Angry? We're bloody furious

Bangkok’s Melbourne Cup is the Australian and New Zealand Women’s Group’s biggest fundraiser. Cancelled last November because of the threat of floods, today has been billed as ‘melbourne cup Retrospective.’

I don’t care what it’s called; I get to wear my fascinator. At last.

Back in September K and I began planning. We talked about inviting the same women as last year, minus those that have moved (C & C we miss you) and trying to find the theme. Then, good ol’ Husband came up with the idea/theme. Was he trying to tell me something?

K & I set of for Pratunam for materials and then I began work on the prototype. My second design got the thumbs up.

Big thanks to K for helping to cut out hundreds of pieces of felt.

 It was fiddly, but it was worth it.

Can you see what it is yet?

Absolutely, we could have bought them; these little guys are sold everywhere but where would the fun be in THAT? Major thanks goes to the generosity of Obsessively Stitching blog who has put up the how-to-make and pattern for (non commercial use) for the angry birds.

Then it was time to get everyone round so I could teach them to assemble their hats, Blue Peter style.

The finished fascinator:

Two faced

I went to art college two years after my daughter (my second and last child) was born. I did it because I wanted to bring my children up but being at home seven days a week was starting to make me a bit mad.

I was writing up until the time I went to art college. Mostly I was writing angst ridden stuff that will never see the light of day in any form other than an emotion for my fictional characters. But I was also trying (unsuccessfully) to write ‘how to’ articles for craft magazines. I hadn’t heard of perseverance in those days and my (non digital) photography skills were pitiful. However, it was pre-art college that through a friend, I wrote and recorded six or so talks for BBC Radio 2’s Pause for Thought.

Then I forgot the writing and went off to art college. It took two days a week, for two years, to do a part time foundation course in Art and Design. How I loved Mondays. When everyone else I knew was bemoaning the end of the weekend, I was cheering: Monday and Tuesday were my days in college. Towards the end of my foundation course, I knew I had to do another course and so when Daughter was one term away from starting school, I enrolled for a full time degree in Fine Art at the same university.

I knew, by the time this course started, that I was a maker (not a painter and I don’t like the term sculptor) and the more I made the less I felt the need to write. Except that I was writing essays – there’s always an element of theory – but I didn’t think about that as writing. So I thought that I needed one or the other: writing or making.

I’m not sure that’s true any more. Making takes you to that place where your subconscious does magic stuff all on its own for the benefit of your writing. And see, I’m still desperate to make…

Meet my two new friends; they’re helping with the hat making.