Wolds Village Spring Open Exhibition

I recently dropped off my two entries for the Spring Open Exhibition at Wolds Village in Bainton, and had a little mooch around their gift shop too. Keith couldn't resist buying some edibles and I was sorely tempted by a whole range of craft items - not just for me, but for creating things with Matheea, Evie and Charlotte, too. (In case you don't know, Matheea and Evie are my two grand-daughters - well, Keith's really, but since I'm married to him, I regard them as mine. Charlotte is my niece- my sister's daughter.) I also enjoyed looking in the upstairs room of the gift shop, which has lots of antique bits and bobs - there's something almost magical about looking at antiques, I find. It's the thought of "who? where? when?" as you look at an object, and imagine the answers - who owned it previously, where did they live and when did they own it etc.  I think a lot of antique furniture is just so beautiful to look at, too. I don't own any antique furniture but I do like looking at it.

Anyway, the exhibition runs from Friday 16th March to Wednesday 18th April and is held at the Gallery on the Wolds, Wolds Village, Bainton, Nr Driffield, YO25 9EF. If you are in the area or know anyone who is during that time, please pop in - it's free entry and it will be a varied exhibition. Afterwards, why not have a coffee or tea in their popular restaurant or browse in the gift shop?

Here are the two paintings I've entered - I think they are suitably "Spring" like, don't you?

"Colossus of Roads" - acrylic on canvas.

"Anniversary Flowers" - acrylic on canvas.

Serendipity

Last night Keith and I were looking forward to a meal out that we'd booked months ago with a Groupon offer - to an Italian Bistro at the other side of Hull. We got showered and ready in good time to leave the house at 7.20 - given that it's a 25minute drive across to Chanterlands Avenue (where Ciao Bistro) is located. Surprisingly for us, the drive across town was remarkably smooth and we arrived on Chants Ave at 7.36pm (I always remember times precisely, it's part of my obsession for lists etc I think) so we were thinking we'd be too early. However, as we approached the venue, we started to realise that we may struggle to find a parking place. 25 minutes later, and two years' worth of screaming and shouting at each other in response to this, we KNEW we were going to have to forego our much-anticipated meal.  Neither of us could believe that there was literally nowhere to park - all the available spaces on the main avenue were taken as well as every inch of space in all the side streets on both sides of the avenue - even along the main road leading up to Chants Ave itself. We decided to abandon the idea so Keith waited outside in the car (with the engine running, he was parked at the edge of a bus stop - the only spare strip of road available at that time) and I went in to explain the situation. "No, I'm not surprised" said the manager when I told him we'd spent 25 minutes driving around looking for a parking spot, "there's a party of four in the corner who were driving around for 40 minutes before they found anywhere. Would you like to make another booking?" "Well, yes, but can you recommend a night when it won't be this bad for parking?" I replied, not hopefully.  "Any night, really, it's just that it's the football tonight so it's really busy"  DOH!!!

That's the trouble with not being remotely interested in football - I never know when our team in Hull are playing, and last night was even worse, apparently, because they were playing a team from Leeds. I have no idea what that means, but it must be important to bring all that extra traffic out in order to try and spoil our evening out!

Anyway, once we'd re-booked, we decided to try somewhere else instead. We were thinking of just going home and raiding the freezer, but because we'd got dressed up (Keith even had his new jeans on) we drove into Cottingham and parked up near a place we thought would be open. Wrong. "Purple Cow" is only open on certain nights - it's mainly used as a cafe during the day, but we've been before when they had a tapas evening and thoroughly enjoyed it! Our problem is we don't go into town or out for meals enough to really have a good knowledge of what's open when and how good it is! So we started to walk back into the centre of Cottingham instead and Keith just happened to spot a neon sign light up in an otherwise empty shop window - advertising "Woksoever". We turned into an arcade and at the end was a chinese restaurant.

We opted for the "allyoucan eat" menu - which was £14.99 each and literally as many dishes, from the starter, main or side dish menu shown here as you liked. We aren't big eaters, so just chose a starter and a main dish each, with rice to accompany it - next time, we will probably just order a selection of starters, however!

I had the sate vegetable skewer for starters, Keith opted for the Chilli Spicy Salted Chicken Wings and we both thought they were delicious. We even enjoyed the bowl of prawn crackers with dipping sauce that arrived before the starters, so knew we were onto a winner here.

