Sunday Part II: Art Bead Scene submissions for July

The theme for July's Art Bead Scene challenge is Mermaid's Grotto. Here are the pieces which I’ve submitted.

Mermaid Netscape

Featuring polymer clay beads by Emma Ralph.

Kronos Crab

Featuring a focal by Sally Carver & two 'handmaiden' beads by Beverley Hicklin

Diving Belle Barbed Bracelet

Featuring art glass beads by Emma Ralph

Liquid

Featuring polymer clay beads by Emma Ralph & glass nuggets & slices by Sally Carver

the importance of a blank piece of paper

I should be celebrating. I should be out on the town with a bottle of champagne in one hand & Daniel Craig in the other. The weather is perfect for fountain paddling at dawn! But alas, I am not the girl I used to be. My hot-to-trot party dresses & stilettos were bought at a closing down sale just before the Ark set sail and where as once upon a time I used to set the pace, all I want to do nowadays is to find somewhere comfortable to sit that is not in a draught. That last phrase is the killer. Caring about draughts is a rite of passage that everyone thinks they will avoid. Unfortunately it has the ability to creep up on one in an insidious fashion. If your knees start cracking when you rise from the ground, be vigilant! If you find yourself mentioning the damp weather & its effect on your bones, you are well on your way to developing a draught avoidance strategy. If this had already begun to happen, STOP RIGHT NOW & reassess your situation. If I may make a suggestion, throwing a cardigan away has an invigorating effect. It demonstrates your insouciance in the face of a draught. Insouciance can be very chic & flirtatious, so cultivate it. Buy that anti-ageing serum from you know where, inject a little insouciance into your life & voila - no one will ever guess your real age unless you leave your birth certificate lying around.

Now where was I? Why should I be celebrating?

I have finally finished work on the bones of my website. I’ve installed all the cupboards & shelves that I need for the moment. With the support of my mother in law and Old Man Dickson I have spent eight weeks working on this project from the moment I woke until the early hours of the morning. I had no idea it would take so long, but conversely I don’t exactly know what I’ve been doing all this time because there’s not a great deal to show for it.

So the end of this endeavour is the reason why I should be thinking of taking a dip & doing an Anita Ekberg - if only I had the right equipment!

Unfortunately I don’t feel like celebrating because I’ve fallen out of love with my website. I don’t like it any more - I’ve grown too ‘accustomed to her face’. I allowed myself to become obsessed with it & now it's pay back time. At my age I really should have learnt my lesson by now!

I miss assembling jewellery. I miss drawing. I miss reading books. Allowing myself to get obsessed is rankly dumb behaviour, but I have coaxed a little pearl of wisdom out of it. I now know why the concept of building your own website was invented! It exists to remind us of the value of a blank piece of paper!

You can make marks on a piece of paper & you can erase them without losing half a page of data with it. If you put a pebble on top of a piece of paper, you won’t lose it. Nothing freaks or is dumped - what you see is what you get. I LOVE PAPER!! It’s so simple & versatile and you don’t need a five year old on hand to show you how to do the most basic piffling task! You can carry it around with ease, wet it, dry it, drop it and tear it apart in rage.

I’m not advocating Luddism - far from it. I’m just saying that computers are the spawn of the devil if you allow yourself to be chained to them.

To move on...

So far I’ve only given you 5 things out of ‘100 things you don’t really want to know about me.’ I’m going to add a few more things to my list now & because I’m enjoying the renaissance of paper in my life, I’m going to tell you 10 paper related things. I bet you can’t wait ;-)

6. I love Ethel M. Dell (my laptop) but I still prefer to write on thick creamy paper.
7. I draw & paint & make collages with paper. Sometimes I make paper collages with paper I have made.
8. I have amassed a lot of cuttings. Two of my most cherished cuttings are the obituaries for John Peel and Spike Milligan.
9. I am a stream-of-consciousness list maker - read my lists & know my life. I can’t do anything unless it’s on a list.
10. I can make paper hats out of the broadsheets. I can do a ‘Wellington’ or a ‘Napoleon’. (I bet you know how to make these hats too.)
11. To date, I have never made a successful paper aeroplane.
12. I am currently reading a paperback called ‘The Deadly Space Between’ by Patricia Duncker.
13. I doodle on any available paper surface
14, I still practise my signature just in case I’m asked for an autograph when I’m a world famous writer/painter/Orla Kiely handbag expert.
15. If a card or something interesting arrives in the post, I use it as a bookmark for whatever book I’m reading. When I’ve finished reading, I leave the card inside the book - it’s a memory marker.

Have you had enough? I thought so. Well done for getting this far :-)

Photograph & design of Exotica necklace © Jennifer Dangerfield 2007

awards four & five

A River Runs Through

I forgot to add my final awards yesterday. I'm not sure if Jeanette Winterson's column qualifies, but it's my party & I'll invite who I want to.

