Well, I'm impressed ....

... but I accept that you may not be. I mean, it's not a very exciting photo, really, and unless you're actually on the ground, perhaps you can't get a proper feel of the site, but for me, today's work (not mine, I hasten to add) has definitely turned the spot into a Site. Two trailer loads of subsoil were duly hoiked up to the tip, the last trip in snow, and the site is now somewhere near to being levelled. You can see the whole area which will be receiving new concrete. A little more excavation and a lot of working out of levels is now needed, but I understand that it may not be necessary to actually remove any more stuff from the site. The next job (when it is not snowing) will be for M to work out the exact levels all round where concrete will be deposited. At the same time we are ready to get our builder in to take a water pipe from the pottery (that's a garage to you) underneath where the greenhouse will be and for M to do the same with some electric cable.

The weather will need to improve even for these preliminary tasks, let alone any concreting, but rather like the first hellebore buds that I've spotted in the garden, this is a sign that growing things are on their way.

Cavalry

Everyone needs the arrival of the cavalry once in a while.

The forecast promised a dry weekend so M hired a pneumatic drill to break up the old concrete on various levels that's going to be replaced by new and on part of which my new greenhouse will one day reside. He knew he would need a bit of help shifting the stuff up to the tip but then someone responded to my offer of hardcore on Freegle and said he would load the rubble onto the trailer as it was created.
 

So on Saturday morning M went to work. To begin with it was not promising. The first bit of concrete he tried seemed very sandy and the drill just went downwards rather than breaking anything up. Fortunately, as he moved back the concrete took on a more expected texture so his drilling work was breaking the stuff up into chunks. Just as his spirits were lifting again, the Freegle chap said he had hurt his back and couldn't collect the stuff. We had started loading the trailer so M took the rubble over for him, but he then said he didn't want any more.

M had expected to do the breaking up over the weekend and ask for help with the taking away but it became apparent that the two jobs needed doing in tandem. The person we had hoped to get helping seemed out of contact so it looked like M would be working alone. I tried some loading into the trailer but it wasn't doing my back or ribs any good, so I wasn't going to be able to help any more.

We were going out in the afternoon so it wasn't a long day's work, but even so M made great progress:

 

So, we bathed, changed and went and had tea and cake to celebrate J's birthday. Very pleasant company, delicious cake and progress had been made on the concrete work so we felt pleased with the day. However, shortly after returning home we had yet more icing on cake in the form of a phone call from the cavalry, who had been out of mobile signal range all day but had now got our call for help and would arrive on Sunday at 9.30 a.m. Hurray!

The cavalry has never been so welcome nor done such a wonderful job. M has discovered that he is even less fit than the last time he did this sort of stuff three years ago but when D got to work, M realised just how much difference 35 years makes! Not only that, but the bit M had removed on Saturday turned out to be of rather lesser quality and thickness and the next bits were really hard going, even for a fit 32-year-old.

Fortified by scrambled egg and beans, they worked on in the afternoon and by the time they stopped work had got much more done than M had expected. As well as the main area, old concrete has now been dug up behind the pottery and in front, where it had been rising up over the last six or seven years so that opening the big doors was sometimes a bit of a struggle.  Instead of having to make endless 40-minute round trips to the tip, a new home was found for the hardcore where some hardstanding is being created, so it really was an excellent day's progress.

 

  

  

Next: removing the excess soil and rubble at the back of the site, but that is for another day.

Exciting things are happening ...

I have at last finished my new big 'canvas' and I'm quite excited about the result. I can't remember which TV programme it was where someone regularly said, "I love it when a plan comes together," but that is basically me. I do spend many, many hours of my life planning things - meals, trips, budget and, of course, work. It could be a reflection of the time I spend planning or the determination which is typical of an Aries personality, but my plans usually do come together.

This one's been a long time in the making. Faithful followers of this blog may remember my writing about artist's block and then how I had the answer and the answer is silk dupion. (I know, I know, you thought it was 42.) Well, here is the last sneak preview of my new large canvas showing the silk dupion. What you don't see is that the dupion covers a framework.