For our main dish, we had the Chicken in a Special Satay Sauce with egg fried rice (me) and Chicken Wokever Curry with egg fried rice (Keith). I actually finished all mine - Keith struggled a bit but only left a bit of rice to be fair - and he'd had 4 chicken wings to start with, which is more than a couple of sticks of vegetable, in terms of fulfilment.

The service was speedy, friendly, everything was immaculately clean and the atmosphere was great. We would recommend this place to anyone who (like us, up to last night) has not yet been. Thanks to Hull City for making what we thought would be a really crappy night turn out to be a lovely one instead!

Colour chart - artistic or anal retentiveness?

I know I can be quite anal in my behaviour at times - I have always liked making lists, keeping notebooks for various things etc. Some people would find it odd, I just think it's perfectly normal to make and keep lists of things. For instance, I have a comprehensive list of every birthday and Christmas present that anyone has ever bought me since I was about 16. So, if you ever wondered what it was - I'm sure I could dig it out for you! This seems to help my memory - I can, for example, remember that a friend (who was my boyfriend at the time) bought me a red covered A4 sketchbook for my 19th birthday. I can even remember some of the sketches I first did in there - of him (Paul Leonard, in case you're wondering), my brother Daniel, and one of Sherry, our German Shepherd dog at that time.

I therefore wonder if this colour chart I've made (along with others that I have but don't happen to have photographed for fear of over stretching your patience every so slightly) is a sign of my well-organised artistic mind or just another symptom of my anal retentiveness. I don't really care either way - just thought I'd share it in case anyone else can relate to it!

I've utilised a cut-off from a piece of mountboard to paint a sample of every brand and type of yellow and green paint that I have in my possession. The only trouble now, is that I need to update this list, as I've since bought more for my different craft works!  I think I shall probably need a larger piece of mount card. I've temporarily misplaced the blue swatch card that I created, but if I find it you may yet see it on here!

Handy reference card, without a doubt. Absolutely necessary for my work? Not really.

Half Term Crafts with "the girls"

For some reason, the Hull area have had their half term a week later than the rest of the country this time. Therefore we spent yesterday looking after our two grand-daughters, Matheea and Evie. We will also have them tomorrow, along with our niece, Charlotte - which I'm looking forward to.

Yesterday was spent with the girls playing on the computer to begin with. I never have any strict pattern as to what we do, just let things happen or not, depending on their moods, but they seem to enjoy the time spent here, so it must work for them. They are really into a site called "MovieStarPlanet" which is specifically designed to encourage children to create a virtual world with different characters. They can also network with their friends and create cartoons or films for their creations. From what I saw of it, you dressed up a cartoon girl (or boy, I guess) in whatever "Movie Star" costume you preferred, gave her/him a name and then proceeded to tell a story with that character . I was laughed at for wanting to dress Evie's character in a red dress and baseball boots, so I decided to leave them to it. They love the fact that they can each use a PC rather than having to share, since Evie uses mine and Matheea uses Keith's.  After about an hour of that (during which time I kept hearing snippets of conversation in typical American dialect from them both) they decided that they wanted to join me in my creativity. I love it when they are being creative - we all enjoy the time together!  They wanted to make one of the mini notebooks I've started creating, so I duly cut them both some card for the cover, stitched together the paper for the inside and let them decorate their covers ready for attaching to the paper. Here are their finished results - they had also planned what they were going to use them for (Evie's was going to be for a secret group at school - girls only, except Josh, apparently. Matheea said she would probably be jotting down ideas for stories she is going to write.)

No prizes for guessing whose notebook this one is!

I like the way Evie continued her design on the back cover, how cute!

Matheea likes her work to be private, obviously!

Just a simple smiley face on the back of Matheea's notebook!

Once we'd finished the books, we all had pancakes for our lunch - perfectly made by Keith, they were probably the nicest pancakes I remember eating. Matheea had three, Evie had one (which is a minor miracle considering she doesn't like golden syrup, honey and only just relented on the lemon juice with sugar idea!). They both then played with some cornflour and water mix - Matheea has been learning about thixotropic materials in school - that is, materials exhibiting a stable form at rest but becoming fluid when agitated. Evie then went on to decorate a wooden yo-yo so that she can hone her skills on the toy (not that she's really tall enough to hold the yo-yo fully let down, in my opinon, but it's cute to watch her trying) at home.

