Something new

On Friday 4 June 2010 me, my dad, my mum and my little boy trundled to Skipton in two cars to pick up a five foot fibreglass sheep that I had been commissioned to paint for Flock to Skipton. Only a few weeks earlier I had resigned from my job to go back to my roots as a designer maker so winning this first commission was really important to me and I was very excited (as was everyone else in the family). It wasn't until I heard confirmation that my design had been selected that I started to wonder where exactly a fibreglass sheep was going to go, I had also neglected to find out what size the sheep was so the five foot dimensions came as a little bit of a shock! After a frantic week with my dad clearing out the garage (thank you dad) 'Woolly' finally had a home and I was ready to collect him. This brings us up to the point where the two cars were travelling across the Lancashire border to Yorkshire......Once at Skipton Woolly was loaded into the car and was safely transported back to his new home, how happy he looked.

Now the fun has really started! Woolly is in the middle of as technicolour makeover inspired by the Austrian artist Hundertwasser. Whilst getting cramp kneeling down to paint woolly's feet the very random thought about what sheep count to get to sleep kept popping into my head. I wondered if we count them to doze off, what do they think about? Then I read a fact on a sheeppoopaper bookmark, (these are made by a company in Wales and I had got one as a present when I won the commission) that sheep only sleep for 8 minutes a day - they probably don't have time to think about anything at all in that time!

The other random thing that I started to notice while I was merrily painting away was that Fern Cotton on Radio 1 seems to play the same set of music everyday (well the two days that I listened anyway). I like Fern but if this is the case I have to say I'm disappointed, isn't it a bit lazy to play the same music in the same order if you have such a big archive at your finger tips? Next time I'm in the garage, I mean studio, I'm going to keep an ear of this and see whether my worries are well founded.

My conclusion from all this is that for the first time in years my brain seems to be managing to think about other things than what my next job is.......not bad for the first week in the shed!