St Ives 2

Along with our visit to Tremenheere Garden we made a return visit to Barbara Hepworth's Garden which is different every time we go and this time was distinguished by the fact that the conservators were in the gardens cleaning up the sculptures.   If, like me, you thought conservators worked in a quiet, contemplative way, think again!

If  you look closely you may be able to see the jet of water pounding through the centre of the sculpture above.  The noise of the compressor shattered the peace of the garden.  Fortunately the guys were on a break for a lot of our visit so we weren't disturbed too much.

This young lady was much gentler in her work.

DH was not deterred from his photography by the workers.

It seemed very strange to see some of the pieces with scaffold towers next to them.

The rain and the effect of the soft light made for some design potentials.

I think these guys had already been cleaned up and I loved the grouping and the feeling of three people having a chat.  I did attempt a small contour drawing of these but don't have it photographed.

 As you can see from the photos we had a little rain while we were away and on our first day it 'pittled' it down, as they say in Derbyshire.  As we couldn't get into our flat until 3.00pm we took ourselves off to the Tate to see the William Scott exhibition.  If you check out the link you will see some of his work.  I didn't know his work before but I really enjoyed the soft quality of his colours.

Always on the lookout for inspiration, I was delighted that one of the stewards allowed us to photgraph the reflections in the curved windows that echo the shape of the gas storage (gasometer) that was originally on the site.

 A view of Porthmeor beach on a very grey day through the windows.

How would you like to live in one of these retirement flats?  They must have the best view anywhere in the country, looking out over Porthmeor Beach.  Do you think they'd let us put our names down?

 

Someone had made their own art on the window!

Circle inspiration was much in evidence in the Tate.

And finally, they put the flags out!  They must have known we were coming ;-)

Where to start?

You probably havn't noticed much difference as the gaps are pulling out between my postings here, but we have been away on the first of this year's holidays.  (Oops, that's a lie, we went to Cardiff, didn't we?).  

We've just got back from our favourite place, St Ives, and as usual had a fabulous time, meeting up with old and new friends, visiting gardens and galleries and getting slightly crafty.  So, where to begin?  Since this is supposed to be a creative blog I think I'll start there first.

Last year, as you may remember, I did a day's workshop with Dionne Swift at the Festival of Quilts on Developping Sketchbooks.  Dionne also offers this workshop online with the ability to have access to the videos and Facebook group for 2 weeks so I decided to 'repeat' the experience but with much more time to devote to it.  I started watching the videos before we went away and carried on with the course while we were in St Ives.

You can probably guess the theme of the sketchbook but I have to say that it was a really good decision to work the course again.  Dionne's videos are always concise and encouraging and there is a clear path moving through the procedures for building the sketchbook which can be used with any future theme you may care to choose.  My head is still full of ideas and possibilities for future work with circles and I have enough pages to make two sketchbooks and probably more on this theme.  It was lovely to have the extra time to play and the more I played the more ideas came to me.  Equally the Facebook page set up for all the participants to interact if they wished was invaluable.  It was great to see some of the work others were doing and to get feedback both from Dionne, who was tireless in her support, and from the group.  

I've made a start on a new book on a new theme and I'm hopeful that this time I will keep up the good work.

The crafting theme continued while I was away with a fused glass taster session with Terri Bunn in St Ives.  It was lovely to share this with my very dear friend Carolyn Saxby and a new friend, Margaret Garrood.

Margaret and Carolyn in Terri's studio.
 

This is the lovely Terri  showing us some of her work.

 I think you could say it was a bit of a breezy day.

This is Carolyn and I with the finished product.
 

And the lovely Margaret with her fabulous knobbly coaster.  The knobbly blobs were accidental but Carolyn and I loved them, very tactile!

Above, my coaster with spirals which are just visible.

Margaret gave me this lovely gift of fabrics (dyed by her), sari silk, buttons and a card holder.

As you might expect DH and I took many, many photographs while we were away, despite having taken 1000's already so there'll be more to come in a future post.   I will leave you with one or two to whet your appetite.

The intrepid photographer!
 

The view from our rental.

St Ives in a foggy mood.
 

And finally, an exceptionally low tide.

Circles

Today has been a bit of a non-event for me as I have plonked myself on the settee and not moved all day except to go to bed for a sleep this afternoon. As you may guess from that, I was totally wiped out for some reason so I listened to my body and took it easy. One good thing to come out of it is I've gone through my photo files and extracted every circle image I can find. This is for an exercise in Sharon Boggon's Journalling course - for lesson 4 actually, bearing in mind that I am still on Lesson 2, but I couldn't resist this one. I have got enough images to make several of these collages so I will be revisiting it and maybe looking at circle images of a similar colour or texture. The idea is also to look at other shapes, squares, triangles or at straight lines or curved lines. This could be a life's work! (I should actually be exploring the local neighbourhood with a camera as the aim is to get you to be more aware as you go about every day but energy levels today wouldn't stretch to leaving the house - poor old beggar!)