Green Man Festival. Haiku. Felt.

I have had four days at the Green Man Festival in Glanusk Park in the beautiful Usk valley, helping my friend Emma in her marquee, selling her beautiful felt items, and also helping out with a manic programme of felt making workshops. Here she is, on day one, before nearly everything sold!

It was huge fun, with the extra dimension of contributing to Wales Arts Review's live online response to the Festival, with contributors responding to events, food and the festival experience. I wrote a series of haiku and emailed them during the days.

My experience was necessarily limited by my working, and not wandering around or seeing other events at all! I thought I would put them down here in order, to give you a flavour of my Green Man experience. I was also constrained by my iPhone, which wouldn't let me start the lines of the haiku with a lower case letter, so they do look very different to my usual style. However, it's all part of the experience! I will list the day, and then the haiku beneath, some of which have titles;

Thursday

Wisp of cloud drifting
Across watching mountain top -
Rain falling below

Friday

Discreet sunlight, breeze
Feet whispering through wet grass
Green Man squats, fierce-faced

Green Man Harvest
A convoy of bins -
Green-bobbed acolytes trudge with them,
Gathering garbage

And now, noise begins -
Swirling on the valley floor,
Mountain, sounding board.

Saturday

Knees
Ugly scowling things,
Stranded between shorts and boots -
Please cover them up!

Making felt
Bright strands, water, soap,
Metamorphosis of wool,
Capturing rainbows.

Selfies
On this spot, right here -
Stand with the mountain behind,
Smile for the camera

Sunday

Wet grass
Mud path will emerge,
Recording every footprint
Small destinations

Climbing
Soft skin and rough bark,
Oak trees stadning patiently,
Accepting hands, feet

Air freshens, colder,
Breeze whispers through the valley,
Nearly time to go

Written looking out of the marquee! I hope you like them! I made a piece of felt to go with the series.

Great fun.
www.walesartsreview.org
https://www.facebook.com/Ffolkyffelt?ref=ts&fref=ts

Letterpress printing. Tour de France.

I have been celebrating the Tour de France in my printing shed! I decided to make a print for each of the three main jerseys worn by the leaders of the race, and turn them into cards. Here is the maillot vert, the green jersey, worn by the fastest sprinter.

Poor Mark Cavendish is out of the race, having fallen at the finish line on the first day. I was hoping for him to be wearing this jersey at the end of the race in Paris in three weeks time.

But the card looks nice, stitched with green thread of course.

The best climber wears the King of the Mountains jersey. It's rather exciting, white with red dots.

I have used some huge full stops, and stitched the print onto the card with red thread.

And the race leader wears the maillot jaune, the yellow jersey.

The big wooden letters look fabulous, and I really like the bright yellow, not a colour I usually use. 

The maillot jaune is listed on my Etsy shop, and the others will follow. Vive le Tour!

http://etsy.me/1q7RpXm

Getting Shakespeare ready for an outing to Dinefwr

Back into the printing shed, and preparing for the Dinefwr Literature Festival on 20th to 22nd June.  Today I am getting some Shakespeare cards together.

I really like the come-on-get-on-with-make-your-mind-up tone of this quote, when you leave off the final to be!

The cards are laser prints of the letterpress original, machine stitched onto a white card. I have given up trying to get adhesive to behave, so I have reverted to the sewing machine. This old wooden font gives a lovely print.

I have used a big wooden O for the Muse of fire quote. I really like it!

It's also been used for an O brave new world print, still hanging up to dry. And then the fluttering pennants of words draping down for the inspiring once more unto.

That middle E is really showing us its history, I love it.

And then, from As You Like It, all the world's a stage, using four different types of letter.

A couple more to go, and then moving on to Dylan Thomas.

And after that, preparing my own poetry, although I hardly dare admit it, in such exalted company!
The cards are in my Etsy shop, with a few more images, if you'd like to look.
https://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/quarto17

poems, pictures, and kitchen table publishing

I have been preparing my letterpress haiku pictures for display at the Big Skill craft fair in Hay on Wye next weekend.You can see the pictures close up in a previous post, Printing, Pegasus and Poetry.

The poems are letterpress printed onto pages of old books. I hadn't really thought how to present them, but luckily my friend Jill was able to help. She's an artist and also a picture framer, and we had a very happy afternoon choosing mountboard of different colours, which she then cut for me. And she told me the how to do it and the what to buy.

Cellophane, sellotape, and a ruler are very important. And I am rather pleased with the results. The butterflies look wonderful.

And the Pegasus pictures so dramatic. I am very glad I painted the kitchen blue earlier this year - everything looks so good in front of it.

I do wonder if we will ever be able to eat in the kitchen again though.

 Jill has a wonderful print studio in Madley, with the most fabulous old printing press, which I am going to introduce to my trays of wooden letters after the craft fair. Here's a link to her website, www.theprintshed.net

And here's a poster for the fair. I'm really looking forward to it. And if the weather is like this weekend!

Printing, Pegasus, and Poetry.

Sunday afternoon, the wind is howling and rain beating down. I am in my shed, printing.

This is the text of a poem about Pegasus. If you look carefully, you can see the errors in my typesetting.

But once that was sorted, I printed onto some pages from an old Romanian book about Roman coins. At least I think that's what it is about. It's one of the books I rescue - so tattered or worn or incomplete that they are never going to be sold. I want the poem to look as though it was part of the original text of the book, but I am not making the print too perfect, or it won't ever be apparent that it's an addition to the page! Fine line to be drawn here.

A lovely opportunity to print the title in one of my new metal fonts. This is 24 point Castellar. Fabulous.

