn between nostalgia and slight embarrassment.  It almost feels as if another person drew it. Which in a way, they did.

The sheet is dated September 18th, 1988, so that would be just at the very start of my A level art course. I was twenty and between the ages of sixteen and twenty, I had spent most of my time being (unknowingly) pretty depressed and screwed up in a  damp bedsit.  By the time I pencilled these sketches, I had pulled myself together and was living in a shared farmhouse in the countryside, near Oxford. It was beautiful and maybe that's why I was unconsciously themes here of metamorphosis, as it felt as if my life had started again. 

 

Despite my disconnect from them, now that I am almost fifty, I was amused to see that I have always liked tall skinny houses that are rather unapproachable.

 

 

My anti-war sympathies were obviously still with me, though it would have been more optimistic to make the Spitfire turn into a butterfly, rather than vice versa.

At first I thought that the woman and her children were pointing at the plane, but then I noticed the clouds...

 I used to draw a lot of little fisher people, this was one of the first.

However, despite distance of the years, I actually found a little sketch which is almost where I am going with my work now, nearly thirty years later. The idea needs tweaking, but there's something there...it's almost as if my younger self sent a little gift to me, through the decades.

The forgotten book

Many years ago, I think it was in 1995, I bought a pile of antique accounts books, for no other reason than that they were beautiful and going for a silly price. They were all unused and in tip top condition, except for this one, which is an old photo album. As it was in a pretty battered state, I decided to save it for sketching.  

It's remained blank for twenty two years and been carted about with the rest of my 'stuff' through five households. However, I'm trying to put aside a bit of time for sketching, so last weekend I hauled it out of the attic and rummaged in my reference library. Sometimes books are better than endlessly trawling through Pinterest. i don't know why this is so - maybe the limitations concentrate the mind. 

I'm a bit rusty so it took me about three hours to get a page of warm ups and then ideas. One day, when I can afford to spend more time on things like this, I might turn a few into paintings. at the moment it remains a bit of a hobby.

Heads up!

It's been nearly ten years since I picked up a felting needle and created my first little rabbit. Since then, I have created countless animal and bird designs, mostly to sell,  but also for magazine and book patterns. Not  to mention easy projects for workshops. And to be honest, I came to a temporary halt with it all. Just after Andy died, four years ago, I had to apply myself to writing thirty simple patterns for my book and since then, I have struggled to come up with anything really new that excited me.

Add to this that needle felting has exploded in popularity and there are thousands of 'cute things' being offered up for sale, often at ridiculously low prices that I cannot compete with. And I do have to try to make a living somehow. Business says that when something isn't selling anymore, it's time to switch up and change.

So I've been slowly working through a design process, as I was taught to do when I was an art student. While I've had to jump out of my comfort zone to some extent, I am also going back to ideas I had many years ago. I have watched the craft of needle felting grow over the years, and I now want to move my own work upwards.   

I started out last year by making copies of antique ceramic Staffordshire animals , but they are incredibly time consuming and although they may seem expensive, the prices still don't reflect the 40-50 hours of work put into them. And as they are as exact as I can make them, there is no room left for imagination. 

Then I started looking at antique milliner's hat stands, which are simple 'heads' made of painted papier mache; I found myself  inspired again. I began my first head a few weeks ago and it was a welcome challenge. 

The first one, 'Charlotte' was made very much in the traditional design and I have to admit that simple as she looks, it was a steep learning curve and a return to my art student days to remember how to construct a face. As you can see, it's a miniature version of the real thing, which would have been life sized.

The next two heads, 'Amelia' and 'Cordelia' were also in the traditional folk style. With these first three heads I tried to emulate the flat, painted effect of the originals.

The next challenge was to make a male head, 'Mr George' the strong man and I started to move away from the flat paint effect, with a raised quiff.

'Eloise' indulged my love of all things 'Versailles'.

And by the time I made 'Emily', I had gone off the path of the painted effect and was  already planning my next series of heads.

If you're an artist trying to scrabble together some kind of living, it is a huge thing to change your known products but it's a risk I have to take. Times change and I'm a different person to the one who made that sweet little rabbit back in 2008. My life is also 'another country'.

While I'm working on the second series, the first batch of heads are now up for sale in my Etsy shop, here in the 'Miniature heads' section. With signed tags and gift boxes.

In the meantime, animals and birds are beginning to creep back in. It was probably inevitable.