Category Archives: Open Studios

Norfolk and Norwich Open Studios 2013

It’s hard to believe this is the third year we have taken part in Norfolk and Norwich Open Studios, but then it’s always hard to get one’s head round how quickly time flies. This weekend will be the last for this year so we’re really hoping the weather stays kind and encourages lots of people to drive out into our beautiful Norfolk countryside to visit us.

If you are a regular visitor to Planet Penny you will know I share my studio with my good friend Kit, a printer, for the purposes of Open Studios. It makes it more fun and more manageable when several people arrive at once and we both know enough about each others work to be able to talk about it. (Although I wouldn’t recommend anyone goes away and attempts etching after an explanation from me!)

I know only a handful of people reading this will be able to visit so this is virtual invitation to our studio so you can see what’s been going on over the past couple of weeks.

This is the studio, through the archway.

It looks so much better when the sun shines!
Norfolk and Norwich Open Studios - garden

The Japanese Maple which last year formed part of the wedding decorations (which you can see in this post) is now a great place to display the felted ‘River Rocks’ which were first exhibited as part of the Bergh Apton Sculpture Trail several years ago…

Inside, it’s so tidy! It’s lovely, I wish it would last!

Can you see the tell tale streak across the mat? Well, for once it wasn’t Higgins. The very first day, dead on 10 o’clock when we were officially open, the little oil filled radiator which we had been huddling round because it was so ridiculously cold went POP and leaked hot oil all over the floor! Several teatowels were sacrificed in the frantic mopping up and that trail was created as we dragged the darn thing outside where it dribbled over the gravel.

Not a good start and I’ve had to dispose of the mat which I rather liked. Never mind, next week I’m having vinyl laid which will withstand tidal waves of hot oil as well as muddy little paws!

Oh gosh, have you noticed Higgins has crept in yet again? Not what I intended but since he’s here I’ll just say he’s well rested now and is all geared up to greet his public should they feel inclined to visit him over the coming weekend. You’ll find general details of Norfolk and Norwich Open Studios on the website, and our Art Trail in particular on the Two Rivers Trail website.

After this weekend I hope to get back to a more normal blogging routine. Coming up next time is another book review. A gorgeous new publication and the chance to win your very own copy. If you haven’t signed up to follow Planet Penny yet now might be a good time so you don’t miss out on a prize!

I’ll be back very soon…x

A Quick Update…

Hellooo….have you been wondering where I’ve been? It feels all wrong when I don’t fit a blog post in, but life has been sooo hectic over the past few days!

There’s been a lot celebrating going on, three big birthdays no less, and my elder grandson’s First Communion. This involved a trip to the South coast of England via South Wales, a round trip of 730 miles over three days. But it was lovely to catch up with friends and relatives we’ve not seen for years and it’s always good to have an excuse to enjoy cake and champagne!

Now we’re home, and in the run up to the first weekend of the Norfolk and Norwich Open Studios so we’ve hit the ground running with preparations. My gardener son did sterling work with pots and tubs in the studio courtyard while we were away. I just hope we get enough sun to make all the buds pop open, there’s so much colourful potential just waiting to be enjoyed.

I’ve been to have a chat with Kay, of Arts Desire in Norwich, and we now have dates for two needlefelting workshops in June which is very exciting…

Needlefelt Workshops, Arts Desire, Norwich

It’s great to have a venue in the city because a morning’s needlefelting could be so easily fitted in to a Norfolk weekend break that you don’t have to be a local to take part. And Art’s Desire is such a great venue, do you remember this post? I can’t help but treat myself or my nearest and dearest every time I pay a visit!

I hope to get to meet some of you over Open Studios if you are in the area. We’ve got a great Art Trail this year, there are eight of us taking part and we are a really diverse bunch. You’ll find out all about us on the website, The Two Rivers Trail and I can promise you sheep, alpacas and gorillas as well as painting, printing, painting and textiles!

(By the way, if you are thinking a visit would be a good way of buying some yarn and avoiding the postal charges it would be as well to contact me in advance.)

So don’t worry if it’s a little quiet on the blog, it’s all happening in the real world! And for those of you who are too far away to join in with what’s going on, not to worry. There’s a new book review in the pipeline, and a very exciting Planet Penny project bubbling away which I’m hoping to bring together in the near future. Plus, if you remember my trip to London to meet the Pinterest team, well that’s all coming together next week as well!

I’ll be back, very soon…x

Beautiful Blues

I’m suffering from the Blues a bit here after last weekend. No lounging in the garden for me this time, but it’s all full on for Open Studios in 10 days time, and anyway the weather has gone back to it’s default setting – Rubbish! I can’t believe it’s nearly mid May and I’m back to lighting a fire in the evening. Not that the four legged members of the family are complaining, they can’t believe their luck!