And the finished product hanging up on the washing line. I managed to get three I am happy with, out of six attempts, so that's fine.

I also finished off three other copies of a different poem, with a different look. Here's one of them,

 These prints are coming with me to the Big Skill  craft fair in Hay on 24th to 26th May. It's going to be great fun, and I hope that some of today's prints will find new homes.

Here's a link to their Facebook Page, https://www.facebook.com/thebigskill
I will also be doing Poems While U Wait at the event. Haven't started limbering up for that yet!

Shakespeare's Birthday. Letterpress. Poems While U Wait.

I thought I would celebrate Shakespeare's birthday with some letterpress and knitting. Of course - how else would I do it?! Here are some of my new cards, awaiting posh photos before being offered to a discerning public.

It seemed a shame to make a Richard III, when I could do a horse instead. The horse represents the absolute limit of my ability to knit. The font I used for the word 'horse' has a Wild West saloon poster look to it that I really like. 

The most famous stage direction of all, from Winter's Tale. I don't usually stitch noses on finger puppets, but thought the bear needed one.

I have a soft spot for Mark Antony, one of the sexiest of all flawed heroes. I hope I have done him justice, in his Senatorial toga.

 The Shakespeare puppets will be coming with me to the Big Skill Crafts Festival at Racquety Farm in Hay on Wye on 24th to 26th May. Here's a link to their Facebook Page, https://www.facebook.com/thebigskill
I will also be doing Poems While U Wait at the event. Very much looking forward to that. I hope William would have approved.

A shed full of print & Shakespeare

At last, I have surrendered and made my shed solely into a print studio.

Very proud of my shelves - strangely enough, Ikea didn't have shelves specifically for trays of type, but these are fine.

The proofing press is on the floor. It's so heavy I figured it would probably end up there anyway.  I quite like leaning down to print.

I have been in a Shakespeare frenzy, finding quotes and bits of quotes. It's amazing how much Shakespeare we know and say without realising. I am planning some less literary printing, but it's been just William so far.

And this card has sold to several parents with children doing course work and dissertations. The big O is fabulous.

I decided to sew the prints onto cards rather than stick them. I don't know how adhesive is done commercially, but I never manage to get a card completely flat, despite my book press (that's still in the sitting room, doubling as a sculpture). And I like the look of the stitching!

The machine complained a bit, but it's been with me a long time and used to make pantomime costumes, so it's used to some extreme sewing.

Some of the cards have finger puppets on, of course. Here's Hamlet.

The cards, with and without puppets, have already been out to a couple of craft fairs, and will go onto my Etsy shop, as soon as I have photographed them successfully. And then away from Shakespeare and into Bride & Groom, Congratulations, Happy Brithday, and You Know Nothing Jon Snow territory. The last phrase is a Game of Thrones thing!

Fingerprint lovebirds, romance, very pink!

The weather is still terrible, but the days are longer, and spring is not far away. Naturally my thoughts turn to fingerprint Lovebirds!

 I made the Twelve Robins of Christmas cards last year, and really liked them so I am keeping going with fingerprint birds in groups of twelve, and here are the Twelve Lovebirds of Romance.

 I like the pink and yellow, adding gold beaks and pink legs with gel pens. The legs are slightly sparkly, which is rather cute.

What a romantic gesture, a greetings card with not one but TWELVE dear little lovebirds hopping about on spindly legs.

The cards are on my Etsy shop if you're feeling the love.
http://etsy.me/1d3i3LR

Pink trees in my last blog post, pink lovebirds - what's going on?! But I am embracing it, and I am sure my more gothic side will emerge once more very soon.

WMC Christmas Fair. The gazebo of poetic delight.

Two more days in the foyer of the Wales Millennium Centre, in my gazebo of poetic delight.

The beautiful foyer transformed into a tented shopping street, with the second weekend of the Christmas Fair.

And poems, finger puppet cards and other cards finding lots of new homes.
I am completely talked out.
I had a wonderful time, but am hoping not to have to speak much for the next few days!

WMC Christmas Fair preparations. Messy studio. This weekend!

Last preparations for the Christmas Fair at Wales Millennium Centre this weekend. 

My studio shed may never recover. It's going to take several days to tidy up!

Last night I was making the last few seed packets, to hold my poetry collection

 Blue Moon at the Map Shop.

 I was watched by my lovely flying horse ornament, which changes colour and is rather beautiful.

Wales Millennium Centre Christmas Fair

11am - 8pm

November 20th, December 1st

December 7th, December 8th

https://www.wmc.org.uk/Productions/2013-2014/Other/178793/

Christmas Fayre. WMC Cardiff. The robins are going!

I have a stall at the Christmas Fayre in the foyer of the Wales Millennium Centre.

30th November, 1st December, and the following weekend as well.

This is what the fayre looked like last year.

I have never been confined in a roofless gazebo before, and feel I may need to take some fairy lights to illuminate my space.

The fingerprint robins are definitely going, I hope they like it there,

and Christmas Trees too,

Wales Millennium Centre Christmas Fayre, in the Foyer.

30th November, 1st December

7th & 8th December, 

https://www.wmc.org.uk/Productions/2013-2014/Other/178793/

Butterflies for Crickhowell Craft Fair

I am really looking forward to the Crickhowell Craft Fair on Saturday, 23rd November.

 

I have got my butterfly prints all framed and ready, and am looking forward to showing them off. Here are spring and summer,

and autumn and winter.

Wouldn't it be great if the Clarence Hall was thronged with butterfly loving haiku enthusiasts!

Hope springs infernal, as my old Granny used to say.

Crickhowell Christmas Craft Fair,

Clarence Hall, Crickhowell.

23rd November.

10am - 3.30pm