La rentrée

In France la rentrée happens every September.  Literally meaning "the return", it means not only the start of a new academic year for schools and colleges but also returning to work after the holiday period.  Much of France still goes on holiday for the month of August.  La rentrée is heralded in supermarkets and other shops with special promotions of stationery, clothes suitable for work in autumn or whatever promotion they can think of in their case and for us it's always a rather early reminder that we'll be heading back to the UK sometime.  This year, because we were so late in going, la rentrée was already plastered everywhere when we arrived, which seemed an unfair reminder that our visit was so short.  I know, I know, five weeks in France doesn't sound short to most people.  But if you're living somewhere rather than holidaying, it is.  Still, you might like to see the last photo I took as we left and compare it with the photo in my last post as it shows we actually did make an impression on the place.

Back to la rentrée (which may be a tautology, but I don't care.)  I really like the concept, as it fits with my approach to life.  I've always related to time in a physical and unconscious way, which I think I've written about here before.  Times of year have reminders for my whole system which I can be quite unaware of until I realise what is happening.  Some, though, like the start of the academic year, are much more conscious.  Until about five years ago part of my life was always organised around the academic year and as well as often feeling it was a chance to do better work in a new academic year, I've always arranged my life around it.  Even my household finance budget is organised from September to August, a throwback to the time when I first took over organising the joint incomes in my first marriage.

Now I'm only involved in my creative work, la rentrée is still a significant time for me.  It marks the beginning of doing more markets and shows and making work specifically for seasonal shoppers.  (I was going to use another word instead of 'seasonal' but decided that September was too early for it.)

This year, in particular, la rentrée is particularly real for me.  I'm back at work.  Nothing all that startling in that, I suppose, but the notable thing is that I'm back at work and I'm well! Only now do I realise how unwell I was and for how long.  It's great to be back.  I've been working on new textiles pieces.  No, you can't see these until my exhibition in October/November, which I will be telling you more about in due course.  I've also been making new stock of earrings.  First a new design, stripey triangles, designed to go with the triangle scarf design:

And then a new colour range, which I hope will be popular for the autumn.  Black is the new black.

Still here

Some time in the last week or so I realised that my last blog post warned of forthcoming surgery and that so much time had elapsed since the surgery date that it would be reasonable to ask if everything had gone ok.

It has, thank you for asking.  A GP I wasn't all that keen on once redeemed himself considerably by telling me that getting doctors to agree about something was like trying to herd cats.  It was good to have this in mind a week after my surgery when, although things had gone fine, I clearly wasn't fully recovered.  Why would I be?  Well, because the first surgeon I had seen (before the operation) had told me that within a week or ten days I would be completely back to normal.  No other doctor I've asked since can imagine why he said that, but he did, so it was always in the back of my mind in a sort of "but the surgeon said so" kind of way.  Eventually, I've remembered the unherded cats and felt better about things.

So although I'm still not completely recovered, I'm still here.  In a manner of speaking.  Actually, just at the moment I'm there rather than here, if you see what I mean, since I'm somewhere else.  All clear now?  Good.

And we were very pleased to find that here is still here, also.  Hiding behind two summers' worth of growth,  but here nevertheless.  This is more or less (more trailer, slightly less grass) what we saw when we arrived.

It's not much different now, to be honest, and we're not planning to try to make up for two summers in a few short weeks, but so far there have been no major disasters.  Since we arrived the weather has been kind (though I see some rain is expected tomorrow) and I've more or less finished the essential cleaning and unpacking.  I am, eventually,  after what seems like many years but is really only two, getting a break.  I'm eating what I feel like eating, sitting and reading and generally just listening to the wildlife and hope to be doing more of that in the next week or so.  I think it's what people call a holiday.

