Project 365 – Day 167

15th June 2012 – “Working from home”

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Project 365 – Day 36

Well, the snow really did keep coming last night and this morning I woke up to find my garden looking very Narnia-esque.

5th February 2012 – “Winter wonderland”

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Weekword: Content

This week’s Weekword is content, and it was chosen by Sally over at Diario.  If you go and visit her blog you’ll be able to see what she’s written, as well as a list of the other participants.

con·tent   adj.

1. Desiring no more than what one has; satisfied.

I was musing on how content I was just the other week, while writing a letter to Sally of Sow & Sew (in this age of electronic communication we are determinedly trying to keep up an old fashioned correspondence via the post).  I was sitting in my studio at the time with the door open, enjoying the view and a cup of coffee while I pondered what to write next.  It was sheer bliss, and right at that moment I was utterly content.

My studio always has that effect on me.  Whether I’m down there to work, or to just sit and procrastinate, I always feel completely satisfied with my lot.  Sometimes I do just sit there and stare out of the door (or window, now that the weather has turned chilly), which might seem like a waste of time to some people, but it’s not.  Sometimes things need a good coat of looking at, and that includes life itself.

It’s a little slice of paradise.  Balm for the soul.  I worked hard to create this space, but it was worth it!  I hope that you’ve got a place which makes you feel this satisfied – and if you have then I’d love to hear about it.

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Crafty Photo Scavenger Hunt: August

The lovely Kirst over at The Leopard Anchor has started a Crafty Photo Scavenger Hunt (to view Kirst’s run through of the details click here).

I thought it would be fun to take part, particularly as I’m having a little hiatus from studio work at the moment, and to make the challenge a bit more difficult for myself I decided to theme all my photos on the great outdoors.  As a bit of a change from my usual camera I also decided to use the camera on my phone so that I could vintage the photos up using the Vignette app.

Inspiration

My studio, which is such an inspiring little place to work.

Something I made

The beehive compost bin I made out of leftover wood earlier this year.

Motifs: Birds

The beautiful bird cage I bought at the Chelsea Flower Show this year.  I love this so much and take an obscene amount of pleasure in simply looking at it out of the window when I’m sat at my desk.

Supplies

Not traditional crafting supplies, but supplies as provided by nature.  I’ve been making a lot of jam lately, so fruit has been upmost in my thoughts!

Holiday

Some people bring home keyrings or rock when they go on holiday… I brought home bits of an old ship which I picked up in the Orkneys.

Thanks for viewing my entry for this month’s Scavenger Hunt.  Please do pop along to Kirst’s blog to find links to the other people who are taking part.

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A studio update

I’ve had a good old tidy of my studio this past week, mainly through necessity.  I realised I needed another work surface to pile crap onto on which to stack things neatly, so I built a little table out of some salvaged wood.  That was one little change (which has made a vast difference in terms of tidiness).

Then I spent two hours looking for something, and because the studio is quite a small space I had to tidy as I went.  I hunted high and low, and in the process I sorted and organised and generally made good.  This freed up quite a bit of space too as I ended up clearing all the things I’d left littered on the floor.

The chair I’ve been using is one I found in the street earlier this year, and it’s been a good chair but recently it’s developed an alarming wobble.  I’ve tried fixing it but to no avail.  I resigned myself to having to buy a new chair…

… and then on Friday I found one in the street!  A lovely sturdy chair, in good condition, just with scuff marks and a few stains on the cream fabric.  I had a go at cleaning the fabric but didn’t make much headway, so I decided to decorate it with ink instead.

Looks good doesn’t it?

So now I have a new chair to sit on, and I’ve done a bit more tidying so that the old chair can stay in the studio for now as an extra place to stack things (and also for any guests to sit on – it wobbles but it’s still functional!).

That photo also shows that I gave in and put up some coat hooks last month so that I’d have somewhere to hang my cardigan and a few bags of stuff.

I’ll finish off with a couple of photos of the walls.  The wall I face when I’m working is coming along nicely with the kirigami shapes, which I make when I have a bit of spare time.

The wall at the back of the studio is looking a bit bare though.  I’ve got various bits and bobs up there, but the left side of it is quite stark and needs filling.  I might put up all the Inspiration by Post items I’ve received so far – what do you think?

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From island to garden…

I must apologise for the long gap between entries, but I’d like to tell you a story which will explain my absence:

Once upon a time there was an artist, and she worked on her sitting room floor.  After two years of this her osteopath lectured her almightily and told her to get herself a studio so she could sit at a desk and stop ruining her back.

So she did…

She was lucky enough to find an amazing studio space in a rickety building on an island.  It was quirky, inspiring, peaceful and very beautiful.  She absolutely loved it.

The artist worked in her studio for a year, but at the end of that year things changed at home, and following her father’s death she decided that she would like to spend more time closer to the home which she now shared solely with her mother.  It was a hard decision to make, but she thought long and hard and eventually decided to give up her island retreat and build a studio in her garden instead.

The garden had become a little neglected due to the sad events at home and was in desperate need of a revamp:

She worked hard for a month, putting in as much time as she could to get the garden, and her new studio, ready.  It was hard both physically and emotionally because the garden had been very much her father’s for the past couple of years, as the artist’s work had kept her too busy to care for it herself.  The old shed had been put up by her father, and the whole garden held many memories.  But grief is a strange thing, and people manage it in their own way.  The artist found that redesigning the garden and taking down the shed and pergola which her father had so lovingly built did not diminish the memories.  On the contrary, she found that everything she did took on a greater meaning as she wondered what her father would say if he were there.

It took a month, a lot of hard work (some of which was helped along by her partner, Matt), and at times a lot of swearing too (!) but the garden is finally almost ready.

It’s not quite finished.  There is still work to be done in the garden, and more things to move into the studio – but it’s almost there and it seemed like a good time to show and tell.

The End.

For more information on Johnsons Island, please visit http://www.brentfordgallery.co.uk/

To see more photographs of Johnsons Island, as taken by the fabulous Katherine Palmer, please click here.

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My desk…

I fancied a break on Friday, so I decided to draw my desk at the studio. As you can see, I was midway through binding a book, and if you note the pile of books to the left you can also see that I’d done quite a number of other ones already!

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