Tears before show time.

For the past 12 weeks, or something, I’ve been working on my Final Major Project which signifies the end of my time at Swindon College, and with it, education in Swindon. This project is more special than the past ones, this one gets exhibited and is open to the public.

I’ve done my project on faith, and entitled it Beatific Visions, and it has culminated in a shrine to human life. I put up my show on Wednesday. I was happy with it on Wednesday. Today, however, was another story.

I went along to Kembrey Park, the place where the show is held, and this time round other students work was up. I had a look around, and ran into a few people. “Is your work ironic? It’s just your last stuff was feminist and now this is… feminine.” “My mum’ll like your work.” “I didn’t see your work anywhere?” and then I returned to my own show, and looked properly. I sat on the floor infront of it and I realised it was missing something major: me.

It’s well stitched. It’s humourous. It’s pretty. It’s twee. It’s totally inoffensive… it’s boring. It does nothing to grab any attention, and it never would have, I just hadn’t realised before. I went to find my favourite tutor to ask him his opinion. He told me to talk him through it. I was stuck for words. I had nothing interesting to say. Completely disappointed in myself, I couldn’t help but cry. I’m not relying on this project to get a good grade, I don’t need one- I’m going to Uni whatever happens. But I want one. Because I’ve worked hard.

John was helpful. “Dooon’t cry, I cannae stand to see ye cry” He looked through my portfolio with me and asked if there was anything in there I could put up next to it, to counter balance. We ended up settling on a project that I had had difficulty with at the time. I liked only 50% of it and was embarrassed by the rest. But he talked me round, he’s very persuasive, I MTFU’d and we nailed into the chipboard a Viva La Vulva Banner and three pairs of knickers embroidered with vulvas and painted with stains. And suddenly, we have something that creates intrigue.

I’m bending the rules by displaying non FMP work but I certainly haven’t broken enough rules this project, so I better had start somewhere.

Every dog has its day

Wondering when mine’ll be.

You’re brilliant, gorgeous and ampersand after ampersand.

My best friend celebrated her birthday on the 11th May. Being tied down with college work (excuses, excuses) meant I couldn’t be there, so I was determined to make up for it now, a month later by embroidering all the four corners of a neckscarf for her with four of her top five favourite ampersands.

I found the neckscarf in Oxfam and thought instantly of her. I bought it for myself but couldn’t bear to keep such a Fuchsia-ey item.

I also made her a birthday cake with smarties in an ampersand formation stuck on top. That was attacked before we thought to take a photograph on our digital cameras. She snapped one on her disposable though.

This is the best day.

I got to vote for the Green Party, and I got Stitchgasmed by Beefranck over on Mr X Stitch.

To celebrate, have a photograph of a woman with a couple of dogs outside the Saatchi Gallery. Taken on May 2nd 2009.

Hearts are the easiest things you can break

Today I came home from work, hot and bothered (thankyou english climate for looking cold but actually being sweltering) and found a little parcel waiting for me.

Inside it was the most beautiful stitchery I could have dreamt of.

I received this from Arlee in the Phat Quarter swap over on flickr. The theme was anatomy. When I’ve got word from Valued Sony Customer that she’s received my piece I’ll show you that.

On the back of the piece from Arlee, she wrote

“She embroidered her fingers to the bone
for the wedding,
Only to learn her soldier lover would never come home.”

Heartbreak!

Here we are, trapped in the amber of the moment.

It’s a curse that the academic year comes to a close in the summer. Sure, it’s great that we then get to frolick around in the sun for six weeks or so- but leading up to that frolicking time, we have to just sit inside and sigh wistfully at the sun and the daisies and the joy whilst we stay indoors bored out of our minds.

It’s impossible to work in such conditions. Especially when friends invite you to fun things that you simply cannot say no to. I love my friends. I’ve just experienced what is posssibly the best weekend ever, but now I have to face up to the fact that my deadline is soon, and my work is not finished.

The project that I’m working on is a topic I’ve chosen myself. For the pretentious title, I chose “Beatific Visions” and for the brief I basically said I had to study the Christian Religion and discuss my own beliefs and create appropriate imagery based on traditional stuff to support my faith. Or something. To be honest, I had no idea what I was doing. And I still don’t. And I guess that’s the fun.

A little while back I bought a small wooden hinged shrine wotsit from a charity shop for 25p. On one side of the wotsit was a painting of God, with a book that I presumed to be a bible. Across from him was the BVM and their son, Jesus Christ. I decided to remake this for my project. This time, I wanted it to be more believable- more human. No pretty, demure looking women or ever powerful men.

I put myself in place of Jesus (Well, why not?) and represented myself by using an image from the story of St Rosa. She, the patron saint of embroiderers (No, really) was said to be seen by a servant as a baby, with her head transformed into a mystical rose. So there you go. Jesus with a rose for a head = me.

And the mother? That’s John Fowler. He’s a tutor at college. He really encouraged me this year and has been my rock. Without him I’d surely have gone mad, and I doubt I’d have stuck the year out or at least certainly not got to where I am now.

God. My God, challenge and a half. Choosing who wasn’t so bad- I just had to look for someone who I basically believed or agreed with every word they ever said. Who I trusted, someone who I thought was good and honest, who made sense of things for me… and who I unequivocally swear by. Even better, someone who writes books. That little wooden wotsit of mine has a book in it, remember? So. Who else could I go for but Kurt Vonnegut. I read Slaughterhouse Five in 2007 and I’ve never looked back. He’s a Humanist too, and famous for it. So there’s humour in that too. Embroidering Vonnegut as God, something he couldn’t possibly believe in.

