Author Archives: pennygj

Getting ahead with a felt hat…

Absolute bliss this weekend to creep off and leave the boys and spend two days having fun! Ewa always turns up with yet another cunning plan to make felt making slightly less hard work and I’m all for that. I’ve always felt slightly scared about making a felt hat because of hat blocks and steaming and all the things you see in the more intimidating manuals. It’s a big outlay if you turn out to be rubbish or you only have one hat in you.

making a felt hat

making a felt hat detail

By the end of the first day of measuring and drawing, deciding on the colour schemes and laying out the fleece, we ended the day with each studio table holding a large amorphous shape of soggy wool, covered in plastic. It was hard to imagine that any of them could posibly be transformed into any sort of head wear.

That’s what I love about felt making though, the magical transformation from a wet sheep to something with form and structure, colour and substance. Wool absorbs dye so well, the colours are intense and saturated, a visual feast.

the felt hat brigade

I was pretty pleased with my felt hat, just the thing to wear on Planet Penny…

Planet Penny felt hat

…now… a hat block…I’m just off to Ebay!

The book’s in the post…

Doing my research for ‘All Booked Up’ I came across the idea of a Mailing Journal in the book ‘Making Books and Journals’ by Constance E Richards. I do try to put my own spin on the ideas I get from other sources, but I lifted this idea straight off the page just to see how well it works. It makes me feel I’ll never buy another pack of ‘notelets’ again! It can be as lengthy or as succinct as you make it, as colourful or simple as you like, and designed especially for the recipient. I do have a tendency to buy beautiful wrapping paper which I then can’t bear to see torn off and discarded so this was a good use for this fabulous double sided piece.

I’m still digging round in the button box…

…and finding more in my wrapping paper stash.

Today I must remove my book hat, replace it with a felt one and get ready for a weekend of making…Felt Hats! I’m off to Broadland Art Centre, as a student this time, for two days with Ewa Kuniczak, felt maker extraordinaire.

Enough of all that!

I’ve just remembered I intended to blog about creativity, not puppies! I haven’t had a lot of time for that recently, but it’s now the first of October, and at the end of the month I am teaching at Broadland Art Centre. We are very lucky to have such a unique venue so close to home. BAC is housed in an old school in a pretty little village on the river and the classroom is the perfect place for a small gathering of students. I feel very privileged to be numbered among those teaching there, as the calibre of past and present tutors is so high. Among them the textile artists Jan Beaney and Jean Littlejohn, the main features of last year’s Knit and Stitch Show at Alexandra Palace, the internationally renowned marine artist, William Calladine, and, AND… ( I speak his name in reverential tones), the one, the only Kaffe Fassett! Oh yes, I did go on his courses.

Passionate Patchwork – Kaffe Fassett

Attending a few courses at the Broadland Art Centre was one of the contributing factors to my eventual decision to become a mature Student at Norwich University College of Art in 2000 so it’s nice to have the association with it now.

This year I, and my partner in crime, Kit, am running a course called ‘All Booked Up!’ (yes it was my idea to call it that, and yes, it has caused no end of confusion to people reading the brochure, and yes, I’m really, really sorry!) and we are making books. Not formal bookbinding books, because that’s an amazing and exacting craft requiring great skill, accuracy and training. We’re making pretty books, jolly books, books for people who have a vast collection of lovely little bits of fabrics and papers, buttons and beads, and piles of gorgeous bits of textile art left over from experimenting…that they don’t know what to do with and can’t possibly throw away. Well, we’re going to make them into little books.

Over the next couple of weeks I will be flexing my making muscles to get them in trim for two days of demonstrating and teaching, and posting the results so you can see if I’m slacking.

I will regain my focus on artistry and creativity, I will aspire to a state of Zen like concentration, I will reach the end of each day uplifted by what I have achieved, I will… excuse me, I just have to go and mop up that puddle…

The Great Outdoors

Nearly a month has elapsed since the black and tan bundle of trouble we know as Higgins burst into our lives and changed them completely. He has galloped frenetically through, pursued by cries of ‘Aaaaah, cute’ by all who have seen him and by me with a mop and bucket… But the time had come to introduce our pampered pooch to the big wide world…

So we went to the seaside.

It’s not easy when you are very small…

..but I think we’re getting the hang of it!

It’s all in the lighting…

Celia’s parents had kindly invited us for a meal and Grand-mère Auzou seemed to have the perfect little nibble for an after dinner treat.

So why was it so important to have photograph it as well? The blogger’s curse!

There was an awful lot of this…

…and it came to this…

before we got this…

But they were a delectable end to a delicious meal. Thank you Rose and Hubert!

(It really is all in the lighting!)

Rouen

Rouen has been twinned with our nearest town Norwich for 45 years, and our family has done our bit towards Entente Cordiale by marrying a son of Norwich to a daughter of Rouen. Very possibly Thomas and Celia had a rather different agenda when they tied the knot some years ago in Cambridge, but they now live within walking distance of the city centre along with two rather nice little boys, our grandsons. Which explains why Rouen is currently our holiday destination of choice.

rue Eau de Robec

It is a beautiful city, every corner you turn presents another photo opportunity. I have probably photographed the same buildings every time I’ve visited, I am so struck by the shapes made by the timber framing, especially on the older houses which have settled, subsided and twisted over the years, and the wonderful colour combinations in which some of them have been painted.

quartier Croix de Pierre

Going under the clock on rue du Gros-Horloge you come into the old Market Place and the church of Joan of Arc.

rue de Gros-Horloge
Opposite the church is La Couronne, the oldest restaurant in France, which made me feel very inadequate about my window boxes!

La Couronne

Not far in the other direction from Thomas and Celia’s house is peaceful walk along the river bank to a water mill. Peaceful to all but a nervous granny who could never get quite as near to the three year old as she would like to feel relaxed!

I am finding a reoccuring theme to my recent posts… look, I found another dahlia!