Scribbles from the (With)Drawing Room 09

The emerging synthesis of wood and weave and colour.

May 29, 2024

Scribbles from the (With)Drawing Room is a fortnightly(ish) post sharing the things I make – the creative outbursts of a life spent largely at rest – whenever I’m able. I recently found out that drawing rooms (that’s British for additional, more private living rooms often attached to bedrooms) were originally referred to as withdrawing rooms. In a sense, the whole flat has become my withdrawing room since I fell ill: a bubble, a chrysalis, the surroundings my weary bod does most of its rest and repair in. But it can get kinda lonely, the long slow process of weathering chronic illness, so I thought I’d start sharing the things I do to keep my hands busy, my heart full, and my hope afloat.

Lovelies:

I was unexpectedly quiet last week because A Lot happened in A Little amount of time, and all my energies were tied up in the Dance of the Day-to-Day*. All is well now, more or less, but a week of Big Feelings and Bigger Uncertainties takes its toll on any bod (especially one with a dodgy spark plug and unreliable fuel lines).

*I am envisioning said dance as a complicated sort of ensemble piece involving a whole cast of people, projects and objects, all interlinked and all more-or-less essential to daily functioning. Writing (and reflection, and recharging, and other re/creative pursuits) can only really happen in the pauses between numbers – on forays to the drinks table for snacks and lemonade – when one is present and awake but not, for the moment, occupied with complex dance steps / plate-spinning / sword-juggling. As choregraphers-in-chief, we generally make sure the band takes proper breaks between songs, and mixes up the music so we can all get some rest. But sometimes Life slips the musicians some caffeine pills, and it’s all we can do to keep up with the back-to-back salsas and Highland flings.

</convoluted metaphor>

So, making and writing have been a little thin on the ground since I last posted. But there is one project I would love to share, which came about last week for the simple reason that Maggie (who I was housesitting for) has More Floor than I do.

Some people, on temporarily attaining More Floor, like to fill it with More People. Others prefer to leave it empty and enjoy More Room. I have this terrible habit of filling it with big projects I wouldn’t otherwise have the space to do and thereby creating Less Room for Less People (including those who may have been quite looking forward to More Room themselves)*.

*shoutout here to my partner, who is exceptionally accommodating of Art Sprawl.

More Floor felt like the perfect opportunity to do two things I’ve been wanting to do for ages: make a big tablecloth, and try block printing fabric.

an expanse of floral-patterned fabric in browns, blues and reds. Some of the fabric has been overlaid with an additional print of seaweed patterns in white. The printing has been confined to two, diagonally opposite quadrants of the fabric, creating a slight chequerboard effect.

Things I learned:

Block printing is a wonderland of sensory delights! The sticky ink making light ripping sounds under every pass of the roller. The bubbled, scale-like textures in the ink you’ve rolled. The way the print pattern appears in negative on the roller after you’ve inked the block. The emerging synthesis of wood and weave and colour.

photo from the printing process: a rubber roller, covered in white paint, rests on a sheet of cardboard, which is also covered in white paint. the cardboard rests on bits of overlapping newspaper – floor protection. The roller has just been used to ink the woodblock, so there are filigree patterns of the rubber below showing through the wet paint.

It’s also super physical. I was glad the ink was so slow-drying (24-36 hrs) because it allowed me the rest breaks I needed to get it all done in a day (I was tickled to discover, partway through, that it was easier to simply stand on the printing block than pressing down onto it with my hands). Even so, it took me several days to recover afterwards. Next time I’ll break it into smaller chunks of work across a week.
I did NOT make life easy for myself with that fabric choice (heavy linen blend)! Something lightweight with a tighter weave might have been more forgiving of my total lack of experience – but since I was going for more of a shimmery veil effect with the printing, rather than bold feature, I tried to embrace the inconsistencies.

close-up of floral-patterned fabric in browns, reds and blues, with a block-printed seaweed pattern running over it in white ink.

I might not have the strength just yet to carve a wooden printing block myself (the one I used is a handsome old retiree from an Indian textile factory) but I’m really excited about making blocks from rubber/lino instead and producing small runs of my own hand-printed fabrics. Watch this space…

New puzzle below! This might be the last Smoked Sprat in its current form – it’ll be getting a name change and a new look over the coming weeks – but definitely not the last of its kind. I hope they’re as fun to do as they are to write!

Until next time,

Marion

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These 16 words can be arranged into four themed groups of four words each. Find the four groups and figure out the themes, but watch out for the smoked sprats* – some words will happily sit in multiple categories! Answers in next week’s post.

*I wanted to call this puzzle ‘Red Herring’ but (of course) there’s already an app for that… so instead I’m calling it SMOKED SPRAT, which is – loosely – synonymous. Hence all the fish.