Vonnegut’s got one of those faces that is impossible to capture. He’s come out looking way more stern than I’d have liked, but according to my mother (with no prompting) it looks like him. Despite the fact I have one of those wonderful wash away embroidery pens, I had no choice but to embroider Vonnegut by eye, because embroidery pen just wasn’t cutting it.

To finish off I had to figure out what words would go in Vonnegut’s bible. At the time I was deciding, I was sat watching Britain’s Got Talent (don’t judge me!) and couldn’t be bothered going to find some books to scan through. So I just scanned my memory for some of his more philosophical moments. And here it is, the Tralfamadorian view on time;

Sigh. Back to work now.

News

I didn’t tell you how my interview at The Royal School of Needlework went, did I?

Well. It was wonderful. I walked up the driveway of Hampton Court Palace, portfolio in hand, giggling with glee at the sight of the palace on a beautiful spring day. I hardly know how I managed to carry myself there, my knees shaking with excitement.

There were ribbons in the trees and the sky was bluer than blue. Not a cloud in sight.

My nerves had got me there forty minutes early, so I went for a wander around the gardens and learnt about popular ghost sightings and had to struggle with myself to not go through the maze. I think my Portfolio was the only thing that stopped me, I’ll be honest.

Meeting James Hunting was wonderful. He’s such a lovely guy and he coped well with my squeals of glee of walking through the Palace. I even gasped at the sight of a stone staircase leading us to the apartment where RSN are situated.

A couple of weeks later I received an unconditional offer and have accepted. So I’m off down London way in September.

In other news, I won a pinny from Brassy Apple via whipup. Here it is being modelled by an unwilling volunteer (who has just spied the camera and is about to make a run for it)

He christened it by making delicious fluffy American pancakes which we had with super crispy bacon and maple syrup. I was far too excited by the food to pause to photograph it, but just imagine something that looks tasty.

Good times.

Tweet tweet

Everyone’s twittering nowadays. Andi Peters, Philip Schofield, Stephen Fry, Lily Allen, me, you?

If you’re anti social *ahem* you can protect your updates so you can control who reads your tweets. Everytime someone requests to be able to read your tweets, this super cute little picture of a girl holding a a branch, with a speech bubble hovering above her head appears, notifying you. I fell in love with her in an instant.

It’s my friend’s birthday coming up- he’s a twitterer, and a protected one, too. I decided for his birthday I’d stitch up that little lady in a pink dress.

I popped her in the most fabulous little papier mache gold frame I found in a charity shop recently. Just the perfect size for her.

I’ll draw the pattern up for her and put it here for free soon… just gotta figure out PDFs first.

Daring Bakers- Cheesecake

The April 2009 challenge is hosted by Jenny from Jenny Bakes. She has chosen Abbey’s Infamous Cheesecake as the challenge.

This challenge was ideal for me this month. You can probably tell from my lack of posting crafty things that I’m hella busy with college work and my actual life (sigh!) at the moment. Deadline after deadline after deadline means my spare time is normally taken up by having a relaxing ale with friends and letting my hands rest around a pint glass rather than gripping onto needles and threads. I’ve been unable to join in with lots of Daring Bakers challenges due to this. Either the challenges are too time consuming, too expensive to join in with or not appetizing to me enough for me to be able to see a return on the baking. I know that’s not exactly the correct attitude for a Daring Baker, but it’s the perfect attitude for someone applying for Art Schools. This time, however, the challenge was affordable, quick and mouthwatering. Cheesecake! Boy, was I ever glad to see that.

My sister visited home for Easter, and being a dairy avoider I chose to make it for her homecoming and ommited all the dairy things. I used one tub of silken tofu, 2/3 of a tub of toffuti cream cheese (that stuff looks like cement! Nice.) and 2/3 of a carton of soy whipping cream for the batter instead of the cream and cream cheese. I made the batter to the recipe flavour wise, plain vanilla is good enough for me! But for the base I used bourbon biscuits, the vegan favourite. I then kinda took the idea of a ‘Mexican Turtle Cheesecake’ and ran with it.

That’s a plain chocolate ganache, using the remaining toffuti, soy whipping cream, soy marg and dark chocolate. I’ve studded it with Spicy toffee pecans that were sooooooo delicious I wanted to cry that I had to put them on a cheesecake and not eat them all. I melted a little butter in a pan, put in a lot of sugar, some allspice and a helluva lot of cayenne pepper, then a bunch of pecans. I stirred everything until it all caramelized, then I turned it onto greased greaseproof paper ala praline (minus the bashing everything up into praline after.)

Mmm! So tasty! Definitely making those pecans again, and if I fancy a cheesecake- I’ll certainly go back to this recipe. You can find it on Jennybakes.com!

My Blue Eyed Prince in his Stumpwork Crown

*Sigh* Is it awful to fall in love with one’s embroidered angel? I think I’m emotionally unstable enough to do such a thing right now.

I spotted him first in the Stained Glass at The University Church of St Mary the Virgin in Oxford. I took a quick sketch of his beautiful face, and later decided he will be my first stumpwork project.

I machine stitched his bountiful curls, back stitched his face (and his piercing blue eye) and then used a few basic stumpwork stitches to create his golden bejewelled crown.

I don’t think I’ll work with metallic thread again in a hurry. It nearly killed me, it’s especially unsuited to stumpwork. My advice is don’t even attempt to combine the two. I’m very upset that it doesn’t photograph well. In real life it’s stunning and shiny. Trust! Here, I’ll show you this blurry photograph so you don’t have to take my word for it:

The stumpwork itself was a dream, however time consuming it was. I will certainly be revisiting that.

I’ve popped him in my portfolio ready for my interview tomorrow for The Royal School of Needlework. Let’s just hope my interviewer is just as much of a wreck as I am and will fall for him also.