Masquerade

For as long as I can remeber I've been interested/freaked out by masks. Mostly people in masks like the scary street corner people who are usually painted gold or silver or indeed this lot (Dr who geek alert)

 As I've said on a basic level masks frighten me, but they also intrigue me in that you can be whoever you want behind the mask. I bought my mask in venice, the first time I went there with my parents, its classic me, music notation all over it and classic Vikki purple. It hangs on the wall to remind me to be myself without the mask as much as possible.

 The first time we went to Venice we found an amazing mask shop down a side street by the canal. I found the most beautiful leaf mask but it was from an artisan mask shop, I couldn't afford it (luckily we found my first mask on a street trader stall & mum & dad bought it me for my birthday. When we went back to Venice I had time to save up and so I finally got to take my leaf mask home (and just in case you are in the area this is where my mask came from).

I had my first stab at creating a custom mask a couple of years ago when my friends Alice & T held a halloween party and we were all instructed to dress as woodland animals. My brother had recently given me a load of phesant feathers and so I made this:

 Which looks like this on

Now I've started work on a second, which I've nicknames my ice queen mask.

 I'm not sure the blue is quite right yet & I think I need to find a blue stone for her forehead (and maybe pain a tear running down her cheek, but we'll see.

Bunting - finished at last

So for the last week Jam & I have been working non stop on bunting for my friend Beth's wedding. Unfortunately I got really ill on Monday & Tuesday last week, so we were behind schedule with everything to do. You may remember the fabrics a pale pink, cream and mint green. Jam was an absolute star cutting out all the triangles and cutting the lengths of bias binding that we were attaching them to. Then all that was left to do is sew. The finished bunting was 100m in total in 5 & 10 m lengths. Here it all is on Tuesday morning waiting to be taken to work to give to the anxious bride

 

As an extra treat (and to make the bunting extra special) I added felt letters and hearts detailing the bride and grooms names.

Here it is in the only arrangement I could manage to fit it all in (it should say, and indeed does when laid out, Nick + Beth. Beth was really pleased with her deluxe bunting and plans to pin the embellished bit behind the top table at their wedding on Saturday. I can't wait to see it!  

creating

(First photo Sophie and the amazing cake she made for sports relief, isn't it pretty???). Life in the house is suprisingly busy of late, I've got a comission for 100m of bunting for a friends wedding (they had bunting on the invitations so we are trying to match that, the main colours are candy pink, a mintish green and a sort of fawn/cream. When I first got the colour scheme I was immediately reminded of neopolitan ice cream but the bride to be wants all the different materials to have a vintage/pattern theme). So with the brief firmly in place (and written down so I didn't get carried away) we set off for Mason's (I took Jam with me as he is really good at matching colours, not many people know that!). It took a while but we have now selected three different materials for the flags (we also managed to get 2 rolls of bias binding but that's only 50m so the other two are on order), we also bought a rolly cutter as I didn't fancy cutting all those flags out by hand! While I was crocheting the other night (more on that shortly) Jam cut all the material so now I just have the task of hemming it and measuring/attaching to the bias binding (this is only going to be single sided bunting, as its going on the sides of a barn). I'm thinking this might be best all done at once over a weekend. Sadly (or not) that won't be this weekend as my friends Zoe and Steve are coming to visit and we are all heading off to a gin and literature (Zoe picked it, honestly) talk at Oxford Literary Festival, hopefully preceeded by a lovely lunch.

There are two other works in progress at the moment, one which deserves a post of its own (and is nowhere near finished so I think I'll hold off blogging for the mo, although to give you a clue its chicken themed) and the other is this blanket.

My violin tutor has just become a dad for the first time and a week ago was searching for possible names for his new baby girl. Knowing his wife is a native Quebecian, I suggested Aimee (with accents) which has french roots and means 'beloved' which I though was lovely, and the more british Clara (I didn't know the meaning, I just liked the name, but apprently it means bright/famous and has latin origins). I added a note at the end that they were just the names I liked and I'm sure they would receive many other suggestions. To my delight I received an email back this week saying they had chosen Emmaline as a first name but Clara as a middle name! So I thought in the absence of cuddling her I'd make her a blanket. I bought the wool (originally I wanted purple or a yellow, but there were no colours in this super soft yarn that I liked). I know blue, cream and brown are maybe though of as boys colours because of the blue but I'm sure Emmaline can carry it off. I'm still a bit undecided about the pattern though, originally I had my heart set on this wave pattern but now 1 repeat in its starting to curl like crazy (I don't know if that's my fault for crocheting too tight or if there just isn't enough yarn there to weigh it down yet). I'm tempted to rip it back and just do a straight blanket (there being time pressures as well). What do you think?     

Exhibit

Although Christmas was supposed to be a lovely break form work I found myself using the time to catch up on projects instead. I thought I'd be mostly knitting I seem to have crammed quite a few other crafts in as well. I went to Ikea with Trisha and ended up buying this fantastic little greenhouse, perfect for nurturing my little cacti till they are as fully grown and as big as these guys.

I did do some knitting, still working on a cozy pair of socks for Jam but I managed to get this scarf finishing for Claire

(the yarn is really pretty containing not only wool but sari ribbon as well in a contrasting blue/green shade). I'm hoping ths will help her feel better and take away the winter sniffles which she has been suffering.

I've been doing a few more cards as well with the orchids that I pressed a while ago. This one was a bit of an emergency one for Jam's sister Teagan (I thought I had 4 days to make it, turns out he got the date wrong so I only had a night).