This has been an interesting learning experience. I spent some time (while we were in France) making the first three frames for a set of landscapes. Working out how to stretch the dupion over the frame without a line from the inside edge of the frame showing on the front took quite a bit of fiddling about. Then when I went into the art shop to buy card to make my Christmas cards, I discovered that one can buy the sides ready cut, mitred and prepared for joining. This was such an exciting discovery that I immediately bought some of the smallest size to experiment with.

The size of the frames and the time of year and the general theme of irises immediately inspired me and I have now made two sets of three small pieces based on iris reticulata. These little chaps are so joyful - how can you not love them? I'm rather pleased with my two sets as well as the large piece. So then I had seven finished pieces to frame.

The frames do indeed join up really easily. I've since invested in a staple gun to make it easier to attach the silk to the frame. I've dusted off my jigsaw (well, to be fair it didn't need dusting off because I keep it in its original box) and this speeded up cutting the hardboard for the back.

The teaser photos are meant to be just that, however, I am so excited about the new work that I am thinking of posting just one picture of one of the small pieces sometime soon. A little more thought is needed.

The course of true love never did run smooth

I think I will probably end up in love with my Whisper wheel but it has not been an easy start. If I have more than one problem of the same sort my distress tends to escalate exponentially and so it was with the Gremlins. So when my Whisper wheel didn't, I may possibly have overreacted but I may possibly be forgiven for doing so.

The really stressful aspect of the problem was the completely unknowable timescale of getting to speak to someone about the problem. As I mentioned before, the people at the suppliers had been off sick since before Christmas and were still unable to get up and into work. Eventually, though, they were back at work during the course of the week (although still sounding a bit rough, to be honest) and I was able to speak to people who knew things.

I had been adamant that a brand new wheel when taken out of its original packing should have been left in a perfectly working state and therefore I was insisting on a replacement but Mike at Potters Connection reminded me that they had taken the wheelhead off to drill holes for fixing batts and said perhaps they had not tightened it up quite enough, the 'key' for the wheel being still in its packing at the bottom of the box.  He was most apologetic for this and was willing to travel down from Stoke to Stroud to see to it if I had still not been happy.  However, M and I took it all out of the box again and although I didn't really feel there was any tightening to do, after trying, the clonk had gone.  I was really very glad not to have to make the poor man make the journey when he clearly still wasn't feeling his best.

One very happy and entirely unexpected discovery was that at least one of my splash trays from previous Shimpo wheels was compatible.  This is good because I have small strips of stainless steel bolted to the sides for scraping hands and because I like to swap splash trays when changing clays rather than thoroughly cleaning the tray out.  As you can see in the photo, thorough cleaning of splash trays is not my forte.

So - all well and good?  Well, no, not really.  In case your nerves can't stand it, perhaps I should add that it is all well and good now, but it wasn't immediately.  We put everything back where it was wanted, M moved shelf brackets that were now too low for the new wheel to fit under and I started to work.  The previous day I made the first attempt at throwing for a couple of months and although my rib injury was complaining, I had decided that doing stuff might be the way to full recovery now rather than resting it and not doing stuff, so I was keen to follow up by making the lids to go with the casserole dishes of the previous day. 

I could not throw.  I just could not centre the clay.  First, I thought it must be because the wheel is slightly higher and I was working at a different height, but we tried raising the chair on some blocks and it made no difference.  Then I thought perhaps the clay had somehow (though I couldn't think how) become uneven and that was causing the problem.  So I took myself and the clay through to the cold end of the pottery and tried a piece on the old wheel.  Perfectly alright. I was convinced (as was M) there must still be some problem with the wheel.  I phoned a potter friend, who said he thought perhaps it was just that the wheel and I needed to get acquainted and then I phoned Potters Connection who said more or less the same thing.  Give it a few days, they said.  This was not encouraging to someone who could really only do an hour or so a day. 

Eventually I saw that I had no option, so I went back in to try again.  And this is where some kind of explanation formed itself.  I studied what was happening and realised that the new wheel is much faster than the old one.  I had been trying to throw as if the wheel was identical.  Additionally, I decided that the foot pedal, although not appearing particularly light of touch, was in fact sensitive in at least a different way, so it was possible that a very slight increase in pressure as I leant forward was changing the speed.  I made the appropriate adjustments and hey presto! of course I can now throw again.

