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Shopping Small

28 March, 2014 / Katy / 2 Comments

I know I’m a little late to the party, but I’ve just got into eBay in a big way.

I’ve started an (unfashionable) brass trivet collection and I’m trying to pick up as many other bits and pieces that we need for the kitchen there as I can.

My brass polishing skills need a little (ahem) brushing up.

It’s not that my charity shop days are over, but if you have something specific in mind it can take years off the search!

Plus, I’m getting (even) more militant in my Shopping Small and even if I’m not able to get everything second hand at least I’m more likely to support a person than a corporation (eBay and PayPal excepted, of course).

I definitely measured the old butter dish (in which the butter fits perfectly) before I bought this one, and no one was more surprised than I when this happened. But neither the Deco butter dish or the locally made butter are giving ground, so we’ll have to work around it.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m on the hunt for a spoon rest…

Sending All My…

25 March, 2014 / Katy / 0 Comments

For various reasons, I’ve been thinking about my understanding of art, how I relate it to my work and how my work may (or may not) broadcast my understanding of art to other people.

In essence, my understanding of art is that it makes you think, no matter what the medium or where it is presented.

Due to the relatively mechanical nature of hand embroidery (a blessing and a curse for the easily-distracted stitcher) I am left with plenty of head-space to fill with thoughts that I either direct into the piece when things are going well or cast around me when they’re not.

The aspect of my work that I most struggle to communicate when selling is that I’m not only hand-stitching because I enjoy it and it’s different than machine embroidery, but to give someone an object which has hours of human contact behind it signifies that you have set aside those non-returnable hours for the contemplation of the receiver’s existence.

The making of any piece, but especially a commission, means that I ponder the recipient, the giver, where I imagine the piece will live, how I hope they will speak about it to people who ask and much more. If you think intentions can travel through objects, I send all manner of good advice, good wishes and happy thoughts with each piece.

The more art I make the more I discover that I like the way it moves my thoughts outside of myself and towards other people.

So that’s the rather sneaky surprise about art, the definition is that it makes you think… but it doesn’t always say who that ‘you’ will be.

Someday Soon?

21 March, 2014 / Katy / 2 Comments

I’m about to start a Parisian-inspired piece, so I’ve been googling a lot of cherry blossoms.

Pinned from elleamberley.co.uk

It’s not helping my Spring-longing very much…

I think it’s time to step out of The Hovel and do some embroidery in the sunshine!

I’ll just get these frames painted in, they’re a suitably Parisian shade of cream, croyez-vous?

Home Alone

18 March, 2014 / Katy / 0 Comments

For almost the first time in a fortnight I am home alone.

No one is drilling, sanding, sawing or traipsing about.

The whole house is a mixture of Things That Are Mine and Things That Don’t Feel Like Mine Yet. (With the possible exception of the tile spacers.)

Until then, there are still jars of jam amongst the train tracks in the front room and I’m not entirely sure where the rest of the tea towels are, but we’re making progress.

Commisison – I love you, I know (The Golden Years)

14 March, 2014 / Katy / 0 Comments

I pride myself on being able to offer products that are unique – partially because there’s quite enough mass production in the world already and partially because I’m not sure I could make the same thing over and over even if I wanted to. (This is part of the reason I make art rather than repeatable things like bags or clothes or jewellery.)

But then I got a request for an ‘I love you, I know’ after someone had seen a post on my Facebook page saying it had sold. So I had to consider my policy…could I still offer unique pieces and give people the chance to say ‘I love that one, can I have one too?’

Luckily, the answer is a resounding yes!

There is always another way to approach words – in this case we’ve got three whole films (I refuse to acknowledge any others) and quite an array of costume possibilities, not to mention fonts, frames and stitches.

I was informed by the commissioner that the pieces were a birthday present for her husband and that she wanted to hang them over the bed. So I went for that gold bikini (and discovered along the way that it is mostly green).

It tickles me to imagine family life in the Skywalker-Solo household, I hope the bikini makes a reappearance, even if only for special occasions.

Here We Are at Little Ox and Giveaway

11 March, 2014 / Katy / 0 Comments

The Here We Are show opened at Little Ox Gallery on Friday, 28th February and I thought you would like a little peek!

Due to a technical hitch, my piece didn’t make up for the opening, so I popped in on Saturday for a look around and a chance to take some photos.

Derek, the owner of the gallery, said that he had expected about half of the people who had collected maps to bring back finished pieces, but in the end everyone who took a map made a piece!

There was a definite split between pieces that interacted directly with the map and those that were more obliquely connected. Overall, I prefer art with a meaning I can parse with the information I have to hand, so I was drawn to those which seemed the most map-y. I haven’t photographed everything or even all of my favourites, so if you’re nearby do pop in for a look!

