Bumbles and Books

Carol Anne - I shall call you a marvel. I can remember the ad now. I wonder how many other people quote the 'greasy auntie' phrase without knowing the provenance. The wonders of the web, indeed, ArtiSue.

Thanks so much to Corryna for the arte y pico award. Very humbling to have awards for indulging myself in a good chat. Bumbling on might be a better description. I am looking forward to checking out your list of bloggers, Corryna.

I am having a surreptitious blog, very quietly, while Clive is doing a garage sort. We are supposed to be having a weekend off - just like normal people do. No computers - how sad is that? I find that weekends off are very boring and I can't wait until Monday. I must admit that they are restorative and so, I guess, necessary once in a while. We have licked the garden into shape and that was enjoyable and now I've read all the papers and can feel a bit of stitching coming on.

When I last blogged we were off to a Society of Authors lunch. Such a coincidence - we sat with a chap who was born in India (so was Clive), came to this country in 1947 (so did Clive) and whose father was railway rather than Raj - you guessed it, so was Clive's father. Just like Clive he had no desire to go back and, just like me, his wife was rather miffed about this!

The Society are wonderful for things like checking publishing contracts, royalty queries and the like. They also monitor the big, bad Amazon situation. Yes, I use them too, but they do knock authors' payments down to practically nothing. I think this is why self-publishing is so popular. I am certainly going to be doing another book with Michael Wicks. Not just because of the royalty issue, but because it was so liberating to be able to change the pages, the size of the pics and to add another pic suddenly. He was also so fussy about the paper and print quality.

The next book will be called Mixed Media and Stitch and I hope it will be out in December. As I started it a while back, the gestation period is similar to giving birth to a baby so I am thinking that maybe I will start another blog to chart its progress - the birth of a book. It would be more sporadic than this blog, as books get done in lulls between teaching, giving talks and getting the mags together. It could be fun but will be a fine line between making it interesting and not giving away all the secrets, as nobody would then buy the book. What do you think?

I have finished the fossily vessel. It even has a base and still stands up straight, no mean achievement. Here are a couple of shots.

I must give it a coat of acrylic wax, as a lot of it is abaca paper, and so is not very strong.

Clive is approaching. I am discovered. Now I will have to make the tea (and possibly tomorrow's breakfast) as penance.