Maggie's Booky-wook

Thanks so much for the award Margaret. I am going to hold off from passing it on it at the moment. When I looked at your list of recipients it contained so many that I would have chosen. I need to do some more blog searching - such hard work!

The acrylic wax won’t improve stability, Artisue, but it will make the paper surface of the vessel more permanent and also adds an interesting surface, not quite shiny but almost.

Gilby - your wax query answered above but, regarding the making of a vessel as a Workshop on the Web article, we are going right to the top here. The June issue will have a lovely big article by Lynda Monk (Purple Missus), the expert in vessel making. In fact the June issue is one of our best (and possibly biggest) ever. Even pinned Jean Littlejohn down before she dashed off to Oz. Sorry about the commercial but I’ve just finished setting it and it looks so good. Can’t wait until June.

So glad that you all enjoy the books. Funny you should say that as, when we went to the London Book Fair yesterday, my Image to Stitch book was there - looking like a proper booky and lovely with it. They had got the advance copies in and that means that the book will be here in about a month - they’ve made good progress. When I got home my copy was there so I could have an even better look. Here it is on my garden table, bless it.



Here’s a DPS. Don’t you think it was clever the way I arranged for the wind to blow and give a little glimpse of the next page.



One of my favourite spreads, below, showing work from Jane Lemon and Vivienne Brown. I am so lucky that my generous friends allow me to show their work in my books as it adds variety and introduces new ideas. I have got over the bereft feeling of not having a Val by using some of her pieces that were given to me. I also did some work from her designs. In one case, I scanned one of her samples and then used a Displacement Map on it. This was printed out and the cover image from the book was made from it. Made me feel we'd both had a hand in it. As it is a gauntlet that's quite apt.






Now it is almost here we have uploaded the related web site www.imagetostitch.com Have a look and tell me what you think.

Anyway, back to the trip to London.

The Book Fair was great - really busy and bustly and we talked to lots of people and learned lots. The Interweave guy (they often co-publish my books in the States) told us that they offer some of their books for download. Not quite like e-books - I think they use PDFs because of the pics. It would be a solution to the huge expense of posting overseas but I think I'd rather have a real book to have and to hold. What do you folks think?

When we left Earls Court we went to the Blood on Paper, book exhibition at the V&A and then to the Russia Exhib at the RA. We were practically crawling with exhaustion by then but it was the last week so we just had to see it. I will blog about these two exhibitions tomorrow, otherwise I will miss the post with some important stuff. Ta-ta for now.