Here she is proudly demonstrating her artistic creation:

I spent the day sniffing and sneezing, so have obviously started with a cold, and left them to it for a couple of hours  on the Wii. They played on "Just Dance", which was quite hilarious to watch as Matheea was putting so much into it whilst Evie just casually made the merest hint of motion yet seemed to score higher more often than not!

Here they are strutting their stuff:

Evie looked positively bored at times, yet played for quite a long time before wanting to change the game. They moved onto the Wii Music game, which Matheea loved particularly as they could watch old videos of their previous attempts, which made her laugh immensely. Some of the saved videos were ones her parents had done - which reminded me of the time when Evie was about 3 and she was talking about her Dad using the Wii Fit. "Apparently", she told us, "Dad's not obeast any more". How cute is it when they say words incorrectly like that?

No doubt tomorrow we will be watching The Wizard of Oz and/or Heidi on DVD at some point, those being favourites for Charlotte as well as Matheea and Evie. Having never had experience of looking after boys, I wonder if they would be as interested in creative work as these 3 all seem to be? I feel very lucky to be part of their lives and I'm always happy when they are around - it must be such a blessing to be a Mother.Now, where's my hankie, my cold is getting a tad troublesome!

Zanzibar notebook in Etsy Treasury

One of my painted notebooks has made into a Treasury on Etsy over the weekend. Although I'm not entirely sure what the full title of the Treasury means, it is named "Roy G. Biv is Rainbow Bright" and has been curated by Toni Becker. It is full of brightly coloured items and well worth a view if you have time.

You can see the Treasury in detail by clicking here. (which opens the link in a new window for you). Many thanks to Toni Becker, whose Etsy shop, Whimsical Jewels,  you can see here.(again, opening in a new window)

I will be updating my Etsy shop again this week, which you can always take a peek at : Arty Aitch on Etsy

Plays cast!

After a bit of a struggle to find something, I'm pleased to say that I have now managed to find and successfully cast a play to direct for our next production in May. Plus, on Monday this week we also read and cast a play for the Junior Section. So, just the Youth section to sort out now!

The Juniors are to be performing a version of "The Emperor's New Clothes", which will go on in July. Fortunately they all enjoyed it and are happy to play the parts we cast them in (with perhaps just one minor gruntle, that is!)

The adults are going to be performing "Don't Misunderstand Me" which is described as a frothy comedy by Patrick Cargill. I reckon a lot of the play is more like farce than comedy, but the main thing is that the reading went very well. It was a very hard decision I had to make over the final casting of the young girl "Jaynie", however. It needed to be read with an American accent, and there were two young girls up for the part, both of which had an excellent accent, despite both saying beforehand that they didn't think they could do one! I was debating in my head as we read the play as to which one I would select, but I had to be quick in making my decision in the end as I didn't want to drag it on. I opted for the actress who "sounded" like Jaynie, in my mind. I see her as a naive girl, and Ellie's voice came across as slightly more innocent than Kay's - I hated to disappoint Kay, as I have known her since she was 8 when we first began the Junior section (she's now 23) but I'm sure she's OK and is still involved as she will be prompting.

I've got the first rehearsal tonight, which will take place on the floor rather than the stage, since we haven't yet dismantled the set from the previous production. I've been blocking the moves out in anticipation - I've used the model of our stage that Keith made, and the little fimo people, moving them into position as I plot all the moves out and write in the script.

Directing a play allows me to use another side of my creativity, and it can be very rewarding when you see the play develop exactly as you imagined it to in your mind's eye.

This is a layout of the set as I'd like it to be built.

Two of the model figures on the model set.

My notes on the moves - written in pencil ready for any changes!

I've nearly finished Act 1, must dash off to do it before we set off for the Youth session - leaving the house in half an hour!

Frost Free Finds - Etsy Treasury

I've just created another Treasury of items to have a look at on Etsy, hopefully one that will make you feel warmer in this frosty weather!

You can view it in detail on my page over at Arty Aitch on Etsy, which opens in a new window if you click on the link.

Here's a snapshot of the Treasury: