Frustration is the mother of invention...

As you can see, I'm not the English expert in my family! 
First I want to show you what I've recently made. I've been working on something that's taken a lot of time, but that has to remain undercover for now. I've made a wonderful discovery: my spice jars are the perfect size to cover in clay, they are large enough to get lots of designs on, but not too large that you start to lose the will to live before finishing it. I use a lot of spices, so have quite a few little jars - happy days - I decided to cover mine in mushrooms.
​
So, why frustrated? Last week I had a back operation, been needing it for the past year and it was postponed due to covid, so it's now finally done. 
Great, fantastic, really pleased about it............but I can't do anything!!! For those who know me will realise that I'm not a patient, calm, relaxed person at the best of times, and having to do nothing active all day is, shall we say, challenging. However, I'm an Occupational Therapist, and believe that if you want to do something you have to adapt certain things (in my case my expectations probably!) in order to make it more achievable.
So, realistically I can do very little claying. My sitting tolerance is 5 minutes, then I have to lie down or sit reclined. That's okay, it's not the end of the world; my lovely friend Lesley has taught me to be grateful for what I have, and I have a lot, just not clay at the moment.
So, back to adaptation. I have another friend (believe it or not, for a perfectionist, intolerant, obsessive, I have the most amazing friends) called Aoife. She's someone I strive to be more like, she's had a lot of operations (not striving for that part!) and always remains optimistic and cheerful, and is a talented clayer to boot. Anyway, I'm rambling, she suggested I put my pasta machine with the motor somewhere where I can use it standing. This means that I can now sit for 5 minutes at the clay table, then stand for about 2 minutes using the pasta machine. Rome isn't exactly going to built this way, but it's a start.
But there's more to claying than actually working the clay. For me, designing things is a part that I love, so I've been busy in my recliner chair thinking about a project I can work towards, one that will need a bit of planning.  A gecko - just what our house needs,  nice large gecko covered in polymer clay canes on the wall.
I'm totally inspired by a polymer clay artist called Jon Stewart Anderson. These are a couple of his sculptures.

His canework is incredible, like lots of little masterpieces all put together to make a sculpture. I've had a bit of time to really look at his work recently, and it was Jon's work that inspired me to plan my Gecko. However, I didn't want to copy any of his canes, so have spent literally hours on Pinterest looking for inspiration for canes, especially decorated tiles, Aztec designs, patchwork and doodle art. Jon gets a lot of inspiration for his canes from architectural ornamentation and suggested that I look at the Carson Pirrie Scott building in Chicago. 
This building is INCREDIBLE! These are a couple of photos that show the intricate architecture.

I decided to make an A4 size page into squares, and fill them all with cane ideas, and a few vaneers. I've done 70, and have decided to attempt to try and make them all. I do like a project!
The top picture is of all 70, and the picture underneath are some that were inspired by the Carson Pirrie Scott building.

So, after designing all these canes, I need a colour palette, and some clay blends.
Friend number three in this blog is Donna Baratta; she's a friend I met in France at a clay workshop run by Doreen Gaye Kassell, and someone who distance is no barrier to friendship. Two years ago she visited me for a week, and last year I visited her. This year understandably we haven't seen each other, but still chat a lot via messenger. When she visited we decided to make a colour palette each of 7 colours, and use them to make canes with over the week. 7 may be my lucky number, but we got just a little over zealous in our colour making! I don't know how many we ended up with, it was considerable, and the collection keeps growing. These little recipes of colour blends are now in little discs in coin collector plastic sheets, and I spent a very happy hour or two picking out all the colours I most liked from some wall tiles on my Pinterest board. Being somewhat colour blind I'm never sure what goes with what, but Iain looked at them and said they were all fine, all very autumnal, and I realised that those are the colours I'm most drawn to. Here they are:

Next job is to get the clay together and make the blends. Ah, that involves getting up, so what you can see in the next photograph is a whole day of clay activity for me!!!!

On the back of each disc is the colour recipe, and I always make it into 8ths. I originally used fractions, but it started getting difficult when the recipe had 32ths, 16ths and quarters all in the same blend. So when making up the blend, roll the clay out on the thickest setting of the pasta machine, and use a cutter (size depends on how much of the blend you want), and cut out the numbers of circles in the recipe. Below is the recipe for reed.

I also have a table of all the colours and their recipes incase I lose the disc or can't read what's on teh back.
Getting back to the Occupational Therapy part, I'm always trying to stress the importance of not taking on everything yourself, delegating tasks where possible, and not feeling a failure if you can't save the world all by yourself. So, practicing what I preach, friend number 4, Linda, is kindly coming round to roll the clay flat in the pasta machine, give to me to cut out the circles from my lady a leisure recliner, then blend it for me; all ready for my 5 minute windows of happy claying.
I'm so lucky with my friends!

Donna Baratta (American friend) has just made a website. Donna's work is wonderful, when I sat next to her at the France workshop, I was amazed by the precision and care that she took with everything. Whereas I'm all polymer clay, Donna likes to combine bead embroidery and hand-made silk with the polymer clay to make exquisite wearable jewelry. Have a look on her website on http://www.donnabarattadesigns.art. This necklace is one of my personal favourites. 

I'll keep you posted on my progress of 'operation-gecko'. This post-operative recovery period has really made me appreciate what good health I usually have, and think about all the people who struggle with conditions that don't get better over time, yet still carry on, living their lives and producing wonderful art.

I'm now off to make an order with Penny Vingoe at Clayaround, I seem to have depleted my clay stock a little over this gecko!!

---