Looking Out To Sea

Last weekend I fulfilled my ambition (it was a brand new ambition only two months before) to learn some basket-making skills. So I booked a session at the Four Winds Inspiration Centre in Inverleith Park, to learn simple basket weaving.

The day started at 10.30 and officially finished at 5pm, though there were still people finishing up when I left at about 5.30. The centre does various classes of wood and stone craft. I really recommend the class I did, and I’m considering booking another session to try out the “random weave” course too, to learn a different technique and see what other things are possible.

The first half hour or so was an introduction to willow and to the style of basket we’d be making. Our tutor, Anthea, lead us through the different types of willow and how it was prepared for weaving. Then we got down to business! Things were a bit shaky at first but once you get into a rhythm you just lose yourself. It took me the full day to make a short basket about 35cm in diameter. Apparently a professional would expect to make at least 5 a day…

The class had 8 other people, only two of which had done any weaving before, and that was just in another class a year ago. No one was an expert, and no one was really bad either. It was also remarkable how everyone’s basket looked very different even though we were all basically using the same template.

My basket is a single buff colour with no frilly bits. I wanted to keep things simple for the first attempt. There are one or two things I would have done differently in hindsight, where there are obvious gaps which should have been tighter. But I’m very pleased and have been investigating where I can get some willow of my own to do things with. I wonder if I should use something else to practise with, so that I don’t forget everything?

If you’re at all interested in this kind of thing I recommend you look them up, or find someone close to you. It’s great fun and very satisfying to take home your own basket afterwards.

After watching the BBC’s excellent Victorian Farm series on TV and iPlayer, I was enthused by the notion of traditional crafts. I enjoyed watching the straw-hat weavers and the basket makers working their magic. I want to spend this year expanding my repertoire in that direction. I am happy that my bread-making has come together, so what else can I turn my hand to?

At the top of the list, unconnected though they be, sit brewing and basket-weaving. Making home brews is a bit of a beardy-man thing to do, like medieval battle re-enactments or role play board gaming. It has an air of comic juvenility to it. But it’s also a culinary skill and an ancient craft, which is what I’m aiming for. It’s also something that I can try at home with a minimum of extra tools and materials. A large bucket and somewhere to store it seem to be the principal concerns.

Basket-making is another thing entirely. Thankfully Helen knew where to look. The Four Winds Inspiration Centre (I know, what kind of comedy name is that?) work at a nearby park and do day and weekend classes in basket weaving, furniture, stone and wood carving and so on. I’ll be giving them a call as soon as I can to ask about availability. There’s a class on Saturday 9 May for round basket weaving which seems like a good place to start. Here’s to another year of learning!

Last Friday… it seems so long ago… we went out to Nick’s for a Birthday Masquerade Ball. There were a small number of people who made their own masks, though not always successfully. José made himself a Zorro-style mask with the eye holes too far apart, so wore it round his forehead all evening instead. Oh well.

We decided to go the extra effort and made some moulded masks using a technique Helen learned from a youth drama group. This is how it’s done.

Continue Reading »

I can’t imagine the pain actors must go through when they’re being layered in latex for 5 hours before shooting for things like Lord of the Rings. Especially if, like John Rhys Davies, you learn that you’re allergic to the make-up that you have to wear every day of filming.

My own face is layered in paper and glue at the moment, in a hopeful attempt to have a beautiful, original, exciting mask for a Masquerade Ball, chez Nick. There is still peeling to come, and then the artistry begins. But what kind of mask and, therefore, what to wear on the rest of me? As much as I’d like to go for a very traditional masquerade ball attire, that’s not so easy to knock up from the stuff we have to hand.

I completely forgot to mention this last week. Last Saturday Helen was already in Glasgow because she’d spent the night with friends there. I went through at midday and we went to an exhibition at The Lighthouse called Haptic.

The purpose behind the exhibition was to follow through on one designer’s idea that more designed objects should cater to the sense of touch — that you should be able to tell something about an object through how it feels, or to have the feeling of the object reinforce the visual information. The finest example from this exhibition was a set of drinks cartons designed to feel like they were made of fruit skins. The banana carton had wide strips with sharp angles running the length of the carton, and waxy skin. The kiwi fruit carton was actually slightly hairy!

It’s a brilliant idea, and I’m trying not to enthuse too much about it or go off on some design-tangent. The important message is that this exhibition was really rubbish for two main reasons:

1. Most of the designers clearly didn’t understand the brief. You’d look at an object and think well what has that got to do with anything? There were so few exhibits (less than twenty, I think) that it was really obvious how many of them were useless and had totally missed the point.
2. The exhibition was designed such that you weren’t allowed to touch the exhibits. I know. It’s kind of like putting an art exhibition in a room with no lights. Instead, there was a finished object on the plinth in front of you, and a sample of the material they’d used that you could touch. These samples were often the unworked raw material, so didn’t feel like anything in particular. The fruit cartons had postage-stamp sized squares for each fruit skin, which had long since been worn smooth by two months of curious-fingered visitors. Some samples were missing altogether.

It was such a good idea and such a poor execution that I really wish they would do it again, but do it properly this time.

Three silly websites for you:

The “Blog” of “Unnecessary” Quotation Marks

I “think” you’ll be “amused” by these photos of signs, advertisements and “serious” notices with excess punctuation.

Photoshop Disasters

Photoshop can be made to do amazing things in hands of a skilled artist. But skilled artists are expensive and won’t hang around doing DVD covers for straight-to-video slasher flicks forever, so these people made do with what they had. I nearly shot Fanta out of my nose while reading these…

Judge A Book By Its Cover

Laughing at dodgy book covers is a hobby in itself.