I've been having a bit of a think about taking a stall at a local craft fair, selling my home bred plants and paper and material bits and bobs, but I don't know whether my stuff is good enough, it seems quite ordinary to me I suppose but I would like to see what ye general public think (so all feedback greatly appreciated!).

And last but not least is this little box, it started out as plain paper mache but I transformed it (using some inspiration from the rug in our living room and a selection of nail varnish) into a trinket box. The problem is now its all done I don't really want to sell it/gift it. Gonna have to get better at this if I'm ever going to have any stock!

It's all been happening!

There has been all sorts going on in this my already quite full life these last few weeks (hence the lack of blogging, sorry but most of these seem to have required pen and paper rather than internet) so it seems only fitting to recap...

Last Thursday the fabulous and very talented Jayne from over at a Novice Novelist came by train (the 4.50 from Paddington  no less) and we hotfooted it down to Oxford Blackwells where author extraordinaire/the crabbit old bat Nicola Morgan was giving a talk on how to get published/write your pitch for your novel (there is a lot more of that kind of advice on her blog here). Jayne writes up the whole thing fabulously here and all I can add is that the workshop was incredibly informative, Nicola was lovely and we managed to drag her out for a drink afterwards (photographic proof of us muchly enjoying the Grande cafe, when in Oxford etc).

I had the Friday off as I wanted to take Jayne to the station & the plan after that was to write but I mostly just sat down to enjoy my friend Ali's second book The Man who Rained, its really good, so good in fact that I'm trying to ration the chapters else I'll speed read it which is glorified skimming and I'm enjoying this book too much to miss any detail (plus look how pretty that and his first novel look on the speculative fiction part of my new bookshelf, indeed!).

Tuesday evening saw me head back to Blackwells (if I'm there enough maybe they will let me move into poets corner?) for the launch of group 2012 the new writing group. The aim is to help with your writing. Having got two novels in first draft (written in the undergraduate years, obviously, when I had time and was doing my creative writing minor) I'm finding it really hard to find the motivation/time to re-write/improve them so the plan was to find some support and some other writers to share my thoughts/time with. I managed to meet some lovely people (quote of the evening: "It's really exciting, like we are the new Inklings. You can be Tolkien" me "Why do I have to be the weird one with elves...", and there was more wine, most excellent) and the next meeting is in a month (by which time I have pledged I will have revisited at least one chapter, gulp). I also managed to find out the dates for this years Oxford Literary Festival at which the author of my favourite novel of all time (An Equal Music - Vikram Seth) will be speaking alongside the literary greats and um Alex James (who is talking about cheese). I'm so excited I may have to take an afternoon off to go and sit in the same room (although they say you should never meet your idols).

Last night was spent at Wood school, trying to finish something I've been working on for a while (I can't really post it on here as I know the person its for is a reader of this blog, ahh the problems) but here is a sneaky peak.

This morning was freezing and my bus didn't turn up (booo) so I was in a pretty cold and bad mood by the time I got to work (after being rescued by one of our lovely neighbours), that was until I found out one of my close work friends James (indeed we used to be desk spouses, until I cruelly moved upstairs) keeps a blog on Dr Who (I'm a massive Who fan & the site is brilliant) and indeed had taken the time to create a pretty epic Sherlock/Dr Who script which you can find here, I also got sent this piece of genius, music students take note!

Wood school Christmas meal

As regular readers to this blog will know since January last year I've been attending wood school on a Thursday night.The class runs from 7pm till 9pm and everyone has their own projects to be getting on with and works pretty seperately unless one of the tutors has something to show us or its break/parish notice time. Brian (seen above with the silly glasses on) is one of the tutors and my favourite, mostly because he is so patient and has never been discouraging about my quite ambitious project plans

We were all rather worried earlier this year when he suffered a minor stroke and was out of action for a few weeks. Wood school wasn't really the same but thankfully a few months later he is back to his fabulous self.  We all trooped along to a local pub (in the rain) and enjoyed some fine eating and some local carol singers. As a bonus I also got a Christmas card from Brian, I've been carving this William De Morgan design (he designed tiles for William Morris) in three layers in a rather large piece of wood since I started. I first saw the design when I was 12 at the Walthamstow William Morris museum & it must have made a big impression as now many years later I still remebered it. Brian has the rule that you can carve whatever you like, but it has to be something that you love, as that way you are more likely to finish it. He told me I was taking on a lot when I first started his namesake (Brian the lion) it is a big job but with three seperate layers (all of which will be rounded to be convex once I've finished)  to the relief carving it was never going to be a walk in the park. He pushed this point home in his Christmas card, it read 'sorry that you haven't finished your first carving yet, maybe next year or the year after, or the year after that...'. I will get there, I have to I've already put my nae down for a large chunk of cherry wood which will be ready in a couple of years time!

Halloween/Samhein eve

There were plans, big plans to host a party of our own this year (you can find details of last years halloween party here), the universe it seems had other plans, arranging my next exam for Wednesday and a friends wedding this weekend. So Jam, the witchcat and I had our own small celebration of sorts (I'll be doing my own samhein ritual as usual tonight as well). There was of course a pumpkin, skillfully carved by Jam who expects me to believe he has never done this before (?!?), there was cake, bought in from the local shop and arranged artfully on my new cobwebby cake stand, a haunted house bought by a neighbour who knows exactly how much I love this time of year and dancing. I was also persuaded to don my fancy dress outfit of choice for some lovely new photos of me and my favourite/only familar. What a cutie pie. Happy Samhein!