If you come away from either Jeanette's site or Kate McKinnon's without having learnt a single new thing, then I will buy a hat & eat it!

Number Four: Jeanette Winterson

Number Five: Kate McKinnon

Occasionally Lost for Words

Piccasso's Dog Pendant

I really admire people who are able to add daily entries to their blogs. I just can't do it - my mind goes dry! I spend much of the day on my own so perhaps I've got out of the habit of talking. Thinking - yes. Talking - no.

Just a few days ago I was a blog virgin - it's going to take me a while to catch up. Now I'm a blog novice who's sat on the lowest rung of the ladder and my initial impression which has arisen whilst reading other blogs & writing my own witterings, is that a blog encompasses more methods of communication than I was aware of. I'm also deeply impressed by the blogs that bear witness to what is happening in the world. I came here because I like to write, but I've discovered that blogging is about so much more than the actual process of moulding language for expression. I'm dumb so please tell me what you think. I'm a fan of other people's opinion provided no anger is involved.

On to other matters.

My dear friend Jean has awarded me a 'thinking blogger award' so I'm drifting on a cloud. What an honour - thank you so much! Jean is a whirlwind of creativity, has the most beautful soul which her sons have inherited, a super hero husband and is the scion of the most marvelous family. If Jean & Emma Ralph don't start writing their family biographies soon, BOMBARD them with email demands for their stories as they are magnificent! If I ever want an answer to a question (this happens a lot), I ask Emma. Today she told me that peacocks have bright orange armpits -did you know that? Do you know anyone else who knows that? Don't you think that's such a cool thing to have tucked away in your memory bank. Jean has gifted an award to Emma - if I could I would second it. Since Jean's blog is something I read everyday, I would reciprocate immediately if I could.

I checked out the awards website & I'm going to paste the rules here in case I forget them.

1. If, and only if, you get tagged, write a post with links to 5 blogs that make you think,
2. Link to this post so that people can easily find the exact origin of the meme,
3. Optional: Proudly display the 'Thinking Blogger Award' with a link to the post that you wrote
That was that! Please, remember to tag blogs with real merits, i.e. relative content, and above all - blogs that really get you thinking!/span>

Being an aforementioned novice, it's going to take me a couple of days to finish my list but my first award goes to Danny Gregory. Here are a couple of extracts from my fan letter:

"You have been a great source of inspiration to me. Indeed 'The Creative Licence' introduced me to Betty Edwards & the left lobe/right lobe concept & this has had a huge impact on the way I view my bipolar. It's now my opinion that you & Betty Edwards should be prescribed at the same time as meds!

You & your family are the sign posts for the way to live & the way to love that life. Thank you for shining a light - instead of a dark tunnel, I hope to continue travelling in an avenue ornamented with street lamps, many of which will have been designed by Danny Gregory."

Number One: Danny Gregory

Photograph & jewellery design by Jennifer Dangerfield © 2007

Spinning in their graves? Warning - this entry mentions intimate parts of the body!

Kronos Crab

Via Radio 4, I have just been introduced to 'Menopause The Musical' which has crossed the Atlantic & can now been seen at the Shaw Theatre in London. I laughed all the way through the interview and couldn't help but wonder what Rogers & Hammerstein would think?

I'm a fan of 'The Vagina Monologues', but I've not seen 'Puppetry of the Penis'. Frankly I've no wish to see the latter - viewed as a design, in my humble opinion it's not the most attractive part of the masculine body.

I must bare my soul now & admit that I would rather give birth than sit through a musical (with the proviso that I had been pierced with an epidural first. One day, remind me to tell you about the birth of Ellie which was so excrutiatingly painful that I seriously considered throwing myself out of the window. At one point I also dived under the bed and refused to come out until they gave me something for the pain. This was one tantrum too many for OMD & he finally lost his temper with me and told me to stop behaving like a child. Don't you dare feel sorry for OMD though. After the birth of our son, he voiced the opinion that men evidentally have a higher pain threshold than women! I could tell you more of my husband's birthing sins, but the list is a long one & I don't want to bore you.) To get back to musicals, to please a dear friend, I did once sit through a performance of 'My Fair Lady' & it had the same effect on me as dragging chalk down a blackboard.

Despite my aversion to musicals, I wish 'Menopause The Musical' much success. Once again the women who sprang forth during the age of the baby boom are challenging the traditional view of women. As a grateful recipient of the changes that have resulted from this witty reappraisal, dear sisters, I sincerely thank you. You're doubly beautiful for doing it with humour.

Photographs of jewellery © Jennifer Dangerfield 2007