dotty moment

A moment of joy when placing those dotty patterns. wonkier the better. 

Talking of which, I am really pleased to know the solo exhibition of Yayoki Kusama is coming to Tate Mordern next year.  Already excited. xm

now and then

This is me doodling all over the house wall when I was seven. The year my parents’ old bungalow was due to be demolished and rebuilt so I was allowed to doodle whatever and wherever I liked! It was a pure joy!  

This is me doodling the college wall last week, thirty odd years on. Still fun as ever! (more so as you get older??) Preparing the display for the end of year show. (click here to view the last year's one) It’s that time of the year already. Where did the year go?? xm 

SOMERSET LOVE 4/4: treasure hunt

Finding your own precious is a part of joy when visiting a new place. I look around everywhere if time allowed, local independent shops, charity shops, CAR BOOT SALE (oh yes!), streets and skips... (You know how much I love treasure hunt form this post.) Here are some gorgeous finds from Somerset. 

Old oil lamps were from school car boot sale right front of where we stayed in Farmborough. Only six cars were there with families with kids (sweet :-), nevertheless I was lucky to buy  them for just 50p! Cannot beat that! I love old jelly moulds (one of my collections :-) and a kind of nostalgic china cup & a miss matching saucer. Again all from the car boot bargain. Beautiful lines from an antique shop in Wells. Glass from a small vintage shop in Shepton Mallet. Beautiful blue letter press card from the Holburne museum. Salt glazed jug by the local artist in Radstock. All now started to settle here and there in our house. I would love to know how you would transfer into your home? Any idea and inspiration welcome! 

I love lines full stop. Simple stitches are my favourite. They are table centers and I am thinking of placing my collection of old bottle glasses with this years sweet-peas. 

Letter press is a new interest for me. Would love to lean how to do it. Does anyone do letter press? 

Currently jelly mould are holding herbs on the kitchen window sills. My aim is to make lamp shades out of them in the future. 

When I sew those glass and china cup, I already had this images in my head. I am so glad I found them. 

Remember Peter Blake’s collage that I mentioned here? Thought I would make my own collage of ‘somerset love’. This is fun and I want to do more often. 

from left top, clockwise; box label from Claire’s studio, flower petal found in Bishop’s garden (Wells), pine corns near Royal crescent (Bath), tree barks and Letter press card at the Holburn Museum of Art (Bath), illustrated parcel tape from Claire’s studio. receipt from a vintage shop (Shepton Mallet), jelly mould (Farmborough), duck feather (Farmborough), old metal caps found in the street (Keynsham), white lined stone (Cheddar)

Hope you enjoyed viewing a wee bit of my somerset love. Thanks for visiting. xm

p.s. where did May go???  

SOMERSET LOVE 3/4: time to doodle

some random miniature doodling from Somerset.

Next post is Somerset treasure hunt! Have a nice weekend all. xm

SOMERSET LOVE 2/4: meet arts and artists

Meeting artists you admire is such a exciting moment, isn’t it? It is wonderful opportunity to seek their insights and ask questions you always wondered. Visiting them in their studio would be a bonus, not just you may see the actual work process but also peek through their inspiration and all sort of fabulous stuff! 

beautifully 'weather effected' work by Claire

We are so lucky to have been able to visit Claire Loder in her studio, and it was a dream come true! Claire is an artist who makes unique ceramic faces and heads, and her work is widely recognised throughout Britain and beyond. I can still remember the excitement that I first met her at Origin last year, shortly after seeing her fascinating work in ceramic magazine. When she responded to my email, I was thrilled! 

Claire kindly shared many of her thoughts and interests, and we had a rather long chat all morning! She was also encouraging on my study and work :-) Thank you so so much Claire for giving us such a fab time! We brought one more head called ‘sitting tenant’ back home from her studio, now happily nesting in our room. Do visit her website and find ‘them’ in her mysterious mirror world. 

