Hey, have you read The Mousehunter books by top author and illustrator Alex Milway? If not, go and read them right now. I can wait.

Finished? Good, let’s move on.

So a few months ago I said I’d help Alex make a few mice for his Extraordinary Mouse Roadshow. Predictably, I only managed to make one mouse, but I’m pretty pleased with it.



He is a Methuselah Mouse, the oldest mouse known to mouse collectors, and this is the (slightly tedious) story of his making. You can click each picture for a bigger version on Flickr. If you literally have nothing better to do, or are unhealthily interested in papier mâché.



I didn’t want to buy new materials to make Methuselah Mouse; I wanted everything about him to be a bit old and musty. Also, I am cheap. So I dug some old bits of wire out of my craft stash and built a mouse skeleton using some x-ray images I found online as reference. Yes, I am now a person who has Googled ‘mouse x-ray skeleton bones’, and that’s something I’ll have to learn to live with.

Alex’s mice have longish claws and snouts, so I exaggerated these bits in my model. Once I was happy with the wire skeleton, I wrapped his limbs and ribs with layers of newsprint and masking tape to flesh him out a bit.



Poor mousey was wobbly as hell during this stage, and I kept returning from work to find him faceplanted on the carpet. I had to get a layer of papier mâché on him quick-smart! The best thing to use for papier mâché is wallpaper paste, but I was too lazy to go to Homebase, so I used a 50/50 mix of water and PVA glue. Little squares of newsprint were soaked in the glue and slowly built up over the hips, legs and ribs.



Ears! The only way to describe this stage is ‘form paper into ears’, which isn’t terribly useful.



Er, then I forgot to take any pictures of him for a while. In order, I found some beady eyes and pressed them on to the paper face, then he got a coating of PVA mixed with plaster, which looked all lumpy and mad. I could’ve sanded him, but I quite liked the rough-and-ready look.



Then he got a covering of wispy wool tops. Cute, right? Around this time, Chris and I developed a kind of obsession with the mouse and kept narrating the action using a high-pitched mouse voice eg. “Eek eek! I am all fluffy now! Look at my ears! I like cheese!” etc. We are easily entertained.



Lastly, I painted his paws and nose with acrylic paint. I left the ends of his wire ribs sticking out, for an extra-ancient effect, so they got a coating of white paint for good measure.



And he made his perilous journey to Penge through the mail. What a hero!

Look out for this Methuselah Mouse in a bookstore near you!

Haven’t been drawing or sewing at all lately, although I’m not sure why as I have bags of time now, more than I did when I was cranking out enormous embroideries and slippers and puppets. Decided to make an effort by keeping a nice sketchbook and some super-fancy pencils next to my bed, and have drawn some vaguely pleasing if wildly out-of-character things just before sleeping – robots, monsters, houses on stilts and a person with a balloon, so far.

It’s interesting to draw out of my head though, something that at art school is only slightly less frowned upon than weeing on the studio floor. Actually, someone at my art school did wee on the studio floor, only much worse, and submitted it for marking. Good times.

September is proving a very slow blog-month, with nothing much to report on either the home or work front. Still, that's never stopped me from clogging up ye olde internets with a few hundred words, eh?

At work I discovered that what was considered a walk-in art cupboard was in actuality a fully functional and totally bitchin' ceramics studio, and thus have spent the week clearing out bags and bags of spider-covered debris. Hey, are those new earrings? No, they are spiders. You should really have that mole looked at! It is a spider. Etc.

In home news, I have decided to channel the bird madness into an amazing Christmas Gift Interactive Art Happening. I am painting a flock of birds and then sending each bird to a new home in the form of a Christmas present. Migrating birds through the postal system! This means that I spend a lot of time like this at the dining table, which looks romantic but is actually very bad for the posture.

Hi! Here is a picture of Phil completing his task with a work of videographic genius that, as an added bonus, features my brother doing unspeakable things to a chicken.


The boy is very cross with me for posting such tiny pictures that you can't read all the words, so I hereby promise I shall reactivate my Flickr account in order that big pictures can be viewed and 'enjoyed' by all.

In other news, I have started adding some stuff to the Tutorials section of this very website. Why not go there now and laugh at my oddly twisted vowels?

Five hundred squids! Note to self: make more use of binmen and the NHS.

