Where Have I Been?

Where, indeed. Haven't posted all week and the reason is that I was suffering from complacency! Having finished my stint with the Val exhibition and taken all the stuff to Michael for the book photoshoot, I thought I could relax. Then I looked in the diary and realised that I had a talk and workshop to do this week and I wanted to update the talk and do something new in the workshop. Panic! Then all the work came back from the photo session and there was a lot that had to go back to the kind people who had loaned it. Double Panic!!!

Anyway, all is now done. The talk was good and Winchester Guild were a great audience. We do little movie clips in our talks and Clive was anxious to find out how his new camera worked out. It is much brighter and sharper than the old one so he was pleased. He also managed not to get any shots of my cleavage this time - always a possibility when he is filming from behind while I work on a machine.

The workshop produced excellent work, too. It was awful getting to the venue as there was an accident and it took me two hours to cover 40 miles. Just got there in time - although most of the participants had also been held up. I was glad of my 'out of the box' starter kit which I always try to carry. Putting all the 'ingredients' for the first activity in one box means you can zip straight into something without too much searching.

Susan (I always think of you as Arti, having misread your blog title right at the start of this madness) I like your fleur de lys piece. Do I detect a hint of embossing powder?

Hope you are going to show your mixed media textures, Becky. I'm going to be playing with mixed media as soon as I've caught up with myself. I have some classes booked and there's lots of exciting stuff out there to play with. Here are a couple of pics from Jane Wild, who does the most wonderful mixed media work. The piece is called 'Whispers', I think, and was developed for our Paper, Metal and Stitch book. It is cast paper, gesso and scrim, all built up on Wireform to allow some movement. We had such fun doing that book that we went on to do the 'Paper & Beyond' CDROM.

I'm glad that you all seem to find the clickable pics are working. Hope these are OK, Jane.

Tomorrow we are going to have a day out, under the pretext of taking Sian Martin's work back (she was very kind and let me use two super pieces for the forthcoming book). Sian lives in Somerset so we are going on to do a bit of 'birding' in the Somerset levels. The weather for the last few days has been cold, crisp and sunny with heavy overnight frosts so I hope it keeps going for another day.

On Sunday I am hoping to bring in a movie - it tells me that I can, so we'll give it a try. Has anyone tried it? Any advice? I guess it might take a while to load, so be prepared.