This was just a little bit of fun.  I wanted to make a bowl on tiptoes that was (reasonably) stable.  It was a bit rushed (I knew if I waited a week before adding a bowl to the feet, I'd have all sorts of issues) and hence the angle of the bowl is somewhat tippier than I'd like (though with a surprisingly fetching split in the rim), but it does tiptoe and it doesn't tip over, so I call that moderate success (I wouldn't say the same of the photos, but hey, I should have taken more care).  I might be getting some practice in with this design, anyway - a couple of people would like one, and you can bet that the next few won't work out.   

At least I know I have plenty of company for my bemusement on this - the onesie.  What an awful word.  I've only seen one close up and in the flesh, as it were, and it looked a very attractive, warm and good quality fabric. Stars and stripes design, maybe? And I had nothing against the whole item of clothing, except that (of course) I didn't really think of it as clothing in the ordinary sense but (yet again) as fancy dress.  No, really.  Andy Pandy inevitably sprang to mind.  Or a clown.  I don't think it had pompoms, it can't have (can it?), but really it might just as well have had them because that's what I saw. 

I think I might have seen another couple crossing the road, long before this one (and all were way back before so much media discussion), but they were pastel pink and I swear there were slippers.  I assumed the people inside them were refugees from a pyjama party or a sleepover and hadn't bothered to change yet.  What do I know?

January is well advanced.  I've been through the good intentions (the resolutions never did happen), and through the disillusionment caused by not a single one of those good intentions getting off to a flying start (don't they know it's a new year?) and I have more or less reached the point where I remember that there's nothing particularly special about That One Day and that I'm perfectly able to fail my good intentions at any time of the year.

I've signed up for a year long printmaking course at Hot Bed Press.  It's a tad indulgent - I've covered a lot of the methods before, and there's no real reason to think that they'll go better or worse this time - but already it's succeeding at what I saw as one of it's aims, in that I'm busy printing more, and just for the hell of it!  No masterpieces yet, mind you.  I have an inkling that they might need more than enthusiasm.  Preparation, perhaps.  Planning ahead, maybe.  Well thought-out ideas, even.

 Aside from the course, my brain is buzzing with plenty of ideas for prints and bookarts.  Just the way one might hope at the start of the year, and especially with two book fairs looming (Leeds and Bristol) and no progress on anything much outside of my head.  There's still time, but there won't be if I don't get down to firming these ideas up into something a lot more solid and organised, and soon.  I can't decide if following Sarah Bryant's Big Jump Press blog makes me more or less likely to get on with working - she's just so organised and methodical, and while I tell myself I could be more like that, I'm not convinced at all that it's true.  But I do not want another week like the Tiger Blue week, and so long as I keep reminding myself of that (how to spoil a really quite well planned project by not leaving anything like enough time, and therefore being disappointed with the results while knowing that it's done now and it can't be re-done) then maybe it'll be enough to push me to get on with things.

Can I just make a claim that the snow (good grief, the snow!  Spent much of today digging the road out, in spite of the possibility that it might all thaw overnight) and the cold and short days and the weather and January in general don't help?  Is that even true?  No, no excuses.  What I need to do is to build up a stock of prints and books ready for when I need them.  What I need to do is to do. 

I'm a bit late with new year resolutions this year.  Well, I did make one - to stop sharing sections from the newspaper with my long-suffering family and subjecting them to my strongly held opinions on whatever is therein, from the plummeting quality of journalism to the dire state of almost everything written about - but as I broke that one on the front page on new year's day, it might be best to pretend it never happened.

Most of the rest will be to do with enabling art-related activities, from making my own through seeing other people's to collecting inspiration, to happen a lot more often.  Maybe I'll start those tomorrow...