Have materials will craft....

Well, our shipment arrived 3 weeks ago. The first week it was here, was spent unpacking as much as possible and trying to find homes for everything. The second week our son turned up from Uni, joined by our daughter and her 1 year old. So as you can imagine, not a lot of time for my textiles.

The daughter & granddaughter left on Monday but the son is with us until he goes back to Uni in September. It's ok tho' - there is very little chance of him disturbing my studies, he doesn't get up until the afternoon.

I have taken over the conservatory, there are crafting and study materials everywhere. It has lots of bright natural light and gives me the privacy I need.

I realised something as I was unpacking my degree work so far and that is that I hadn't really been putting in the right kind of effort. I feel quite disappointed with what I've achieved so far. I can however, understand how that has happened. Being in the Middle East was quite tricky when it came to getting hold of stuff. Due to some new rules and regulations any goods being delivered into Qatar became subject to a larger duty fee. So back in September when I tried to order some of the books needed for A Creative Approach, I faced delivery fees of nearly 120 GBP for books that didn't even amount to that sum. I couldn't justify that expense and so had been trying to work as best I could from the very few textiles books available on Ibooks or the Kindle app. It didn't exactly fire the creative juices.

It was the same with materials as well although the fabric souqs were very cheap and great for stocking up, the arts supplies were pretty generic and in some cases very expensive. It isn't a very inspiring place either. They have some fabulous buildings including the Museum of Islamic Art and Katara - the Cultural Village but in that heat and constant sunshine, the last thing that you feel capable of doing is wandering around or sitting still for long enough to sketch.

But here we are in Aberdeenshire in Scotland. Books are delivered, new materials added to the collection and I am surrounded by more inspiration than I thought possible. The greenery, the landscapes, the sheer size of the geography here are mindblowing after so long in a land of sand.

I jumped back into it yesterday and feel quite proud of what I've produced so far in the 'Looking for shapes and drawing' section. Will be posting those photos with some thoughts in the next day or so.