Thank you so so much Claire!

our new face 'sitting tenant'

We are also lucky to have visited Bath on this occasion, just in time for the current exhibition of Peter Blake at the Holburne Museum, which was also just opened after a three-year refurbishment. He is well known with Beatles’ jacket design; Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, but in this exhibition there were more of his personal collections over the years. He assembled everything together in to collages and displayed in collection boxes, from tiny beach combing with his daughter to a plastic elephant that you can get like a freebee. A total treasure hunt, and I LOVED it. 

a museum for myself by Peter Blake

The Holburne Museum is a mixture of old and new, its building itself and display too. (Collections of ceramics were hung from the ceiling, which I loved.) There was a sketch exhibition by Karen Wallis, which showing the images of during the construction in drawings. (You can peek a bit here.) Her sketches were stunning, I wish I could draw like her... Nevertheless I did do some doodling here and there in Somerset, which I will show you on the next post. Be there if you can dare. xm

SOMERSET LOVE 1/4: inspirational wander

As I mentioned before, I will be sharing my view of Somerset in next four posts. Today, I would like to share a few places that we visited during our stay. Hope you can enjoy. (you can click to view lager images)

On day one, we went to Cheddar gorge, this massive rocky hill, much due to my husbands request. It was a beautiful sunny day and many people were having picnics. We hiked right up to the top of the gorge, walking through woodland. So refreshing.

view from the top of Cheddar gorge looking cheddar reservoir 

(can you see the car on the road? My legs went to jelly)

finding 'heart' in woodland walk

bluebells and ferns. I’m thinking of next screen print or transfer...

Next day, we visited Bath, one of the most famous cities in Somerset. The sandy colour of Bath stone walls were really soothing to my eyes, whilst we are used to grayish Yorkshire stones. You can find lovely features everywhere in Bath, like these windows and balconies. I was also attracted to lines of chimneys on those terraced houses. Made me want to doodle (which will be coming soon!). 

Roman Bath is probably the most popular place to visit in general so I won’t write too much here, but it was fascinating to go back so deep into the history. I was very impressed with the underfloor heating system throughout the whole area, which was created with piles of terracotta tiles. I really wanted to have a bath in the end. What was the point of looking at them without actually enjoying them? Or is this me being Japanese? I do miss the public hot bath! Counting down to the next trip to Japan.

Somerset has many classic gardens that are open to the public. We went to Kilver Court Gardens in a village called Shepton Mallet. With a stunning backdrop by 19th century viaduct, you can enjoy the traditional English rose court-yard and massive rockery garden, where water cascades into the lakes and millpond. I am not much into rockery garden to be honest, but this scale (3.5 acre) definitely is worth viewing. I loved the ‘rose’ patterns created by those alpine plants, too. If you are garden lovers, you cannot miss it. 

We stayed at a lovely guest house called ‘school cottages’ in Farmborough, about 7 miles from Bath. They have beautiful garden and water feature that I totally enjoyed walking around, watching little ducklings following their mum (so cute!). Breakfast with fresh egg laid from chickens in thier garden, hosted by Tim the lovely owner. Well recommended. 

'children must be supervised' - well followed

Next post, I would like to share my dream visit to the artist studio. Watch this space! xm

SOMERSET LOVE: coming soon!

We just got back from Somerset for our anniversary-two-night-getaway. It’s been ages since we had a short break together. (never mind the long holiday?!) Wandered around and relaxed with no plans. Just what we needed. Plus, visiting a new place is always great to find inspirations. Somerset certainly did to me! In next four posts, I’m going to share a bit of my SOMERSET LOVE (similar to the previous travel post ‘LONDON LOVE’). Hope you enjoy Sunny South England with me. xm

HELP JAPAN donation complete & my thoughts will continue

Finally (yes, finally!) the donation from HELP JAPAN 1000 BIRDS PROJECT and HELP JAPAN Handmade Art Sale has been forwarded to Japanese Red Cross via the Japanese Embassy. We have raised £4933.20 in total. The receipt from the Japanese Embassy is below.

What a fantastic result! Without everyone of you, the project would not have achieved this so thank you very much. I’m pleased that I could be a part of help toward their recovery. Of course, YOU are the biggest part! 

My husband has been ‘camera-videoing’ some of me making birds. I thought this can be a message video for people in Japan to express our thoughts, so I edited into a short documentary film (approx. 6 mins), which I would like to share with you. (This is an English edited version. The original Japanese version can be seen in my jp blog.) I hope our wish will reach those affected by the earthquake. 

