sleeping while your waking

start of a collage from drawings in Tunisia

So so so tired!
Have exhibitions to get ready for.
Commissions to finish.
Feel like I am walking in my sleep, whilst I am awake at the moment and then I found out I have been sleep walking. Is it ok to start sleep walking at the age of 37?
Note to oneself make sure you have clothes on if this sleepwalking continues.
Wishing I could sleep walk onto a plane, to a place with no phones, no technology just paint, paper, books and space to be.
The rat race is so consuming.

it's not easy mixing green!

"it's not easy bein' green."
Kermit the frog

Today has been a day of trying to find my perfect green. It's my perfect greeney kind of turquoise. The colour I have in my head is the colour of the walls in this photo that I took roaming around the backstreets in Tunisia. I saw it again this week when I popped into see a friend and there budgie had escaped from the cage and was dive bombing all and sundry, that budgie too was my perfect colour. I also saw it as a young child when I helped to strip off about 300 layers of paint and wallpaper at my great grandparents house. It's a kind of aged greeney / turquoise colour.
So my dilemma, you know the advert, "we can mix any colour" just bring us a sample, so here in lies my problem. I am 2000 miles away from that building in Tunisia, the budgie is somewhere flying around Berkshire and my grandparents house probably has another 300 layers of stuff on the walls.
In search of my perfect colour started me thinking of this wonderful book I read Colour by Victoria Finlay. It's a treasure trove of a journey in the quest to uncover the secrets of the paintbox.
In the green chapter it tells of a secret colour that only royalty could own in China, which was found only on a very special kind of porcelain. Some examples were found in a hidden shrine in 1987 undisturbed since the ninth century.
The author talks with much excitement in having the opportunity to see some of the porcelain and see some of this mysterious secret green, only to find out it looked like a dirty olive brown. How disappointing!
I do like the idea of having a secret colour though.

selling you soul ?

How much of your creative soul is it ok to sell?
This dilemma is clouding my creative thoughts and won't go away.
I had an opportunity to meet some of the most creative and exciting buyers we have in this country and they really liked my work, they loved the designs the stitching, they gave me some really good advice and then said to come back to them with some revised designs. So the dilemma is they were talking oatmeal colour as a base and this just makes me sad as I love white. So what's a girl to do.
So I made a new cushion this week that concentrates purely on the hand embroidery so the beauty of the stitches and design as they said speak for themselves, of which I agree, but i can't do oatmeal it's nearly boring beige.
I can't afford to sell such a chunk of my soul just yet I might need to keep some in reserve.
New design can be seen http://www.folksy.com/items/291189-cock-a-doodle-doooo-2?shop=yes

love

Valentine by Carol Ann Duffy

Not a red rose or a satin heart.

I give you an onion.
It is a moon wrapped in brown paper.
It promises light
like the careful undressing of love.

Here.
It will blind you with tears
like a lover.
It will make your reflection
a wobbling photo of grief.

I am trying to be truthful.

Not a cute card or a kissogram.

I give you an onion.
Its fierce kiss will stay on your lips,
possessive and faithful
as we are,
for as long as we are.

Take it.
Its platinum loops shrink to a wedding-ring,
if you like.

Lethal.
Its scent will cling to your fingers,
cling to your knife.

What is love?
It's been a whole day of love in all it's many guises.
It's been a day of real love, not that forced kind of Valentine love, where love comes wrapped up in a box of chocolates or a bunch of flowers.
Love is simple so why do people over complicate it so
For me it's simple, this morning lying in bed drinking coffee together, dreaming, laughing, appreciating that we are so different to the very core, that in theory we shouldn't work, but we do. Then love comes down the phone by a friend sending a message to wish two of her favourite people a happy valentine day.
Then to meet some of our favourite loves, friend that we haven't known so long and every time we meet them we find out a little more, we laughed shared worlds, drank wine, Phil spoke bad Portuguese we all laughed at him. Thank you Adri and Bruno.
Then there is the love story shared to me by H who is 93, a real love story.I asked H to fill me in in the last bit of the story today. What happened in Piccadilly in 1943 as it was Valentine's day. H has been divulging bits of this story for months she always shares a little bit more with me every time I see her. Her body is giving up but when she tells me the story she is back at that moment in 1943 and her eyes sparkle and she is in love again. I wonder what happened in Piccadilly and if I will ever find out what happened ?
I have just spoken to my mum and she is always about love.
Now to sit by the fire, read, share food and wine with Phil and Archie the cat.
A day of the realist kind of love

doodling

I was doodling today, it started off with just a room and before I knew it I had doodled a whole house. Doodles are so wonderful, they let you brain rest and your sub conscious do the work.
How strange though, I should doodle myself a bird in a cage, because I would let it out in my conscious world. I do like this doodle sofa, can't help feeling I should have made it look more comfortable. I now have a hundred doodles of my wonderful house, it's so tidy unlike my reality.
Really I should have stopped drawing ages ago and doodled off to the gym.
Hoping sanity returns to me soon!!!
Thankyou to everyone who reads my blog.

dancing queen

Have just finished making this cushion, it was inspired by a sketch I made whilst watching a group of women dancing.They were taking part in a burlesque dance class, I am fascinated by dance and am very jealous that people just go for it, even if they are terrible. I have to have wine, and lots of to dance, and then of course in my mind at that point I can dance like Ginger Rogers, Darcey Bussell, Madonna. I'm there! But after seeing film footage of my dancing spectacle, sadly the truth is very different. Dancing is strictly for me in my car and in the confines of my house!!!!
Anyway I ramble, I love watching this group because they come in all shapes and sizes and I am intrigued by their confidence and sheer abandonment, they are just brilliant.
There is one lady their who has the most wonderful voluptuous bottom that she squeezes in to fishnets and a corset with her tiny waist. I love watching her dance.
You can find this new dancing queen cushion in my shop

http://www.folksy.com/items/265233-dancing-queen?shop=yes

and the winner is..............................

Pants and paper, there were 482 buttons in the jar.
Thankyou to everyone who joined in, and thanks for reading, lovely to know there are people out there. x