Not very, I was weeping profusely earlier because I did not get to work.  That is another story altogether.

I am hoping to return as soon as possible.

So, this year the first six months were of course taken up with Haram Bawbag, the person rather than the artwork.

For those who do not know the story, Bawbag was Bawbag’s favourite word.  It was an affectionate rebuke at the time, because he was behaving extremely badly.

As a celebration of our failed attempt at friendship, partly because Bawbag feels he ought to be responsible for women, and partly because I no longer have time to pander to particularly pointless arguments, I am working on the artwork regardless.  It is also a rendering of the piece that he managed to take unfinished because I could not return to finish it without having to listen to a lot of nonsense.

The tagline for the artwork is ‘Until we can insult each other, we cannot be friends’  and it is a very important and subtle statement about Islam in addition to the more personal depiction of the inside of Bawbag’s head.

My work all relates quite directly to people, so it is effectively Haram, although technically because there is no actual image of a person it could be decided that it is fine. It will be interesting to discuss it with more serious Muslims.  I usually have a fabulous time with scholars, less so with people who have not really thought about their faith.

Anyway Bawbag and I were super close friends, but sadly it was brief because although I believe he actually understood what I was doing, he would have found it easier if I had been a bitter womany type that wanted to bonk him.

I have had, and continue to have a lot of very long term, deep friendships with men, whom I see very rarely but know very well, so I often find that recent acquaintances find my open affection confusing.  As I have previously talked about, a clear conscience means there isn’t a bar to friendship because there isn’t so much of the sexual tension people find problems with.

I do miss him terribly, but I have no doubt that he wouldn’t understand any better now than he did then, so it is safer to avoid him.

Because I have been grieving for my mother throughout the last couple of years, quite dramatically at times although I wasn’t terribly concious of it, I moved swiftly on to Two Grapes, Another Bad Investment, which took an enormous amount of time and money, and was adorable right up until the dude turned out to be a rather weak character.  It was not a particularly deep piece of work, but considering it was a failed project too much time and work.  Worth doing for the learning experience, but not practical.  I will not be doing that again.

I was at full speed on Little Shiva right up until the sewing was complete.  I remember on the last day thinking that I had had enough of it, so I measured my stamina at nine months pretty precisely.  It is a very heavy piece of work and I am not surprised I was tired of manipulating it.  I met a lot of nice people because of Little Shiva, however, and it will be a huge statement once it is complete. I will be renewing my fight with it tomorrow, amongst many other important tasks.

And then I met Grumpy, who pitched a fit of comedy fury and asked me what I was doing, which is a remarkable bit of EQ.  This has led to the opportunity to move Ina into a new phase altogether, and certainly I am impressed by some new tricks displayed with the cushions so far.  There is still a fair old bit of work to do, particularly on the beanbag, but I am ready to start the heavier wool work on them, which is quite exciting.

Grumpy is a very positive person with a big aura, so I am finding this process quite freeing, although very exacting.  Grumpy has promised faithfully not to like everything, which is a wonderful thing to say to an artist.

As a reward, I am considering a crochet course to make him a jumper sometime in the next year or so. Far too busy at the moment.  Grumpy makes up for a lot. He’s not at all empty, which makes a nice change.

So that is 2019, which is unusually intense for me.  2020 will make me look more hardworking, however, as a lot of new stuff will be complete in the early part of the year, and I will be following that by massively expanding Ina’s range of goods.  I am working on some courses at the moment, and once I have sufficient output, I will have to look harder into marketing, since the performance element is off at the moment.

I also have a lot of writing to catch up with once I am artistically tired.  The grieving process has been very intense creatively.

My commiserations to Little Shiva, who appears to be vacationing in Slough.  Boke, as we say in Glasgow. I used to live down the road.

Today I was mainly working on Sunrise, which was inspired by one of Grumpy’s jackets.  I am fond of the shade.