My piece, ‘Blue Plaques – 297 unremarkable lives’ drew heavily on the Malcolm Bull’s Calderdale Companion; an amazing website which catalogues a vast quanitity of historical data from a variety of sources. I literally worked my way down one street and up the next, finding births, marriages, scandals, bankruptcies and murders along the way.

I traced the removals of families, businesses and schools and kept track of the number of people directly affected (as best I could guess if there wasn’t concrete information). The text mimics the Blue Plaques erected in London and other British cities to commemorate famous residents and their deeds. In a further nod to the industries of the area, 297 steel beads were stitched into the distance markings around the edge of the map. You can see more detailed photos of the work in progress in this post and this one.

I have two unused maps which I’d like to send out into the world and see what you can create. If you’d like to have a chance to win one, leave me a comment with your very first idea about what you’d like to use them for (painting, origami, headgear, anything) and I’ll draw two winners at random on Monday 17th March. When you’ve finished your project (even if it bears no resemblance to what you originally thought you would do), I’d love to post a photo of it.

Good luck!

Commission – Ellen

7 March, 2014 / Katy / 0 Comments

I made this piece for my gran’s 90th birthday at the end of February. It’s one of the first pieces I’ve made about someone I know and I really struggled with it!

The first thing I knew was that it had to be bright. From purple hair and turquoise eyeliner to Indian fabrics and sequins for all occasions, there is always lots of colour around Ellen.

I also wanted to capture her sort of energy; curious, enthusiastic and irrepressibly sunny. (Does anyone else get letters from their grandparents about roadtrips across the States, politics in the Middle East and art – all within the same paragraph?)

In common with many people who stride easily past their four score years and ten, Ellen is an irrepressible optimist. She got a tattoo at 80, and can be counted on to denote her approval with an ‘aw, isn’t that darling!’

I’m not sure I’m ever going to adequately compress the essence of the person who helped me make my first quilt, showed me that more is more when hanging pictures in your house and let me try on every bright and beaded item in her wardrobe at the same time into an embroidery, but here’s hoping I get another chance to try in 10 years!

A Habit of Speech

4 March, 2014 / Katy / 1 Comment

If you know someone with a specialist subject, especially if you live with them, you’ll find yourself picking up some of the knowledge they leave lying about (this can only be a good thing, of course).

Sometimes this leads to unexpected actions, such as the many photographs of paving I took on my honeymoon (our most long-standing flatmate is a landscape architect), or an experiment in writing my undergraduate dissertation in LaTex about tutus (that would be the computer scientist sitting next to me).

It doesn’t all go one way, of course – Dragon pulls out my Pilates mat and announces he needs to do his exercises and LYM tuts sympathetically when I complain that the new DYMO label-maker has slightly different kerning than the old one.

So I hope that you’ll appreciate following hilarious monologue by Mike Lacher on the font everyone loves to hate…Comic Sans.

But…

…don’t read this out loud to your granny, unless she swears like a trooper already!

At Sixes and Sevens

27 February, 2014 / Katy / 2 Comments

I’m feeling a wee bit fuddled this week and I can’t seem to focus on anything much. Among other things, we have a flat-pack kitchen and appliances in boxes in our dining room in preparation for what I’m calling Takeaway Week.

I spent the end of last week and the weekend desperately embroidering my piece for the ‘Here We Are’ show at Little Ox Gallery. It was a proper BBC costume drama box set, internet-free marathon with breaks only for the taking on and jettisoning of cups of tea and Pilates breaks in order to counteract chronic embroidery flexion*.

Monday morning I sprang out of bed (…ok, more like a slow motion tumble) and prepared to face the week getting organised for Saturday’s Morningside Maker’s Market. But the Pilates batphone rang and I raced off to teach an extra class.

My conscientious side said ‘Never mind, I can always write a blog post this evening.’ But the rest of my brain apparently over-ruled that in favour of reading a Victorian novel** cover-to-cover. (I try not to read, especially when I have other things to do – like brushing my teeth or sleeping).

But I’m back on track now (I’ve finished the book and resisted the temptation to start it again) so if you’re in Edinburgh I’d love to see you on Friday evening at the Little Ox Gallery in Candlemaker Row and Saturday at the Columcille Centre! All details in this handy calendar.

*neckache

**Oh dear, I’m slipping. I couldn’t work out what sparked my great urge to watch and read North and South. Until I wrote this post and realised that when embroidering the comings and goings in a Northern mill town you pretty much can’t read anything else.

Paper and Stitch

21 February, 2014 / Katy / 1 Comment

Remind me, when I next ask you, that detailed embroidery on paper is a bit of a pain.

There’s one week until the opening of Here We Are at the Little Ox Gallery and so I’m stitching as fast as my hands can go.

Luckily, I’ve got some company (as long as I’m not blocking the sunshine.)