Wimbledon..... sort of.....

It is raining cats and dogs here in Wales so it won't be long before it blows eastwards and stops play on the first day of Wimbledon fortnight. Just in case you enjoy tennis but won't get to see any have a look at this version of Nadal v Federer in book form. It's quicker to watch the video than the re-runs I suspect they're already lining up for the breaks in play....

WIM•BLE•DON from BRYANKU on Vimeo.

Strange week

I have had a strange week. The fact that the weather has been so up and down means that plans have been changed continuously to fit in with it. One minute it is glorious sunshine so I've been out and about with my sketchbook trying to find elements in the landscape that I want to translate onto paper . It does not float my boat so part of me is happy to find an alternative occupation when it it raining - like more experiments with the tyvek. I rusted a few more sheets - when it was hot one afternoon - and then looked for scraps in my rag bag to bond it to. I found a small piece of lace and some grey ribbed fabric and wondered whether I could somehow sandwich them all together. I bonded the lace to the grey first and then bonded again into the tyvek. The results were not bad so I found some more lacy scraps and decided to have a go on some curtain interlining. The scrap above is jusy tyvek onto lace but I am really pleased with the piece below.

The soft interlining gives it a warm feel and it is quite flexible. I think I could manage to embroider some beads or stitch into it and then use it as a book wrap or book cover... but I am no embroiderer so that may just stay in my head as a possibility. In truth I have spent most of the week fretting over the bird life in my garden. I normally love this time of year as the nestlings fledge from all the boxes in the garden but the weather has played a strange role this year. Blackbirds are apparently struggling because the ground is too hard and there are not enough worms to feed on. Our moth traps have not been very productive as yet and after an initial burst there are very few butterflies around. There is not enough insect food for fledglings so we have started to put nuts and seed out again for the adults.

So far this season I have only seen one baby blackbird and he has disapeared. I saw three young robins in the garden but found one of them dead the other morning. Sadly, he had flown into my bathroom window. He is now amongst my tiny collection of deceased avians. The goldfinches have been successful and they are around and about, as are the Greater Spotted Woodpeckers too. The adults are regular visitors and their calling has been going on for a few weeks now so it was great to finally see a juvenile appear this week on the feeder. I'd be surprised if they only had one youngster but that's all we've seen to date.

There are also chaffinches around and I caught this little chap and a few others in the tree last night being fed by the parents but every time I look at the feeder I either see the woodpecker or the frenzied grouping of these Great Tit fledglings. They are super abundant this year, along with blue tits and they swarm over the feeders. We are going through seeds and peanuts like nobody's business almost as much as we do in the winter. We don't know what to do for the best. If we keep feeding we worry that they won't try to find other food but , on the other hand, we're not convinced there is enough other food out there at present.

The swallows are incredibly active but there is not sign of any young as yet. I have not seen as many swallows around this year and not a single swift at all. Very unusual. The biggest surprise came last night. I was sat in the conservatory in the semi dark just before 10 and a beautiful, but quite small, barn owl glided across the garden from the field next door. In the twilight it was as ghostly as you'd expect it to be. Despite living in a very rural area that is only the third time I've seen a barn owl here in 10 years so it was very special.

Now is the time of year that we should be putting out a moth trap and recording the data at least 2 or 3 times a week but there is no point in all this rain.... and there is more of it again today. Flaming June eh? I am hoping for better weather next week and a return to summer..... oh no, I just remembered it's the start of Wimbledon. It may be more of the same then. Better get my brolly out.

Messing about

My kitchen is a mess. I have made the mess so cannot complain. I'm surprised my husband does not complain actually , especially as I have a large workshop cum shed up in the garden that I am meant to mess about in. The trouble is though that I like to have all my ongoing little projects within easy reach so that I can pick them up at random and play around as the mood takes me. I have a papier mache mask on the go and I've also got some small canvases prepared as part of my landscape painting course but today I was keen to play around with a piece of tyvek that I rust dyed last week. Now I've never worked with tyvek before but I know it can be of paper or material construction. The stuff I've bought is definitely paper but it still rusted OK in a couple of hours under the hot sun last week. It's the top sheet in the photo above as the other piece is quite clearly an old piece of copper shim I've had for ages. A friend who is doing an MA in Surface Decoration told me that tyvek can be sandwiched with fabric by the insertion of a piece of bondaweb between the two. Put the 'sandwich' inside a non stick baking parchment envelope and iron heavily on a high heat. The tyvek melts and contracts and moulds into the fabric she said......

Well, I thought I'd have a go today with three different surfaces. I used some fabric that had already been rusted, some canvas that I had dyed in shades of blue.... and the copper shim.

The rusted fabric looks, well, more rusted but did not photograph well. The canvas came out a treat. I love the mixture of rust and blue at the best of times but this is gorgeous in close up. If I'd used the material tyvek I think I might have been able to subsequently stitch it but the paper is a little tough. What it has given me though is a great surface for printing on. As I have lots of this blue canvas I've already started to rust more tyvek sheets. I feel a book coming on....

