BlueBlah

My desk after an onslaught of blue. 

I love the off-cuts and the leftovers. 

And I'm sure you'll all agree it's more restful than lime.

*'([{Five addictions}])'* and a beach offering

I've been tagged by the talented Anna over at Colour and Sound to name five addictions, I've been meaning to post this for ages... these are my current addictions but by next week I will have new loves, O fickle me...

•The Internet... Oh my, I loveheart it...Do they have rehab for internet fiends? I have got repetitive strain injury from my mouse usage and ~I still can't stop, there is so much to see and do. All that research at my finger tips, all that creativity leaping around in the magic box. I need to be taken to a remote place and made to go cold turkey..NOW.

•Boots..Oh you know, the ones that go on your feet, they come in all colours shapes and styles and I like them. I line them up and look at them when I am really bored. Soon to be replaced by flip flops as the sun comes out.

•The Wire...The tv police series. It's given me so much to get my head stuck into, it's given me nightmares, it doesn't insult my intelligence, I hate television, I'm very against the opiumbox of colour (see addiction 1 which really shows how two faced I am) but The Wire...sigh. I don't want it to end. Oh yeah, p.s it's got the best looking cast ever. 

•Food..not an addiction but a necessity, heres the thing... I go through phases. I can honestly eat the same thing for days on end. Last week~salad nicoise...the week before...tuna melt with tabasco sauce...the week before that...spaghetti bolog. I think it's because I make a huge vat of something and am so busy watching the wire, being internetty or polishing my boots or possibly even making artistic and creative castles that I just dont want to think about food until I'm staaaaaarrrrrrving, so then I eat what i've left in the fridge...

•Yoga...feel weird if I dont do it, feel shattered when I do but cannot stop for fear of the emptiness and hopelessness. 

……An Overdose of Lime……

I keep thinking I may have overdone it on the lime. Every time I catch sight of my transformed garden set I have a mini crisis about just how bright it is. I would prefer it to be a bit more weather beaten and by next spring, after a winter outside, it may have toned down a bit. Not bad for £12 and a tin of paint. 

Loulouloves...casing in and singing

Casing in books has a bittersweet tone about it. It means the book is getting made and almost done but it's also a critical ballet between keeping it clean, straight and openable. I take a deep breath before every one. Constantly rubbing my gluey fingers on my apron and using plenty of waste paper for masking off the fresh pages. Muttering a running commentary or singing the same line from the same song over and over like a bookbinder's mantra. (today it's The Boxer from Simon and Garfunkel "O I am just a poor boy, my story's seldom told")

My desk is not organised at all, I start off with great intentions, clean mind, clean desk, clean hands and I find myself working in greater and greater chaos with my working space becoming smaller and smaller until I find I am working in a single square foot with piles of tools, scraps of paper and I can't find one of my six scalpels.

Then when it's all done I have a big clear up and cannot allow myself even one moment of satisfaction until this is done and then when I am back to some kind of space I sit and sign all the ones that are finished. 

Then I go into the garden and listen to the birds also singing their one line over and over and I think, none of this really matters at all. I'm just glad I am here today. And tomorrow there will be another song. 

Please God, don't make it an annoying one.

+Loving Lime+

After the soggy week last week, rain and drizzle and fine mist (we Brits must have as many words for rain as the Eskimos do for snow) we are now basking in sunshine. The washing that was on my line has finally dried, the builders have packed up and gone and left me to do the painting, sanding and filling. The gas board have stopped traipsing through my house and have set up camp in the road to replace 30 year old gas pipes. And suddenly it is calm, I can once again concentrate on the tasks in hand (about 36 at the last count). 

I hung this Turkish lantern in the garden because it's too big for indoors and now I want to paint everything lime green. Starting with the garden furniture I got for £12 in a garage sale. It's going to be tres chic. I'm imagining garden lunches that look like Sunday supplements but I know that the soundtrack will be the neighbour's new chain saw and the gas board's pneumatic drills. 

Box Number Three

Box number 3 is created from a discarded cutlery box I found on the ground when the flea market was packing up in Paris. As if I didn't have enough boxes already...I had bought a book about insects (all in French) that afternoon which was destined for the project as the binding was very loose and it was only 2 Euros. Everything else on the market was so shockingly overpriced I thought about driving over there with my next boot load of junk and making my fortune. 

So, here it is....Box Number Three incorporating "Encyclopedie illustree des insects". Celebrating my escape to Paris. 

<{Click on the images for bigger views}>

 

Into Production

I have had a creative fountain in me this last week or so, it is situated around my heart area. It looks like a cross between a chandelier and Southend seafront. It's like being at a party and believing you are the life and soul of the event. In actual fact, you've probably just had a tequila too many. I'll probably wake up next week and think what a fool I have been.

But for now, the folding, cutting and glueing is spurring me on.

Note to self:

Don't think too much, just make.

Don't talk too much, just create.

Don't varnish your fingernails a particularly fetching and inappropriate shade of midnight blue because every time you fold a piece of paper it leaves it's indelible mark.

A poke around the garden

Home again, home again, jiggity jig.

My favourite corner of the garden. Last autumn I planted over 50 tulip bulbs, all different varieties but all of them were orange. 

I love orange tulips. 

And I love seeing that couple of hours digging and planting before winter produce such a great show. 

I am working on lots of new things and as the weeks unfold like bird's wings, I shall share them here. Inbetween reorganising myself after the building works, setting up my Etsy shop and preparing to go to Hong Kong. More of that soon.

All in a day's work...