Two months has passed since the earthquake, when the whole nation shared the sadness. Somewhat ironical to see the huge difference between those who are affected directly (and secondary) continuing hardship, and those who are back to normal. Even we say ‘thinking of them’, they may not yet be ready to move forward positively. That is why we must not forget what happened to them. That is why we must continue our thoughts. I would like to continue doing whatever I can do to support them. I would like to thank you all for helping me be strong. xm

b****y blogger or is this Friday 13th nightmare ???

I cannot believe the loss of my long awaited publication about the completion of 1000 birds project! As you may know by now, Blogger had a huge trouble worldwide today and has removed my post published on 12th May, INCLUDING all of your 22 kind comments! (I haven’t even read them all!!!) They say it will be restored and it seems to be happening to some people, but I am not one of them. Mine has still disappeared from the publication window, which they put back to an older version before the final post. I really do hope they will do the good job to return my precious post including your voices asap! (patience is a virtue, I know!)

This is what they said today........  (s i g h) xm

May 13, 2011

Blogger is back (NOT!)

What a frustrating day. We’re very sorry that you’ve been unable to publish to Blogger for the past 20.5 hours. We’re nearly back to normal — you can publish again, and in the coming hours posts and comments that were temporarily removed should be restored.  Thank you for your patience while we fix this situation.  We use Blogger for our own blogs, so we’ve also felt your pain.

Here’s what happened: during scheduled maintenance work Wednesday night, we experienced some data corruption that impacted Blogger’s behavior. Since then, bloggers and readers may have experienced a variety of anomalies including intermittent outages, disappearing posts, and arriving at unintended blogs or error pages. A small subset of Blogger users (we estimate 0.16%) may have encountered additional problems specific to their accounts. Yesterday we returned Blogger to a pre-maintenance state and placed the service in read-only mode while we worked on restoring all content: that’s why you haven’t been able to publish.  We rolled back to a version of Blogger as of Wednesday May 11th, so your posts since then were temporarily removed. Those are the posts that we’re in the progress of restoring.

Again, we are very sorry for the impact to our authors and readers.  We try hard to ensure Blogger is always available for you to share your thoughts and opinions with the world, and we’ll do our best to prevent this from happening again.

Posted by Eddie Kessler, Tech Lead/Manager, Blogger

NEW HOME WANTED for HELP JAPAN birds!!

This post is now information only. All birds happily found their new homes to fly next week. Thank you so much for your quick responce. (updated at 22:15)

Unfortunately, (or fortunately for some?) I had to decline some pending payments from on line orders for HELP JAPAN 1000 Birds earlier today as it passed the noticed deadline. Without completing this I cannot proceed my donation project forward. This cancelation made 4 birds available again. I have decided to look for two new homes for two pairs of birds. 

£7.00 for a pair of birds with extra P&P charge. 

If you would like to order, please email me your name and full postal address to makikohastings@gmail.com as soon as possible so that I can send you paypal invoice. Once you received the invoice, please complete the payment soon for the same reason as above. 

First comes first for two kind people. Hope someone can help this project to complete! Thank you so much xm

HELP JAPAN Handmade Art Sale - result

The fair on Saturday was fantastic turn out. Beautiful sunshine brought us lots of visitors. Many came after seeing the newspaper article, too. I met lots of wonderful visitors from the local areas and beyond, including those who shared the deep thoughts to Japan by having lived there before and studying their languages. 

The last batch of birds had gone within 2 hours. My original fear at the beginning of this project of not being able to sell them all had unexpectedly gone out of the windows. Many gave us encouraging feedback to the project and art sale, which was very supportive to myself and people in Japan. We also sold 106 pieces of my work in total. I am grateful to have received many positive feedback to my work. And must not forget, a big thank you to my husband running a wonderful children’s workshop making origami Easter Bunny! All in all we had such a wonderful day. Here are some images from the stall. 

Including kind donations, we raised £1188 from the stall (including bird sale on the day). This will be added to the sales from HELP JAPAN 1000 BIRDS PROJECT and will be sending to Japanese Red Cross via the Japanese Embassy. When I have done all of the process, I will inform you once again here to share the outcome. 


Thank you so much everyone for your support. xm

Missed out the bird? You may get a last chance!