Sometimes I wonder where I was when they gave out brains. Ironing metal makes it hot! This was not my finest hour and it has not really done anything special for the copper but that's why I love experimenting. Today I've had a naff result, a so-so result and a fabulous result. The canvas piece has so many possibilities it does not matter about the other things but now I want to try the effect on felt.... and velvet.... and linen.... and denim. Oh dear, looks like more mess ahead!

Buttons....

In my recent post about my collections I was about to launch into photos of my button hoard when I realised the scale of it. I've subsequently started to have a clear out and tidy up of my things and have made a resolution to use or throw away the mountain of things I have that I never use (.... famous last words) Anyway, along with a few jars of colour co-ordinated buttons I have these three tins and it reminded me that my collection was added to a couple of years ago when I inherited my Great Aunt Lilla's sewing things. Along with the hundreds (yes, true) of dress patterns she left I also have her button tins. The old Kodak tin is full of black buttons and nothing else but black buttons as Lilla worked in a factory making police uniforms. As she was 96 when she passed away you can imagine how old they are. I can even remember Lucky Number chocolates as a child so want to keep that tin regardless of whether it has buttons in it or not. The Quality Street tin was inherited when my Mum passed away and the box below belonged to my Nana before it passed via Mum to me.

It made me think that most button hoards probably start this way by being passed down the generations. In a previous sort out, when I singularly failed to dispose of anything, I must have co-ordinated the buttons and decided to stash all the ones semi -attached to cards in this old box. I can't bring myself to use any of them. It's seems wrong to detach them from their home. If I could think of a way of incorporating the whole card into something that would be easier.

I have picked out a sample of my favourite ones to show you below. Some are vintage and some are new, bought just because I liked the shape or colour. The black selection shows some modern ones that I buy every time I go to Hay on Wye. There is a shop there that buys them in Nepal and brings them back to the UK but the glass ones are old. The black and gold glass buttons were bought in a junk shop about 25 years ago. At the time I broke the shank from them and made them into earrings. I used to think I was the bees knees in them. Of course they were really heavy and hurt my ears something chronic but I loved them. They've not been used as earrings now for many a year but I could never bring myself to part with them.

This lot includes some little oddities, some again that I could never part with like the lime green ones that look very 30's to me but I think the time has come to be ruthless. I am going to throw the bulk of them into a tin and take them to a charity shop or the tip. Either that or I need to use them in something or find them a home with another button obsessive out there who has an obsession worse than mine...... is that possible?

More book things... sort of

I found this a few weeks ago and 'bookmarked' it. I liked it mainly because I thought it was great animation and a fabulous way to trail a book. It also makes me think of Gina, one of my fellow Postman's Knock chums. She will know why but I'll give you a clue - it's word number three!!

Collector.... Hoarder.... Magpie..... Obsessive?

When I casually threw out the comment in a recent post about whether anyone wanted to share any of their collections I didn't quite expect the response.
Thanks to Niminy Fingers,Jee and Me, Third Age Musings, Ticking Stripes,Kitsch and Curious and Things to Make and Do for taking up the question and responding in resounding fashion. Looking at all of your 'collections' really made me think whether I am really a collector at all or just someone with obsessive 'must have' tendencies when I spy certain things?


I never collected anything as a child or teenager so this thing came late to me. It started with an article in a newspaper about ten years ago. It told the story of Jools Holland's brother who, whilst touring with the band, spent the spare daytime hours visiting the charity shops in the towns they toured in. His objective was to find and buy Ladybird books and I was really transported back to my childhood by this notion and started to keep my eye out for them in the same sort of place . Before long you realise that you are going out of your way to travel to unknown places just to visit charity shops and have a scan on the shelves.... well, over a period of a few years I bought hundreds and almost have a full collection of the titles I want. They sit in crates under the stairs jostling for position with my husband 's Eagle and Dan Dare collection of books and toys. I don't even look any more as the older ones have long disappeared from the charity shop shelves . I have specialist Ladybird publications, work cards, posters and even a large number printed in Welsh but I no longer look for them. The Holy Grail for me would be a copy of 'Learnabout Farming' which was listed but supposedly never published. I've never tracked down a copy but if anyone sees one.......

By the time I stopped searching for Ladybirds I realised I'd started something else. By then I'd started picking up books by certain illustrators, not going out of my way, but buying them if I saw them. I love illustrations by Edward Bawden, Barbara Jones, Brian Wildsmith or David Gentleman. This little collection below is a mix of King Penguins and other books I choose just for the covers or end papers and internal illustrations.