I'm beginning to think I was actually more unwell and for longer than I thought I was, considering the exclamations of "Oh, you look well!" that I've been hearing from all sorts of people.  Certainly I had a year of increasing stress, followed by a few months of less stress, followed by starting to feel more unwell, followed by quite a few months of feeling ill and not being able to work full time.  Although I say I am not fully recovered (and not yet back working), I'm only talking about the body.  As a person I feel like myself again.  And I do rather like it.

I do, of course,  have work with me. Not to mention the current stock in my online shop, so that it is still fully operational.

Oh, did I not mention that I have a super spiffy new website complete with online shop?  Sorry.  Well, I do.

Do go and take a look, if you haven't already.  http://www.clothandclay.co.uk

What's in a blog?

Well, what should be in a blog?  I guess it depends on why you set it up in the first place.  I started blogging because I enjoy writing and showing off my photos.  I wanted somewhere to put news so that family who live elsewhere could see things we'd been doing, like the greenhouse project.  I wanted to be able to write about my work so that customers could find out a little more about me if they were interested.  And I wanted to be able to just share things widely when I felt like it.

There.  Like that.

Actually, the sort of things I really meant were perhaps recipes, book reviews or other topics which interest me.   It's ok, I'm coming to the point.  What I never really wanted to do was use the blog as a personal/public journal.  I hope people like to read it, though I sense that the friends who started off reading every post may not read it at all now.  In any case, though, I do want people to feel it might be worth coming back to see what I've got to say next so I have tried to avoid writing when I've got nothing positive to say.  Which is why the blog has been more sparsely written of late, to be honest, and I decided it was time to say something about this, without moaning too much if possible.

I have been suffering the ill-effects of gallstones and I am due to have my gallbladder removed next week.  There will be some weeks of recovery from surgery but then I hope to feel considerably better.  And about time, too!  It was a long time before a diagnosis and the knock-on effects of not being well enough to work a full week since Christmas have been widely felt.  With regard to this blog, when I've felt well, I've snatched the chance to do some work and when I've felt ill, well, as I say, I just didn't want to write when things just felt gloomy and I had nothing positive to say.   There, hardly a moan at all, but now you know.

And the weather hasn't helped.  Well, quite.  And here I'm not even going to try to avoid moaning.  I do try to be phlegmatic about weather.  We live in a climate with seasons and I'm usually comfortable with that, indeed, I've written quite a few happy blog posts on the subject at different times of the year.  But the last three months' weather has been just dire-bollockle.  The sun is shining now, it's July and approximately eight o'clock in the morning, so I would expect to be able to sit with the door open, letting in the warmth.  If I do open the door, though, a howling gale sweeps through the study.  As it is, I am sitting here tense with being not quite warm enough.

And the garden!  The vegetables don't know whether they're coming or going.  Well, the squashes are definitely going.  In the two months they've been out in the garden they haven't grown at all, the flower buds they had are still flower buds and the leaves are turning yellow.  No squashes for us this year.  The fleece over the leeks (to prevent leek moth) is being torn by the wind.  The beans are holding their own, making their way up the poles at about a quarter of their normal speed.  Fair enough, the spinach is growing well and I suppose the leaves on the root vegetables probably indicate that the roots themselves are swelling up.  But the onions!  Some of them are flowering!  What's that about?

I don't ever remember a spell of weather as bad as we've been having.  I don't know a single person who isn't fed up and saying so, and considering the number of cheerful, practical, back-to-nature types I know, that really is surprising.

So there.  Some legitimate moaning.  We all do it and the weather has given us plenty of cause.  You don't really need to know that some of the time I've been moaning, it's been about something else.

Coming back into fashion again

When I wrote about coming back into fashion back in January, I didn't say much about how I got into it in the first place.

