How the time sails by, full of new places, people and ideas - but perhaps not quite enough sleep at present ... roll on Christmas!
A fellow student, Carmen, trying out a disabled buggy in Hyde Park
Last week, the Methods Lab hosted by the Helen Hamlyn Centre was a brilliant chance to work with other students and a 'creative partner' - a young man with MS - on an exercise to consider how to integrate the needs of different people in sustainable design. Not rocket science, but realised how much I miss working in a team. Would like to find ways to do more of that soon.
Degeneration 2, photographed by Dominic Tschudin
I also spent many hot hours trying to master the lampworking torch without anything to show for it at all, had an explosive but equally unproductive session in the hot shop with James (the one piece that made it into the Lear was cracked when it came out), a day with the RCA photographer Dominic Tschudin to get some better shots of my work, was filmed for the Work in Progress show and had a first stab at printing with finely-ground glass with the help of Steve Brown, who devised the process.
printing with ground glass
I also organised a series of very constructive meetings as Student Rep trying to avert a minor revolution - it seems to have worked, for now at least. We were even served coffee in the very plush Senior Common Room this afternoon!
students in the SCR
There were also trips to the Post Office with paperwork for the final stages of the house sale in Bristol, which seems to be going through...
And I was lucky enough to spend a memorable, windy 24 hours at the Herring Festival in Clovelly in Devon. We camped in Avel Dro tucked deep into the harbour, sitting on the quayside drinking tea in our waterproofs for a couple of hours at dead of night wondering if the crashing waves of the rising tide would drag her across the stony beach. The seas subsided so we put the tent back up and went back to sleep!
Avel Dro in Clovelly harbour
Two tutorials in the morning, then off to Bristol to begin to pack up the house and prepare the lecture for the Ophthalmic Imaging Association on Saturday.
Two men and a van will show up next Wednesday to take me, the washing machine and rather too many boxes of books, sketchbooks and tools (as well as the lavendar bushes and fig tree, gifts from Mum and Mim) over to Frome, where my new address will be 11 High Street. Frome BA11 1ER.
Will collect the last things from Farnham on Friday and be, at last, all together in one place in one piece again- well, sort of!