A lot of my sewing is actually frame making for the very small bits of carpet that I make by hand.  The frames seem to be going through a fairly elaborate phase right now.  I am not sure if Grumpy has brought out the baroque in me, but I am putting a lot of juice into this.

Anyway, Sunrise was looking pretty unpreposessing the last time Grumpy saw it.  I am not usually fond of yellow, but this is a good exercise.  I do not think it will be of practical use for anything apart from staring at.   I often find that the less thinking and the more sewing, the more interesting the result.

I have ordered the stuffing, and most of the cushions are ready for the carpet magic to happen, even if a bit more stitching will be relevant after the carpet is in place. Then I will worry about the sides once I am happy with the images.

I may get the opportunity on Monday of finding out if Haram Bawbag can be removed from the studio as a very old friend got in touch.  Probably safer with two creatives attempting the near impossible.

Once it is suitable weather, a lot of resin work will recommence, and there are three or four pieces of resin work ready to release so that I can get some workspace back.

I am too scared to ask where Grumpy is, but he is away a lot, so not terribly worried. Concentrating on saying a lot with a few sweeps of sewing.

This is Maurizio Cattelan, the artist behind the Duct tape and Banana. The artists of facebook are very confused about this.

It doesn’t matter how much you explain how art works to them, they are still confused.

Damien Hirst and his investment group were very open about what they did.  The price was set by them with a view to later profit, and they all did very well out of it.  Maurizio has done something very similar, although it is later in his career and so it packs a bigger punch.

Maurizio is also famous for a middle finger statue, a gold toilet and a statue of Hitler.  He likes to cultivate a kind of monsieur Hulot version of himself.

I have been trying to rethink the performance element of Ina, since my project was rudely curtailed by Twisty and Little Shiva.  I am thus far stumped, because I cannot discuss my ideas with anybody and in any case since I have now been sewing constantly for over a year, would have to spend several months recovering from sitting too much.

In the meantime, the Grumpy Dude collection is going surprisingly quickly, as work has been slow, and I am cautiously pleased, particularly with Sunset of Discontent, which I am working on at the moment.

Still too cold to proceed with Haram Bawbag, although I am considering artifical means to get it to the next stage.

I have about a weeks worth of work to do sitting in my bedroom, and I imagine this will get done over Christmas.  I am very mean, so it takes me a while to persuade myself to indulge in basic things at times.  These problems are usually solved if I have a visitor as I like to pretend I am civilised.

In the event you are at all interested, I am currently digging the Singh twins, Sandeep Sinde and Philmy Reyes, who is a dear friend on Facebook, you can look any of these up.  I have a very wide interest area and tend to avoid other textile artists as I find some things confusing and unnecessary, and feedback has indicated that other people cannot understand why embroideries of vomit or tangled dust gathering wallhangings would be relevant or interesting.

Found myself watching some rural Indian porn on facebook today, which was tasteful and charming.  My new facebook friend who was watching it was bemused by my interest, however rural Indian facebook porn usually consists of a healthy normal woman doing fairly boring household chores in a see through or dangerously precarious outfit, so it is fascinating.  I see why men dig the sewing now.

Anyway, sorry it has taken a while to update, I am hard at work.  I have a lot to do, because I would like Grumpy feedback before I start on the spring shoes.

Ina

A policeman dropped by the car the other night, and remarked that it seemed strange that Bawbag had knocked on the car window back in December.

People now knock on my car window every day.  I am a living statue, although my colours are more entertaining. I was stopped in the street the other day and identified as ‘the sewing lady.’

Sometimes they want to ask about my work, today’s wanted to tell me I was amazing.  Sometimes they mouth that they love me through the window.  International tourists have sent photos of me back home.

I have also overheard people coming out of the pub and remarking that I am clearly having a better time than they are.  They are correct, although I am beginning to wonder if I should take up listening to non-fiction audio books rather than dance music.