Some birds still left at newly opened gallery & deli, The Pantry, in North Yorkshire. I am not sure if they could do oversea postal service, but if you like to contact them, please email: thepantrylockton@aol.com 

This is a polite and urgent reminder for those who placed on line order and pending the payment. Please do check your Email and complete the payment, so that the project can move forward and the donation into the action. Due to the unexpected situation of rapid 1000 birds sales, I’m afraid I have set a deadline as 30th April 18:00 (in UK time). I could only think this is fare. Hope you would understand. 

1000 hopes

me and my birds on today’s local newspaper.

see you tomorrow at the fair! xm

HELP JAPAN Handmade Art Sale

What are you up to on this Easter break? Why not visiting Knaresborough, our beautiful historic town in North Yorkshire? This coming Saturday 23rd April, there will be Knaresborough Easter Fayre. Why not have a look around the stalls at the market place, children’s entertainment at 11th century Castle, take a walk by the river, pop around our local deli and cafe and much more. 

At Knaresborough Easter Fayre, I will be holding a stall (only Saturday) to raise money for Japan Earthquake Appeal. I will be selling my ceramic work, brooches, prints, postcards, stationaries and many more and all proceeds will go to the appeal. There will also be the last stock of birds from HELP JAPAN 1000 BIRDS PROJECT, which is currently running worldwide from this blog. Everything on the stall are handmade. This will be the one off chance for you to get my work at the very special price and YOU will be helping Japan! 

Have got kids? Why not come and join the ‘Making Your Easter Bunny’ origami workshop, which will be held by my husband (the origami master!)? It’s going to be fun! This activity is free, but voluntary donations are welcome to ‘Easter Bunny Donation Box’ at the stall. Every little does help and can make a difference.


The direction to Knaresborough and more information about the fayre, please click here. 

Looking forward to seeing you there! xm

MUST NOT FORGET

One month has passed since Japan’s Earthquake. It is ironically amazing how quickly the news has disappeared from TV. Life goes on around me. As if there were nothing happened. Being a Japanese living in a foreign country has put me in a strange position that I have never felt. 

The truth is that Japan’s recovery has only just begun. They have a long way to go. Still tons of worries and uncertainties. Their future path is unclear. My parents say they still have shakes every hour. I hear someone I know who works for Tokyo Electric Power, has not been back home since. I hear those who evacuated 20km from Fukushima Power Plant were told that they would not be able to return home for at least a year. I hear it takes decade to clean the radioactivity. I hear about contaminated vegetables and water. I hear Red Cross has not been able to divert the donation for the use as there are too many affected areas. I hear there are not enough land to build temporary housings for people who have lost their homes. I hear lots of things. None of them seem to be enlightening the hope. 

April is supposed to be the month of new start in Japan. Children enter schools. New class mates. New uniform. Graduates start new work. It is supposed to be exciting time of year. But this year, it turned out to be a different story. Many have lost work and schools to go to. Lost friends and families to celebrate together. Many of those school children who survived from the Tsunami in Minami Sanriku (the town that was completely wiped off) for school being on higher ground, have lost their parents and homes at lower ground in front of their eyes. I cannot even begin to imagine how their life from now are going to be...

Yet, they are a humble nation. Fighting for the recovery. Trying to reach out to a tiny hope they can possibly have. 

Must not forget. What they are going through. 

Must not forget. Our continuous prayers. 

Must not forget. This is why I am doing what I am doing now. 

Here is NY times link that you could see in English. I feel the importance of not forgetting those images. I hope you would share the prayers for Japan from now on too. 

My current project HELP JAPAN 1000 BIRDS PROJECT is to encourage people in Japan. I could have not done it myself but with YOUR support I have managed to foresee the hope. Thank you so much for your contribution. Crazy busy two weeks have passed since it started. My birds are still an on going process (sorry for being slow but almost the last batch!) so I only sent out 380 birds. For that, we have raised £1550. Up until yesterday, I have received 713 birds orders in total! This is absolutely amazing! 1000 birds were supposed to be a long term goal, but it may not be? Thank you so so so much for your support. We are certainly cheering the nation. I will send the donation together with the proceeds from the forth-coming fair. I will keep you posted the details. 

By the way, this is SHIN SHIN 100th Post! I would like to say a big thank you for everyone who visited me here. Your feedback and suggestion to my blog are more than welcome! xm