• Hello and welcome

  I'm Mary and this is my blog (in which I shamelessly overuse the word "lovely"). It's a minny bouquet of stuff that I make and stuff that I like.

  Thanks for visiting.

• Search for:

• Categories

  • artyness
  • bookishness
  • cheeriness
  • craft fairs
  • fabric(ness)
  • filminess
  • grooviness
  • its better to give
  • lost and found
  • music
  • naturalness
  • playlist
  • randomness
  • vintage clothes

Radio Silence. I have been sucessfully practising the dark art of invisibility (here) and taking spooky photos. Spooky photos for dark, damp, grey days which I am very much enjoying, and ‘though I suspect that the novelty of a new season will wear off soonish there just seems to be an awful lot of stuff to like and look forward to right now.

China chips from a walk in the woods.

Looking through newspaper/magazine clippings that I’ve amassed, some of them I must have had for 20 years, started taping them up on a blank wall. Surprised and pleased to find how much of a theme they all adhere to. So, whilst I am predictable there is something comforting in knowing that some of the things that I am drawn to are so fixed,  that they have remained consistent through lots of passing interests and life changes. But also a bit funny that  this consistent theam seems to be one of decay, shabbiness and signs of wear. Luckily for me this fits in perfectly with my “needs some work doing to it” house and so I seem to have ended up covering  areas of real peeling paint with pictures of peeling paint.

 

Me and my dad, California, circa 1980?

So lucky to have my (painting, loving, patient, kind, inspiring, funny) dad. Love you, thank you xxx

For my lovely Sarah xx

I luv my bruv. Yesterdays post brought the best surprise – “Eating Carrots in the Bath and Other Marvellous Moments”, a book of Momo’s photo’s made for us and the Davis clan by our fantastically talented and wonderous brother. Momo; all time winner of the kind and thoughful cup. More of his beautiful work and wanderings at  goodmorningcaptain.co.uk. Thank you Mo, come back to England so that we can hug you, sit on you and never let you go off again.

Resolution – draw more. I’m enlisting the children in this one too. We are stocked up on art supplies and filled with enthusiasm. Well, Rae is filled with enough enthusiasm for all of us, Con, lets just say, not so much at the moment. So, we shall see . . .

Our art supplies all came from the  Holsworthy Family Workshop Resource Centre which is completly fantastic. I can’t praise it enough, it’s wonderful both as a resource and an organisation. They have tonnes of supplies, from the basic to the wierd and wonderful and helpful staff who are full of ideas.  They also run workshops and organize craft fairs. It’s really, really worth joining (and cheap too!). Had good fun at the Craft Fair they ran last weekend.

Illustrated by: new supplies from HFWRC plonked on a picture of me and Rach at the Spring Craft Fair organised by HFWRC  (me: patented “smug face”, Rach never anything other than gorgeous).

Beautiful screen grabs from: The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, Pippi Longstocking and In the Mood for Love .

Too much apple pie list.

1) Lists are good

2) Screen grabs are good. The Pippi Longstocking image reminds me of Night of the Hunter, The Assassination of  . . .was a surprise, as I watched it without any prior knowledege and loved the way it was shot & lots of the interior images. Every single second of In the Mood for Love is gorgeous.

3) Receiving Leopalloza tickets in the post is good. Having a festival in Week St. Mary is beyond amazing.

4) The fact that this and this exist. Stationary and letter writing club based websites are good. Film and clothing based websites are also good.

5) American Folk Art Museum and (unrelated) the images here on the Together Bound blog.

6) Rediscovering old books about old films and getting wanty about new books about allsorts. Henry Darger, Carson MuCuller

Stop.

More 50′s fabric (on the left) -  I like this more and more the more I see it. One of it’s charms is it’s similarity to the painting above by Emily Martin of The Black Apple.

Car bootie – stack of albums from the 20′s-50′s, quite tatty, completely wonderful. Now mine. Scan to Flickr? Embrace compulsion to categorise. Pretend i have my own museum. Go mad, end up gtting crushed to death under pile of “old stuff”. That’s the plan.

Rosemore was fun, lots of really nice people, lovely feedback and I got called a “good girl” three times by kind strangers, which I find strangly comforting. Looking forwards to being at the Holsworthy Craft Fair on the 21st May along with fabulous Rachel and her fabulous work.

s

Having a nostalgic wallow I found some old mix tapes. Sigh, lovely, lovely  mix tapes – the handwriting, the inlay cards, the sheer bloody effort that went into making them. And, lots and lots of excellent music. I made a playlist of some of the excellentness – don’t worry, it might start out sort of upbeat but that doesn’t last long. . .

Click on the link below to go to the playlist (as, talking of sheer bloody effort, I can’t get the blimmin thing to embed properly right now). (edit: I can now! sort of, center, damn you, center)

Good grief! I decided to stop sneering at facebook (whilst all the while living vicariously through my husbands account), get over myself and book my own face. It still feels a bit wrong but anyhoo.

It’s just made me think about the old internets and all and wonder about how it might have affected my life if I’d grown up with it. I’m sure that an adolesence spent using facebook would have brought out my inner stalker. And also whilst it is fantastic to conjure up music instantly it would have been sad to have missed out on the anticiptaion of waiting for Melody Maker or NME to come out, pouring over it, ordering albums from the record shop. Waiting. Beacause, we used to wait. . .

The internet is many things and sometimes it acts as a mirror – a magic mirror you can step into (like Alice). It can reflect back  to you your passions and interests , it can amplify them and  – especially – show you things you didn’t realise were there (jam on my face? again?). It can even smooth out the deep set wrinkles of social awkwardness.

For me, the internet at it’s best is a source of inspiration and connection which enables creativity. Sites like Etsy,  Clever Nettle, and enhabiten are wonderful. It’s also interesting to me that whilst I always seem to end up gravitating to music and books written by men the internet looking-glass land I visit is dominated by women.

There is a dissertation waiting to be written by someone somewhere about women and online businesses and creativity all reflected and shiny in the magic mirror. But, in the meantime just “yeah, ladies of the internets!”.

Next Page →

• Tags

  birds books brooches butterflies carpets colour craft fairs curiosity cushions downbeat dresses ebay embroidery fabric film florals flowers gifts hair clips kimono lace momo music nick cave oh comely packaging photography playlist quilts reflections repetition rockpools school of one sewing silk spots stick insects strawberries unfinished villagers vintage water will oldham windows woods

• Pick of the bunch

  • (inside a black apple)
  • 6music
  • angry chicken
  • anna maria horner
  • art and ghosts
  • clever nettle
  • enhabiten
  • good morning captain
  • heARTfelt franca caroline
  • liebemarlene vintage
  • maid in cornwall
  • miss moss
  • posie gets cozy
  • soule mama
  • the day to davis
  • the snail and the cyclops