The course I was on was in Dress and Textiles.  Most people on the course had either or both of Art and Textiles "A" Levels.  I had neither, (having done languages at "A" level) but I did have a Housekeeper's Certificate.  This was issued from a wonderful institution called Eastbourne School of Domestic Economy (which seems, unsurprisingly, to be no more.)  The course was three terms long and we had five main subjects: dressmaking, needlework, cookery, laundry and housework.  Yes, really.  And in the seventies, not the fifties.  The observant amongst you will have noticed a distinction between needlework and dressmaking.  Needlwork involved children's clothes, nightwear, embroidery and smocking.  Dressmaking was everything else.  But you can tell from the tone that precision and method were of prior importance.

Fast forward a year or so and you find me on the Dress and Textiles course, still imagining I would get good marks for precision and method.  My grades went down termly.  Eventually we had a half-termly module on jewellery and my life turned a corner and I found myself on the path I'm still following today.  The jewellery module was something completely new to all of us.  We were encouraged to make use of a wide range of materials and just go for it, so I did.  I received my first A grade and finally understood:  the point of it all was to be creative, express my own ideas and come up with original designs.  I applied this to the next fashion garment module and never looked back.

So having come back into fashion earlier in the year with my silk scarves, it's not really surprising that my latest product launch is of earrings.  I have discovered friendly plastic, which, put simply, you soften and cut to shape with metal stamps.  I've made my own stamps by and large so that I was able to make earrings to co-ordinate with my scarf designs.  I've also moved on to some other designs since.  As soon as my new website is built, you'll be able to buy them directly online, but in the mean time they're for sale here in Stroud or in By Local in Cheltenham.

Enjoy.  I am!

Not all doom and gloom

Well, actually, the weather is all doom and gloom.  Not only is it the worst summer weather I remember but more people than I can remember are getting cheesed off with it and saying so.  So here, to cheer us all up and because I've been rather lax in posting pics of what's around, are two photos from two weeks ago, just to remind us all that we have had some nice days and it's always possible we'll get some more.

More new pots

As promised, some more of the recent lustred pots.  I'm making these more or less individually, in other words some might be similar but I'm not recording the colours and shapes so they are all different.

These are small mugs.  I've done more of those than any other shapes with underglaze and lustre decoration.   I'm very fond of these serving bowls, though:

New pots

I've recently come to the end of a batch of firings, ending with two lustre firings, and these plates were a long overdue order.  I've said for a long time that plates decorated with lustre can be ordered but this is the first time anyone has done so.  Usually cereal bowls are decorated with stars but this customer wanted one each of the four designs to go with the mugs and the same in large and small plates.  I think they do look pretty stylish.

I've been looking back over the last year or two and it seems the pattern of firings works out that I probably only do lustre firings twice a year, but then when I do, I do more than one of them.  I'm not sure if it has to work out this way - it might be more convenient for supply and demand to have them spread out more evenly - but suspect it does because of the way kiln-loads need to be distributed.  In any case it always does feel that lustre firings happen and then that's the end of a big cycle.  I probably don't have enough pots to do another ordinary firing until I've done some making. 

At the moment I'm not making pots, I'm catching up with life tasks, especially getting the vegetable garden planted up.  My health problem seems to have been diagnosed as gallstones.  It's great to feel a step forward has been made but the diagnosis is only the first step in a long wait for appointments and treatment so I'm still not able to work full days or weeks and gossip about waiting times indicates this may continue for some months.  Deciding what work to do in restricted time is tricky, but I think I've decided to move on to the new project I hinted at earlier in the year.  Watch the space for this.  

In the mean time, I was so pleased that the firing cycle meant I could produce these for a "Happy Holly Party" (instead of a christening.)

The beakers are new and seem to have worked out well.  (This shows back and front of the same beaker.)  The firing cycle problem means it's not very convenient to offer as a christening present to order because these are decorated with lustres.  However, they might work ok in the chicken design with the name written in blue.  I'll have to give it some thought.

And finally ...

...  a whimsical idea I had which turned out well.  Heather glaze with purple or carmine lustre spots.  I didn't make many but will certainly make more.  The heather glaze is the most variable according to kiln position so lots of variations to play with.

Next time - more recent lustred pots.