Dancing whilst sewing in my car actually started because I was extremely cold, and concerned about possible DVT.

Since then it has become something of a statement.  Had the owner of Two Grapes not been an asshole, he would be getting a weekly dose of it for nothing. However, like all the others, he was an asshole.

Although all of this happened by accident, largely due to the actions of Little Shiva, it has been most educational.  I would never otherwise have known how intoxicating sewing is to men of all ages, for a start.  I am particularly fond of the sporty ones, who check the sewing as if they are watching a match.  Note that they aren’t checking me out, it is definitely the sewing.  Ages of men drawn to sewing have varied from 9 – 90 and social class is entirely irrelevant.

Women are more diverse.  I get a few who applaud the logo, whom I like very much, some who also sew, who like to check what I am doing in passing, preferably without me noticing, and some, remarkably are extremely jealous and actively avoid looking even as their partner nudges them to tell them to.

I have had only two directly negative responses.  One was a guy who objected to his date watching me work and who was actually quite frightening in his contempt for somebody who wasn’t harming him at all.  He actually stormed out of the restaurant they were in, pushing his date in front of him, so I hoped that she was in the process of dumping him before he started actually hitting her.  The other was a young drunk, and his equally young companions were gratifyingly horrified by his verbiage.

An interesting feature of this accidental survey is that a frighteningly large proportion of the population have never actually seen anyone sew before, and so they have no vocabulary to talk about it – they see wool, so they will ask if it is knitting, I will say no, it is sculptural embroidery and then we usually talk about colour.

Grumpy dude has been the cream of the crop for creative chat.  He took a photo of my yeti boots this morning and seems to be just entertained by the fact something is happening.  He isn’t as grumpy either, so perhaps I will have to come up with a new name.

Sometimes all you need is for someone to listen to you and say yes, that’s good.  Sometimes that means a lot to you.

Work is going well, I guess, I am not sure if I like it at the moment, but I am sure I will like it by the time I have completed the work.  I am hoping to get it out of the studio in one piece, but there is a possibility I will have to dismantle it to remove it.

Certainly helped doing the piece of work for the other coffee shop owner, the leather is preserving colour far better.

Apart from that, mainly working on cushions at the moment.

We seem to have got rid of Little Shiva for the moment.  Perhaps he is visiting his mum in India, perhaps he has finally stopped staring at me.  It doesn’t matter anyway.  He was too cowardly to do anything other than stare.

Speaking of cowardly, I do not need any further interference thank you. Today was very irritating and pointless.

Thank you for all the nice comments.

Working on Haram Bawbag at the moment, whilst doing the Grumpy dude stuff at work.

Changing the tone of Bawbag somewhat, as it was a bit too austere.  It is quite a lot of work.

Bit fed up with the carelessness of people, particularly people that cannot be bothered looking up the meaning of straightforward words.

Not sure what they think is going to happen to them, given how they treat other people.

Apart from that, reasonably happy. Dreamt about Boris last night, oddly.  We apparently render each other almost silent, which is odd.

Things going quite well on the Grumpy Dude project, one piece ready to join the bedroom floor pile, which will make a total of five or so awaiting attention when I feel strong enough. If you could see the pile of stuff waiting to join it you would probably faint.

Started on Little Shiva and was exhausted fairly quickly due to the size and weight of the thing, but I am happy that I will be able to get it done along with the others.

Basically this stage is much heavier work and involves a lot of humphing big boxes of wool, which is why it is advisable to have several pieces to do at once so that you only have to humph the once.

Did some work on Haram Bawbag and am waiting for resin to cure and varnish to dry.  The temperatures up here are so low just now that it takes twice as long as usual, so 48 hours between coats.

Apart from that, still lost in paperwork and I need to go and talk to some business people.  Not sure whether they will want to supply the relevant information or whether I should adopt the suck it and see method.

I would like to meet a nice person that can manage a two way conversation and isn’t an idiot. I am really quite bored with idiots now.