People tell me it's all happening at the fair

Ah yes, The Fair. There's only 8 days to go and it really does feel like it's all coming together. Finally.

When Joe asked me if I'd like to help with getting a craft fair started in Exeter I thought "Sure!" and somewhere I imagined it could be quite a lot of work but it still felt like something good to do and a great experience to get under my belt. I mean, how hard could it be, really?

I had NO IDEA how hard! Or how many hours worrying and stressing, how many late nights, early mornings, trips to printers and gazillions of e-mails it was going to be. But it's happening, it truly is.


Now, I'm not an easy person to work with. I'm extremely critical and have super-high standards for a lot of things, I like planning ahead and getting every single little detail sorted. Joe's been incredibly patient and understanding and put up with everything, met me for lunches and coffees and sent me at least half a gazillion emails back at all hours of the day. Such a trooper!

In hopefully less than 15 minutes my transfers will be ordered and paid for, then I'm off to the studio to glaze the last of my work, which I will also be doing tomorrow, and then firing on Sunday, applying transfers and lusters on Monday and firing again either Monday or Tuesday.

Did you guess I've put in for another meeting next week..?

Functional?

I've been extremely tired lately. Now, I say "lately" but it's probably closer to a few months, with spikes of sheer exhaustion. Yesterday I went home early from the studio; I was having problems concentrating and was worried I might start accidentally breaking things. On the way home I decided to walk a different way that was slightly longer and when I got home I'd walked off my frustration and promptly fell asleep on the sofa... I woke up briefly and realised I simply couldn't make it into town for Make, Do & Mend, and went back to sleep...

In the end I think resting helped as I was able to take part in my choir later in the evening (we call ourselves a choir, but it's really a quintet). It was a great session and although still tired I felt better afterwards. We are so lucky to have the incredibly talented Rosa Rebecka leading us on our musical adventures, who always writes beautiful arrangements that make all out voices shine.

Work is going through a bit of a slump at the moment. Functional is just not where my passion is so I find it hard to get really excited about it. I did promise some pictures of WIP last week, so here's a bit of that:


Jewellery en masse! It looks like quite a lot but I still have quite a few bits to do...

I also decided to review and re-make some of the jewellery pieces I wasn't quite happy with, and also make some more of things I was happy with. These flowers go on hair clips or slides.


At this point they're very rough; I let them dry out before sponging and tidying edges, plus when they've been fired I sand them as well. Now I "only" have to make up my mind about the colours!

I wanted to end with pictures of something I can be a little bit more excited about; these flower vases (or that's what they will end up being, vases) are a bit of a merger between something I'm still working on that was/is not functional and function. The flowers are very delicate and I'm slightly concerned about how to package them in the best possible way to discourage breakage... The solution most likely lies in making the flowers less thin and have them protrude less from the body of the vase itself. But I like them this way! I want them to be looking more like they are a part of the receptacle and less of decoration; that's the idea!



And then one single flower, just before it goes on the vase:


I'm impressed I managed to take a picture that didn't have plastic bags in the background! They are everywhere in the studio; I use them to cover up work/clay so it won't dry while I'm working on something else. Baglady, moi?

I'm trying to sneak in some time to work on my Secret Semi-Big Project but I find myself lacking some of the information I need, so I will have to do more research before I can press on with that.

Next update should see more about the Handmade Home Fair that I've been working on with my friend Joe for what seems like an eternity now and it's starting to feel a bit frightening that it's on in less than 3 weeks!