P.S

I have been looking at the book 'Textiles Now' on reserve in the library and I loved it, on Pamela's recommendation I googled 'Basso and Brooke' and I thought I had died and gone to heaven !!! I am going to buy 'Textiles Now' for myself to dip in and out of at home, tomorrow I am going to go to the 'Knitting and Stitching ' show in the RDS hopefully to be inspired and to purchase materials.

week 6 the 'back-to-front man'

I have done some more pencil sketches of my 'fuchsias', the Uban flower, I dabbled with some ink drawings and oil pastels I have introduced sinnamay material to recreate a 3D petal shape, I had hoped to be a lot further on but I seem to lose direction on a regular basis. I woke up this morning at around three-thirty, again with another interesting analogy re: my 'project', [week 5 was childbirth],   this week, it's 'Halloween', of course. My son informed me the other night that he needed a halloween outfit for the following morning, he wanted to go to school dressed as the 'back-to-front-man', great I thought I don't need to make an outfit for a 'Bankrobber', note the 'bank' and 'robber' ! He set off for school with his uniform on the wrong way 'round and his school jacket zipped up the back and his school bag on his chest. By now you should be able to see the analogy. He did'nt win any prize for his costume  but he loved walking  around backwards all day long !!!  Some days I am walking around backwords, I'm telling myself it's early days and soon enough all will fall into place.  Next week I will have an awful lot more to report, I hope, ?! i.e in the meantime if I  don't walk into a pole whilst walking backwards. If you had asked me six weeks ago as to which I would find  more enjoyable , writing a 'blog' or drawing it, I  surely  would have opted for drawing it, what a difference a few weeks make ??!!

WEEK 5

Thinking about my experience of college so far, is, I think, somewhat akin to 'the birth of your first child'....Returning to college as a mature student is another life-changing event, you are excited and anxious a long time before the actual 'event', apprehensive because all these years later you just don't know what to expect, will I manage ok, is it too much to take on etc etc ? And then....the big day arrives, and you're like a cork bobbing on the water, running  up down sideways and diagonally ! maybe you have'nt done enough homework preparing for this 'life-changing event'.... you are completely traumatised and then they hand you the baby... [project]  ?!! and some cross, maybe overworked nurse .... tells you to 'get on with it' ! [my personal experience] I can only compare it to arriving to your longed -for destination,  then being spun around a couple dozen times, and when you stop spinning you just want to throw up ! You don't of course realise  there and then  that the next time it will be easier and if a nurse shouts at you to 'just get on with it'....you bloody well shout back !....yeah right.  Re: my 'project,'  it is coming along nicely, slowly putting on weight, bit of colic here and there and a few sleepless nights, in time it will grow and become stronger and I will re-teach myself to relax and just enjoy it.

urban environment

My primary source of research for 'maps' has been for me one of many books,  called 'You Are Here', by Katherine Harman, this has really tied in with my original concept of  'belonging' and 'Identity', and coincidentally this book is  described as a 'series of personal geographies'. I am looking  at lots of maps,  [I would'nt have done so  previously, and ironically I have absolutely no sense of direction ! so this has evolved as a very personal journey]  I now see that they are actually beautiful  other than what I would only have ever thought of them as a purely  functional  source of geographical  information,  contemporary and historically. I needed my theme of ' maps'  to become more focussed and less abstract so my next step was to map out my journey home using photography etc to do so. I looked at many books to inspire me and the most recent of these is 'Sources Of inspiration' by the Ceramisist Carolyn Genders. I particularly liked the work of Laurence McGowan and his decorative motifs that are often reflective of nature. He  uses ' the  symbol of a flower - familiar but infinitely more personal ',  and this concept really appeals to me. I am now following through my project with reference to, or in  deference of,  nature in all it's glory  and I am using flowers fruit and foliage from my immediate ' suburban environment'  to inspire me.

urban environment

From the given criteria I chose the word 'maps' because I have been questioning the importance of 'belonging' and 'identity' in relation to one's environment. I am literally drawing a map between home and college, and I am literally re-looking at this journey.