And what a beautiful spring I am anticipating! We have bluebells and daffs popping up in our front garden for all the passers by to admire - ok so they're still only tufty green sprouts at the moment but their time will come.
I enjoyed being introduced to an exciting new craft a few weeks ago - my future Mother in Law kindly took me on a Nuno Felt Making day course where we learnt to create beautiful pieces of felt from raw milano wool, it was SO much fun! I felt it really ticked the box for me as I could incorporate layering gorgeous colours with a modernistic blending look and still create something really visually interesting without falling back through lack of sketching skill... ja get me? Anyway, I loved it and plan to make many more felty things in due course, I'm really interested in trying out impressionistic landscaping, making pictures and playing with images in the felt.
The basic method is really simple, it's what you put into the first few steps that make a difference. The first thing is to tear very soft thin layers of milano wool and place them onto a sheet of bubble wrap (you'll later wrap the whole thing in the bubble wrap so it's best to start out with it underneath your felt) layer your tufts of felt first horizontally then vertically and build up your layers until you have about 4-5 and the size of felt you want. We started with a sample about the size of A4 page.
Next you have to spray your felt with warm soapy water (soap flakes or olive oil pellets dissolved in the water first) until it's damp all over. Then it's time to wrap up your felt with the bubble wrap and roll the sausage shape until your arms ache. Unwrap your bubble wrap to see what you have! The beauty of this rolling part is the bubble wrap acts as friction on your fibres (ooh my!) so you never really know exactly how your felt will come out once it's been packed and rolled down.
Meanwhile after felting....
The mornings are getting lighter so I'm back on my bicycle! I've started a routine of going three times a week and cycling 20 minutes along the beach and back again before work, it's just great to see the sunrise and experience Brighton early and empty in the mornings but it's still soooo cold! I took this photo on my first morning out.
Pretty eh?
What else? I've just got involved with doing some production assistant-y stuff with Hullaballoo Quire, they're putting a performance on at the Sallis Benny Theatre on 2nd April and I'm helping the infamous Seb Lee-Delisle create some fancy-pants visuals to go with their performance so that's exciting! Might even try to join afterwards as well, I fancy getting back into singing.
I'm still modelling for Brighton Life Drawing as well, Jake's putting on a 'Strings Marionette' evening at the Keystone in Guildford tomorrow and I'm playing the Puppeteer's assistant. (I'm always an assistant, maybe I just have the look...) I shall be handing out materials and later posing complete with Victorian-esque costuming! Hilarious.
So that's all for now I guess, oh we're thinking of getting a friend for our cat Bob, maybe a little girl kitten we can call Milly or something. I like the idea of 'having to go home and let Bob and Milly out' like we keep a geriatric old couple in the back room....
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