I didn’t even find time to write a blog post either, and I’ve been collecting lots of photos over the week. Mother Nature is a lot more robust about the weather than I am, she’s in ‘I’ve started, so I’ll finish’ mode and the garden is filling up nicely, and the hedgerows and verges too.

I love the way Spring has a sequence of colours, it’s reminds me of the little mantra of names I run through when I’m packing the Planet Penny Cottons…Aubretia, Delphinium, Cornflower, Eggshell, Aqua, Jade, Apple, Lime, Buttercup, Marigold, Peach, Petal, Gerbera and Rose Red. Spring starts white, with Snowdrops, but almost immediately there are yellow Aconites…

photo: Van Muewen

…and then the Daffodils and Primroses arrive.

Not long after, pink is added to the mix, with Primulas, Tulips and all manner of blossoming trees. But get to May, and it’s blue…the Beautiful Blues and probably my favourite time of year. I’ve tried and failed so often to capture that mysterious ethereal blue of the Bluebells but it always defeats my little camera…

…and anyway I can’t catch that glorious smell and save it in a file on the computer, can I? It’s an experience, and all the more exquisite because it’s impossible to completely capture it.

In the garden, there are Forget-me-nots.

….Periwinkles…

and Cornflowers, and quite a few of the ‘Wrong sort of Bluebell’ , a European interloper, very prolific but not quite achieving deep glow of our native species. Still, it looks pretty good as a flower arrangement…

There are also Irises, but I can never bring myself to pick those…

…aren’t they amazing?

Back in the studio the challenge is to turn the working space of one incredibly messy worker (Moi!) into an exhibition space for two, and it’s a l-o-n-g job. I can always think of so many things I would rather do than tidy up! T’was ever thus. My dear Mamma, listening to me moaning said, ‘Well, you always used to stuff things under your bed…’ Too late….full!

I’ve tried hard to keep the creative vibe going though. I mentioned the on going white cotton theme in this post, and I’ve at last found time to complete the project which required it. I found this gorgeous pattern…

…with a tutorial here which was just perfect for the Planet Penny colours. One day I might have time to make a throw, but in the meantime, there is this…

It looks perfect on the dresser.

If you are looking for white cotton, there are still a couple of packs left from this post and of course all the other colours can be found in the Etsy shop.

I might be a little random in my appearances over the next week or so, there are a couple of family birthdays, a confirmation and much travelling round the country coming up, but I’ll be back, like the proverbial ‘Bad Penny’!

See you soon …x

All Sheep Shape…

Have you heard the sound of birds singing and sheep dancing on Planet Penny this week? It’s all because the sun is shining and I have finished my piece for the Norfolk and Norwich Open Studios Taster Exhibition at the Forum in Norwich….yippee! I’ve just looked back and found I published my Ta-daaa moment for the last piece almost exactly a year ago today, you can read it here. And I said “This has existed in my head for so long it was rather a shock to realise that I hadn’t actually made it yet, so I’ve been working on it all week” And I can say exactly the same this year. It’s amazing how a deadline focuses the mind!

But first, the sunshine. It’s still not very warm, but it was a relief to wake up yesterday morning and realise the wind was not whistling in the chimney which it’s been doing for days.

I’ve had the doors open into the garden for the first time this year (and kept my fleece on) to let some fresh air into the house and Henry and Higgins have appreciated being able to wander in and out as they please. Henry has a spot on a warm paving slab where in a few weeks he will be able to get spaced out on Cat Mint…

…and Higgins parked himself under the bird feeder to make sure no pesky birds could get at the little dish of water I put out for them. He found it was particularly delicious, so much nicer than the inferior water in the dog bowl!

There’s a lot of bare earth in the garden, even the weeds are holding back, but there are patches of Spring to enjoy…

And so to my big project for this week. I really wanted to do something completely different this time, to step away of the bright colours, the crochet, the small things. Also to challenge myself on the needlefelt front and make something much bigger than little birds and mice. So I’ve used a very subdued palette…

Natural Merino fleece with a background of charcoal grey.

So can you guess what I made? Well, of course it’s a sheep!

It’s actually quite hard to photograph and get the angle right…

It’s called ‘How to Knit a Sheep’… (but please don’t ask me for a pattern!)

The knitted part starts off as unspun fleece and gradually reduces in thickness until it becomes undyed 4 ply to knit the lacy part.

This has been a rare moment when the finished piece is almost the same as the picture in my head, hence the singing and dancing! As you can imagine, I haven’t done a lot else this week but there are exciting Planet Penny things in the pipeline which I hope to share with you soon.

It’s Handmade Monday again this week so I’m linking up with Wendy for Handmade Monday over on Handmade Harbour and I’ll be back very soon…x

Hearts and Flowers Mobile – The Reveal!