The moth book cover was designed by Enid Marx and the woodland flowers cover is the work of Clifford and Rosemary Ellis, the designers for many years of the covers for the Collins Naturalists series. I am a pushover for any book with interesting covers. I can't tell you what type I look for. Sometimes, the book just shouts out to me and I have to bring it home with me.

I have been so interested in what other people have blogged about. I do wonder why we suddenly start to pick up similar things, before long realising we have quite a hoard of them, so I started to try and gather some of my bits and pieces. To be honest I buy a lot of things thinking I am going to incorporate them into something else, chickening out at the final moment, unable to use something I've grown quite fond of. That's the problem with these tins. They were bought to be carriers for small books relating to the product or the image but.......

The same goes for my collection of shorthand books and this lovely shorthand medal. I have lots of these things. Why? I don't understand shorthand but I love those graphic marks and the fact that someone was awarded a medal for their prowess with it.

There is a common theme through some of my things. I am a bookaholic. I've already owned up to keeping my eye out for certain illustrators. I currently have an interest in finding Fontana Agatha Christie covers from the 70's but an ongoing passion is anatomy and first aid or nursing books. I have quite a few St John Ambulance manuals and it is fascinating to see the changing illustrations as the 20th century progressed. My 'Ship's Captains book of First Aid' has some very strange illustrations in it. Innocuous at the time of printing but not very PC these days. I dare not show you for fear of offence....

I'm not averse to picking up the odd jigsaw either but it usually has to have those gaudy handpainted covers from the 50's or 60's. I'm very fond of my Coronation jigsaw and picked up the other Royal one in a charity shop for £1 only a few weeks ago. I think I was swept away on Royal Wedding fever at the time.... These get made up and dismantled and live under the cupboard too with our Dan Dare jigsaws from Woolworth's circa 1950's.

When I took these photographs earlier I thought the 'Buttons' jigsaw would lead on to some photos of my button hoard, inspired by the photos at Kitsch and Curious. When I started to look in my shed for the tins I have them stored in I realised that they could make a post all on their own. It's also made me focus on what I have! Will I ever use it? Doubtful. So why keep picking it up and hoarding it? Now that is a question I would like an answer to!

Up, up and away!

I went on a brilliant automata making workshop yesterday and came home with a flying horse! My photo does not do him justice but he flaps his wings and is ready for take off. It's only a simple thing but I can't stop giving the handle a twirl every time I walk past. Although he's only a first attempt I'm still going to paint him and make him look more finished. I've left the wires long so that I can remove them and then trim them when I finish him to my liking.

I didn't know what to expect from the workshop but I took along a template to work with in case we needed an idea. The template is a free download from artist Ann Wood who makes great papier mache creations and has some lovely templates to work with. The first thing I did was scale it up and attach it to some card. I could have made it in wood but I was taken with this dog automata made by the workshop leader, Toby, and thought card would probably be the medium I would work with again anyway.

Even though I opted for card we were still encouraged to use tools for speed so I cut the pieces using a treadle operated fretsaw which I could not get to work smoothly. I kept telling myself it was just like using a spinning wheel, except I spin sitting down and could not get the action right standing up. I used a handsaw to cut the bases out of plywood. It was hard! Plus, my left handedness meant I was always in everyone's way when I needed bench space. I smoothed all the edges of my pieces on a belt sander and sanded my finger at speed as well. Trust me to be the one to test whether there were plasters in the first aid kit.

I drilled holes in the base, screwed them together, made my wings and wired it up and hey presto, I nearly fainted with pleasure when I turned the handle and it worked. I rarely go to a workshop and actually take a completed thing home with me. I love to absorb the process and then do my own thing but there was no escaping it yesterday. Toby was committed to everyone taking home an automata or a kinetic sculpture. I'm so glad he was so insistent about that.

This is a puppet mask that Toby made and of course, I had to know how he'd done it, already making plans to make one for myself! The shape of the face was made by putting some fine scrim over someone's skull and then sticking a structure of brown gumstrip over it before building up the face later. I asked my husband if he'd be my model and whether I could put clingfilm on his head to papier mache over. He was reluctant, pointing out the possibility of suffocation.... and then he suggested I use the wooden hat block I used to use for feltmaking. Ping! Lightbulb moment! Of course, that's perfect. It's already set up on the side to start.....

I went along to the workshop with a chum from my art course as we both had half term and this is what Ann made. There was lots of driftwood there we could have used so she found this great piece and made the body of a vulture. She is going to give him large card wings and I think he will be fabulous. Similarly, one of the chaps on the course also made a bird. Here is his pelican eating a fish. He has a way to go but the idea really works.

This was Toby's first workshop and it was great to be a guinea pig. I have not used tools as such for years and it was physically exhausting as well as mentally tiring. You are constantly assessing and re-assessing, making small changes ..... and wondering where you put the pliers....

Toby is now going to run another workshop in September making paper models and paper automata. Surprise, surprise, I said 'Put my name down now!'