The Curious Case of The Blue Soup - A Spike Spike - and the imminent rise of Mid Century Primitive. . .

Well, starting in a backwards direction, just to be awkward, with the Mid Century Primitive, the above pic should show you what I'm on about. . .

The primitive bit is easy to get your head round, pretty self explanatory, but the Mid Century might be a bit less so. Someone mentioned it in a comment on FB and it resonated. I think there is something about the shape and colours that is resonant of fifties and sixties interior design. Your mileage may vary.

Dunno. A bit of a tenuous correlation maybe, but it's a fun invented category to explore the inherent contradictions, or indeed the inherent similarities to be found within it. ;-) 

More about this further down the blog post.

The spike in spike sales may be an oh-so-witty pun but it is also a real life event. I had another good selling session on FB the other day. (Update - and again last night!) My spikes seem to hit the spot with quite a few people.
Hooray for quite a few people, is what I say. Though a spike does imply a sharp up followed by a sharp down, so maybe it's not such a feel good analogy. . .
Anyway, the beads below all sold, amongst others. Long may it continue ;-)

I'll get to the blue soup in my own good time thank you. The subject of Mid Century Primitive is more pressing a matter. Imho of course.

It's a mixture of artily crude and deliberately and sophisticatedly unsophisticated workmanship and simple, sculptural shapes (whatever that means, as any shape could be 'sculptural' really. . . but I think you know what I mean) reminiscent of shapes popular in the fifties and sixties, especially amongst ceramic artists. Who were no doubt influenced by such artists as Brancusi, Arp, Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth etc. Well, that's my take on it.

Maybe because like such artists the shapes are defined by the process as much as by an imposed conscious decision. .  Discuss. . .

I'm not saying my work lives up that ideal, but it's what I am aiming for, without getting too precious about it all. It's fun to make this stuff.

Oh yeah, the ones below sold too ;-)

Blue what? . . Oh yeah, soup.

Well. . . It's all about red cabbage. I cooked a roast chicken with all sorts of veg in the pan below it, including red cabbage. The process turned the cabbage and consequently all the veg dark blackish blue. . . ooer. . .

When I made soup from the chicken carcass and bits (as I always do) I included the left over veg. I whizzed it up in the blender and got blue black, slightly frothy, due to the blending process, soup! Yay! My wife was appalled as it didn't look even vaguely appetising ;-) I ate it however.

It tasted great with a bit of yoghurt thrown in. Hah! Mid Century Primitive Soup. . .

Till next time,
Jon x

Spikes, Car Trouble, Rationalising Bead Boxes and Appreciating Past Efforts

Well, this is a bit late, as I try to post every ten days, but we took a short break for our combined birthdays and various DIY things happened too. But I did get some time in my workshop despite all that. 

I sold a bunch more spikes things on Facebook last week. So I am feeling appreciated ;-) These pictured below are some of they. .

On a less happy note, I managed to reverse into a friend's car on our drive a day or two ago, so the feeling of being appreciated is only transient. . . An insurance job, as it bent the front wing and cracked the lens on the headlight. My car was merely scratched a bit. 

Oh well, there goes me no claims bonus for a while. The rear visibility is not good in my car, but that is a poor excuse.

To bore you further, said car has done 100k miles, so I splashed out for a service. The mechanic asked me when the cam belt (I don't know either) had been changed, I said as far as I knew, I didn't think it had, so he looked it up in the manual. It contained the interesting information that it should have been changed 40k miles ago. . . So I have been pushing my luck apparently.

Back to bead matters - I have been sorting out my various bead boxes, in conjunction with checking my laptop, with a view to working out which beads have been listed on Etsy, which have expired, and which never got as far as being listed in the first place. There are surprising number of things that aren't in my shop. I am going to start remedying that situation forthwith.

It's been nice seeing some old friends lurking in their little compartments. Some things I was, and still am quite proud of. I always learn something from looking at what I was doing a year or so ago, it's easy to forget how far you have come in that period. And to realise what you have also forgotten, some it useful stuff that you would do well to remember.

Here are some of my new spikes, for sale in the LBA Galleria Elementals group on Facebook. Only a glimmer of interest so far, but give it 24 hours and we'll see where we are.

On to more general stuff, like the weather. . . 

Time marches on, and as was the case this time last year, (and every other year I imagine) the aconites are out in the garden, and some snowdrops, some cyclamen and even some crocuses are coming out. The hazelnut trees have catkins hanging off them, and all sorts of daffodils and suchlike bulbs are determinedly pushing their way out of the ground. At least Spring seems like something that will happen in due course. I even heard a skylark singing the other day, when the sun broke through. Don't know what it was thinking. . .

Winter ain't over yet however. I don't mind, as long as it stops blooming' raining. This winter has just been sodden. Give me a crisp, cold day anytime instead of dismal wetness and uncomfortable blustery winds. . . Extreme weather? We get extremely dull. Hence no photos ;-)

Jon x