I can’t believe it’s taken me all week to get to the ‘big reveal’ for the Hearts and Flowers Mobile project I was working on last weekend. I’ve spent a lot of time keeping metaphorical plates spinning and I’m so glad I’ve got the routine of Handmade Monday to keep me ‘regular’, once a week at least! I think if I was asked to pick just one piece of advice to give to someone trying to get their head around blogging it would be make a routine, and stick to it. I know when I started out it was so easy to put off a post and then have so many photos, so many ideas that it would take a huge effort of will to sit down and turn it all into something potentially interesting to someone else. Right now the mid week post keeps getting put off because of ‘stuff’ getting in the way, but I’m hanging on the the weekend post for dear life until everything settles down a bit.

We’ve had all sorts of weather thrown at us in the UK over the past days, but I made the most of a brief mild spell to nip into the garden to see what was going on and found these…

…with a little help from my friend!

I love snowdrops. They look so delicate and yet brave the elements every year to let us know that Springtime will arrive, eventually…

There is an old rhyme which says…

The snowdrop, in purest white array,

First rears it’s head on Candlemas Day.

Candlemas Day falls on the 2nd February, so it must be true!

Back indoors though it was rather a struggle to photograph my Hearts and Flowers Mobile. Ideally I need a large blank space, a white corner of a room with no distracting background stuff going on. But I live in a very small cottage, my studio is packed with things and the mobile is just under a metre or 3 feet long so I hope you’ll bear with me…

I’ve used the garland pattern to make the hearts and flowers using the Planet Penny Cotton colours (the pattern and yarns are available from the Etsy shop). I’m very happy that it worked out exactly as I had pictured it, and that doesn’t happen very often!

It’s triggered another idea, so I hope I get time to make a start this week. My other ongoing project is building a website for our entry in this year’s Norfolk and Norwich Open Studios. This will be the third year that I and my friend Kit Calladine the printmaker will be taking part, but this time we are part of an art trail with six other local artists which is very exciting. Before long I will put a link to the website so you can find out all about us, and hopefully some of you may even pay us a visit!

And this also means I must return to the felting needle. I have a plan for a piece for the Taster Exhibition but it is very easy to have the image in your head for so long that you forget you haven’t actually made it yet!

So altogether I have quite a bit to keep me out of mischief , and I promise I won’t forget to call back here to tell you all about it!

Meanwhile, I shall leave you with a link to Handmade Harbour where after 6pm this evening (UK time) you will find lots of other busy crafters and makers taking part in Handmade Monday.

I’ll be back soon…x

A Bug in the System

Hello! So sorry I haven’t been around for a while, and thank you so much for the lovely Get Well Soon messages which were very much appreciated. I usually have to cope with a bug in the computer system, but this time the virus has been my very own!

The last few weeks have been flagged up for ages as the busiest of the whole of 2012 but I had thought I would gallop out the other end triumphant carrying a banner (or a stream of bunting!), not stagger out with a box of tissues under one arm waving a white flag!

In the space of month there has been:

A Wedding (Proud Mama #1 (with hat))
A Book Launch (Proud Mama #2)
CSSD Student daughter left for Mumbai as part of the Morni Theatre Collective (Proud Mama #3)
Norfolk and Norwich Open Studios- three weekends (Working hat)
Another Wedding (Proud Aunt (with another hat))
Most of my best-beloved family either visiting or staying (see items 1 & 5)

In amongst all this, Planet Penny decided it was not possible to wait another month to become a business rather than a hobby, which has involved finding a business account, an accountant, taking legal advice….and so on….and so on….

Perhaps it’s not surprising that a rogue bug decide to join the party, but I really haven’t appreciated having such a nasty little gate-crasher!

Today is the first day I have actually found two brain cells to rub together so I’m gradually trying to get my studio back into working order whilst thinking my way round all the ‘stuff’ which has accumulated whilst I (as in ‘my brain’) have been ‘off line’. so while I’m doing all that, I’ll share a few of the photos taken over the last few weeks….

There has been of course Open Studios, and this is what Planet Penny looked like in ‘exhibition space’ mode…

There were times when you couldn’t see all this though…

…and times when we were playing host to our local MP!

Just down the road our neighbour was hosting her first Open Studio, complete with a herd of Alapacas…

and a yurt!

Hands up who is joining me with serious ‘Yurt Envy’!

A fabulous time was had at the book launch at Heffers Children’s Book Shop in Cambridge…

Not often you have to queue to speak to your own son!

And as the rain fell, the garden carried on growing…

…and growing…

…and growing.

But now it’s back to normal time. I’ve already re-jigged one set of display shelves to accomodate the latest Planet Penny Cotton Club delivery…

…and it’s heads down sorting out the next pattern and kit. The packs are for sale on Etsy, follow this link or the the Shop button at the top of the page to find them, plus the Rainbow Mouse kits, Mini Mice Fridge Magnet kits and patterns.

See you again soon! x