All of this would make me feel rather stupid, you can imagine, were it not for what I think is the explanation.  I've been aware for a long time that I have a very particular connection between mind and body.  In some ways the connection is stronger and clearer than for some people but in others there's just something missing.  For some reason, noticing an 'obvious' increase in speed had not been straightforward for me. I find it difficult, at this point at least, to explain what I mean by this but I am fairly sure that it's not unrelated to other mind/body difficulties.  How many other people do you know, for instance, who feel motion sickness for the first two or three weeks of driving a new car?  It's always happened to me.  I have other peculiar difficulties here and there which add up to some kind of problem between mind and body.  None of them are too severe, but they can, as in this case, require concentration to overcome.

So here we are, my Whisper and I, after almost two years of my wanting to own one and after so many initial difficulties.  I've always thought Shakespeare meant that if there aren't a few problems, it's not true love so I'm beginning to feel very encouraged by overcoming what seemed like rather serious problems.  The Whisper really does whisper.  Gone are the days of having to play CDs at full volume and needing to select music that does not vary in volume.  I can now once again play symphonies and concertos without losing everything except the ff bits under the twangy buzz of the wheel.  I can choose the music, or silence, that most suits my mood.

It already feels different.  Making pots is not just a mechanical thing - one's inner processes always affect the quality of the work.  Over the last two years my predominant inner process while throwing pots has been a rather tense struggle to ignore the horrible buzzy groaning that filled the pottery.  I had thought that a lot of the tension came from the pressure I was putting on myself to make sufficient work but now I remember why I love making this work and I think I had underestimated the effects of the noise.  There is a particular mixture of physical skill, intention of design and spiritual contemplation that leads to making good pots on the wheel.  I think my Whisper and I might be on the way to achieving it.

Phew!

We seem to have expelled, or at least calmed, the gremlins for now, but I don't want to say it too loudly.

Photoshop CS4 works just fine on Windows 7, which is on the laptop, which is what I bought it for, so I suppose I shouldn't mind too much.  I do, though.  It's a very expensive product and it *should* have worked ok on Windows XP.  I spent at least two days in total working through various steps and talking to people on tech support and eventually found numerous threads on internet forums where people basically said that none of these workarounds or fixes actually work and this is Really Not Very Good, You Know, or words to that effect.  I agree.  But I have no more energy to pursue the problem since I do now have a solution in the form of a working copy on my Windows 7 laptop.

A very nice chap from the camera repair company phoned me to find out in more detail exactly what problem I was experiencing with the compact camera and discuss with me about the options for repair and that I should check whether my rechargeable batteries were still up to scratch before sending it back to them again should I need to do so.  He replaced the flash unit, though I think he was unconvinced that the problem lay there, but anyway the camera returned pronto and works just fine now.

I had, as usual, a bit of a runaround from Dell.  I don't really blame people who live thousands of miles away for not understanding what the weather is doing here right now but I did rather object to being told that the courier could not collect the laptop because of the difficult weather conditions and no, he certainly couldn't just come the next day but a trip would be rescheduled.  Apparently, someone had to drive to my house with a box and another someone had to drive to my house to collect the box once I had placed the laptop in it.  Naturally, none of this was true.  There were no adverse weather conditions, as I knew, and as usual the arrangement is that the courier brings the box, I place the laptop in it and then he takes it away.  On this occasion, though, I was Very Cross on the phone and Dell said they would send an engineer to replace the CD/DVD drive instead of collecting the machine.  CitiLink, who were the couriers involved on this occasion, phoned me the next day and apologised that the driver had simply run out of time and would be arriving that morning.  They were pleasantly understanding when I said they needn't bother any more.  Sod's law said the engineer was then genuinely stopped by snow a couple of days later!  Eventually another engineer arrived after the snow and duly replaced the drive.  He also spotted a nasty little program called RoxioBurn that Dell like to give away free and that may have been conflicting with Windows Media Player and causing further problems so we removed that at high speed.  CD/DVD drive now working perfectly.

