Goodbye Website Shop, Chronic Blog Neglect and more bleedin' Lockdown to get through. . .

Blog neglect taken to the lengths that I have taken it to is probably a criminal offence. . . But I just don't feel the urge these days. The Groundhog Day existence this Covid virus has caused doesn't help. At least my repetitive life involves some repetitive selling. Grateful thanks to all the bead buyers out there still accumulating the raw materials for their jewellery projects.

My website has also suffered. I only have one because I feel I ought to, and my website shop is only there because people say that a stand alone shop is a good thing to have. I am not convinced. I am even less motivated to promote it than I am to make blog posts so it is somewhat unloved right now. Most of all by me. I do OK on Etsy and sell on Facebook so really it is surplus to requirements. I am going to wind the shop up and put the beads etc on Etsy, or FB from time to time. The website itself I will keep as a source of info if anyone wishes to find out anything about my work that isn't obvious by looking at it. .

Black and white scratch design spindle bead

On the domestic front, we are down to two chickens. Not sure what happened to the two that went missing but the F word is the obvious answer, a fox got them I am guessing. No stray tell-tale clumps of feathers though so it was a clean job. Must have been a daylight raid as they sleep in their firmly shut chicken coop thingy (a converted child's Wendy House according to the previous house owner. .) They had also stopped laying a week or two ago, not sure why but it does happen from time to time I am told. I will probably get a couple of replacements next spring, maybe some more arty, feathery legged ones this time, we shall see.

We have four adult geese now as the two goslings have grown into healthy adults, just as raggedy looking as their parents. Sebastopol geese are such eccentric looking things, like they just had a fight with a shredder ;-) Noisy, but amusing have around, mostly. .

Work - More of the same sort of thing. Variations on stripe painted 'spindles' and spikes, with some nice scratch design beads thrown in. Less of the Industrial Boho side of things but I am moving in that direction again.

I did make some moulds using plastic dinosaurs. Not as popular as I had hoped but fun to make and fun to use.

I have made a couple of small assemblage/diorama things but am awaiting a bit more inspiration before I take them any further.

'Nicholson'

Backing Singers. .

I would really like to make more actual jewellery, but it is a whole new ball game and I need to get more confident that I am making the most of my work and my particular way of creating. It has to fit my aesthetic so to speak. Also, if I am going to tie up fifty quids worth of beads and focal etc in a necklace, I would need to sell stuff for a decent price. I have to feel that what I make is 'worth it', not to mention whether there is a receptive audience for it out there.

Earrings do seem to be the way to go too. Everyone else seems to make them, and they keep on selling. I assume that earrings are the sort of thing that buyers like to have lots of around, unlike necklaces. Still considering this. . .

Oh yes, I also made a couple of pieces into cool wall art, by deepening a couple of small, ornate-ish frames that I had knocking around, to make shallow, shadow box type things, into which I put a couple of pieces that were once intended to be pendants but looked good just as they were. I think they came out well. The trouble is that now we have another Lockdown I can't pay a visit to the framing shop to see what other small frames they have lurking on their shelves so I can make some more. Fah!

Oh well, I shall persevere and we will all get through this. . . The vaccine news is good, so far, and though I hate to mention politics, the US election 'should' work out for the best eventually. I must admit it has been depressing the life out of me and I don't even live there!

Anyway, stay safe and stay well,

Jon x

Guinea Fowl, Norfolk Pronunciation and Faux Stoneware. . .

Oh yeah. . . and we painted the house.

The Spring has sprung,
The grass is riz,
I wonder where dem birdies is. . . etc

You know the rest. Probably.
We had that poem in one of a series of very nice poetry books for kids made for schools in the sixties/seventies called 'Voices'. Very much of their time. I must try and track some down, they were good.

Yep, spring has sprung all right. Our first in this house ;-) All sorts of bulbs springing up, as they do. Grass growing, blossom starting to appear and the first chiff-chaff of the year singing. He'll be an overwintering one, getting his voice back together I think, it's a touch too early for migrants yet though I could be wrong.

The geese are sitting on eggs in their nesting box things by the pond. (the geese and boxes, and pond, were all passed on to us by the house's previous owner who had lived there for forty years. . .) They are fluffy feathered things called 'Sebastopol Geese', and apparently, due to the fluffy oddness of their feathers, they are rubbish at incubating eggs, at least the ones on the outside of the clutch which can't be kept warm enough.

Nothing to do with ducks, geese or spring, but just some recent bead eye candy

Ducks have appeared, and are behaving badly. I never knew ducks went in for what I can only describe as gang rape. Seriously, four of them gang up on one female and physically hold her down. . Nature huh? Still, she has made a nest in the bole of a coppiced hazelnut tree nearby.

The moorhen has a nest in the base of a willow tree by the pond, and the jackdaws are eying the chimney in a purposeful sort of way. Oh well, I might have to light a smokey fire for a short while to put them off.

Oh yeah, Guinea Fowl. We inherited two of them along with the geese, except a fox got one (we assume) so the poor lonely male has been mooning about with the chickens, looking as sad as a guinea fowl can look, all winter. We decided to get another female to keep him company, so my wife went off to get one. She came back with two. The guy at the poultry place was obviously a good salesman. . .
We were advised to keep them apart from the male for a while, but visible to him. OK, so we put them in the fruit cage (also inherited. . .). Only we forgot there was no netting roof on it and that guinea fowl can fly when they want to. The male went nuts when he saw them, it was like all his christmases had come at once, he started running back and forth like a thing possessed, fluffing up his feathers and making those distinctive rusty-gate-on-steroids noises guinea fowl make. The females weren't too impressed and were pretty disorientated anyway, so when he battered his way through the netting and got in to the fruit cage, they promptly took to the air. One flew into the next field never to be seen again, (no idea what happened to it) and the other one flew into a nearby apple tree. So much for keeping them separate. . .
Luckily, things calmed down a bit, she stuck around and now her and him are a proper couple and spend their time pottering round the garden together in perfect and endearing guinea fowl harmony. They don't sing in harmony however, and their song is not remotely endearing, but hey, you can't have everything.

More eye candy - faux ceramic style

Norfolk Pronunciation - We are getting to grips with the local accent, which we love by the way. It's quite soft, and fairly slow, as country accents tend to be. A computer is a compooter, a human is a hooman, and my friend tells me he had a boss called Mr Pugh, whose name was pronounced 'Mr Poo' in the local accent. Well, it made me snigger. . .

Kind of interlocking beads. Faux Stone ware or what?

Oh yeah, polymer clay stuff. I've been playing with includes as they are called, I believe. All the DIY I have been doing and the materials involved has inspired all sorts of ideas, and all sorts of things to mix with the clay, texture the clay or destroy the clay. . . My experiments have turned out some interesting results. I shall pursue the techniques further. You can get a great faux stone ware look. . .

Complimentary shaped beads, well rustic.

Well, I have delighted you enough, as Mr Bennett would have it, so I will shut up until the next outpouring, which will likely be in a week or so I should imagine.
Laters,
Jon x