Incidentally, the first time I asked Dell for tech support on the faulty drive, the guy wanted us to go through writing to DVD to find where it didn't work and said to start up this RoxioBurn.  I said I didn't use it and would prefer to use Windows Media Player as usual.  Amazingly, I got the reply, "Ma'am, we do not usually support Windows Media Player and I have never used the program, ma'am, so we should use RoxioBurn."  I pointed out that the thing should work with Windows Media Player and he conceded.  I found it astonishing, though, that someone trained in tech support should not ever have even used Windows Media Player.  For the connoisseur, I'm sure there are plenty of special programs which produce better results but for most Joe and Jane Bloggs, WMP is perfectly adequate.

What else?  Ah yes .....

Gremlins

Oh boy, is my house inhabited by gremlins at the moment!  The laptop and compact camera have swiftly been followed by Photoshop CS4 which will still not load properly after a day and a half of tech support and delving into the depths of System32 and then to cap it all I unpacked my new Whisper wheel and it didn't.  Whisper, that is.  It went "clonk clonk."  I phoned the suppliers but only reached a hapless bod whose job is not normally in the office but who had gone in to answer the phone as the other two have been in bed with flu since before Christmas.  I'm sorry for them; that's a long time still not to be able to get out of bed.  But I'm probably sorrier for me.

This last has rendered me somewhat indecisive about work.  Should we get the new wheel out of the workshop end of the pottery where we have only just put it and replace with the old one and then try to create some order and eventually try making pots again, or should we leave it in the workshop, optimistic that the flu-sufferers will recover rapidly and help with the problem?  In the mean time I could continue with textiles work full time instead of the planned half days.  I still don't know.  I waver.  It probably partly depends on how much time I have to spend on technical problems.  Today an engineer sent by Dell should be arriving to replace the CD/DVD drive in the laptop, time as yet unspecified.  And I should really plough on with the Photoshop problems.  It's just snowed for an hour or so, which doesn't make the pottery feel inviting.  Perhaps I will leave the decision for another day.

In the mean time I am quite excited about my new work.  Here's another sneak preview.  For the time being (by which I mean this year) I am sticking to the arrangement I've held to for the past eleven years - new textiles work doesn't get shown anywhere until it's been seen at Another Beastly Art Exhibition, but I think perhaps showing small areas one at a time doesn't count.  It's a good compromise between showing you nothing and letting you see what I'm pleased about.

Economy of scale

I am making trousers. Before you start wondering how trousers for a large-scale woman can be more economical, would it have been any better if I had called this post "bulk sewing"? No, I thought not. But put all those images aside and you may understand. It's actually much quicker to make several garments concurrently than one after the other.

You get this effect even more if there are two of you working together. In the late seventies and early eighties, when I was first teaching, I used to go and stay with my parents for a week or so during the school holidays. I would take clothes to make and usually my own sewing machine. Mum and I would make two or three garments for each of us in four or five days. One person would be stitching, one pressing and pinning and we would hand things backwards and forwards between us. It was astonishing how quickly the garments came together. As my art work filled more of my time, sparing a week for dressmaking became too difficult and we got out of the habit. I've usually made more than one garment at once since then, though.

I've never had five things on the go, but as I was trying to decide which of the trousers were the most urgent to make, I came to the conclusion that making five was not so daft. (I'd like to point out that I could probably have made ten pairs if I'd used all the trouser material in my possession, but lines have to be drawn somewhere.)

I am a person who takes naturally to economies of scale. Apparently by no means everyone does. Many friends shake their head in puzzlement at the idea that I will happily set to and make a batch of ten servings of some dish or other and freeze eight of them. To me, the idea that if the day has not gone to plan or I am in the middle of some work that takes me well into the evening, I can easily find something in the freezer that just needs heating up is a real plus.

I miscalculated once. I picked as much spinach as was ready, weighed it and then worked out that there was enough for three times the recipe I had in mind. I bought the ingredients. I did feel surprised at the tins of tomatoes but remembered that the recipe title included the phrase "rich tomato sauce" and that this was achieved by lots of cooking down. I started cooking. As I was turning in all the tins of tomatoes, alarm bells began to ring. I looked at the recipe again. "Serves 10." So we had thirty portions of spinach and ricotta in rich tomato sauce. It was good, though. And I'm often surprised and disappointed to find I don't have any in the freezer any more.