In other news, those of you who are either ex-art schoolers or in the midst of various degrees might enjoy this poster project in which graphic design students in their final year designed advice posters for new first years. Nice.

Okay, something mad has happened to my fonts. I'll take that as a sign to stop typing and do the dishes.

I've emerged from my three-month creative funk and begun doing some artwork again. I've been making paper and wire birds that I thought were lifesized until the boy informed me that they were laughably huge. Every time they are moved around the flat, from table to airing cupboard and back, I say 'cheep cheep cheep' in the manner of an excitable starling. Curiously, the boy has not yet bludgeoned me to death with a pan.

I've also begun experimental embroidered illustrations for a mini-story that I browbeat Cope into writing for this specific purpose. I have only spent two nights on this so far and already I can feel the telltale spasms of crippling RSI and am squinting like a mole in the moonlight. Hooray stereotypical artistic suffering!

I suppose I should really add some photographs of these thrilling masterpieces-in-progress, but frankly my real reason for posting was simply to plug this hilarious website that the boy and I have been laughing ourselves sick over all week. Warning: the more you scroll, the more ludicrous it gets.

In other news: Le weekend!

No news today, but I'm feeling a certain pressure to post since the boy's paean, so here is a photo of a drawing of a lady. Please note that I was too lazy to scan in my sketchbook properly even though I am actually SITTING NEXT TO a scanner. My sloth knows no bounds.

Room temperature update: hot enough to roast a suckling pig.

Took some students to see the Antony Gormley exhibition at the Hayward Gallery today. I wasn't expecting much, to be honest, but it was genuinely spectacular. Our kids spent much of their time groping around in the Blind Light installation, staggering out from time to time, looking like they'd been in a tropical rainforest. The installation itself comprises a large glass room filled with thick white fog. From the outside, you can see creepy silhouettes appearing and disappearing, moving in slow motion as if they're underwater. Of course I went in! I'd have been a muppet not to.

Inside was literally thrilling. Once the door closes there is total whiteout, so you can barely see your own outstretched hand. Not wanting to look a ninny, I began to creep forward, quickly becoming utterly disorientated. Some people were in pairs, holding hands, but I think it's better to go in alone. The sensation of being in an infinite white void, surrounded by garbled conversations, starting to soak through with condensation and vague panic was frickin' amazing. I heard one of the kids call out '...is this what heaven is like?' I replied that I thought it was more like a coma.

After that, there were amazing wire sculptures and more interactive installations and finally we ran out onto the viewing platforms to see all 31 of the Event Horizon blokes, staring us down from all over the place.

Sadly we weren't allowed to take pictures in the exhibition, so here is a crappy cameraphone snap of my souvenir Blind Light Cloud Dome:



Antony, I salute you. You crazy rich sculptor man.

Here is a cameraphone photo of a drawing of a Barnacle Goose. This goose has been through four levels of interpretation, if you include my eyeball. Imagine the Xerox-like levels of degradation! The boy would be able to make this look all amazing and get rid of the golden glare from the lamp using his amazing Photoshop skillz, but frankly I can't be bothered monkeying around with the 'Adjust Levels' buttons. I'm a busy woman.

In other interfering-with-fowl news, check out this chicken I roasted:

There's a lemon up its arse and everything! And thyme! I am disproportionately pleased with my ability to put a raw chicken in an oven for 90 minutes. I'm not sure this bodes well for the rest of my adult life.

Thing 1: Beauty
Today I got ludicrously choked up whilst talking about a photograph I had taken of a sarcophagus. Because it was so very, very beautiful. And literally ancient. Thankfully my students are used to this sort of thing and continue to take notes as I dissolve into artistic raptures over painted stone.

Thing 2: Sibling Rivalry
South London shout-out to my brother who is now officially a boffin. He also now rivals me in terms of letters-after-name, although I will have to do a character-count to determine the winner of the Best Offspring Award for certain. I think this should be awarded by my mother in the form of a giant cauldron of tomatoey mince with 'put the heating on' iced on top in Smash.

Thing 3: Women who Love Smocks Too Much
I want to hand wash my smock, right? But I also want to have a long, relaxing bath. Oh, what to do? Yes, I am going to share a bath with my smock. Shut up, I'm not all that dirty.

Tired, tired, tired. I'm now leaving the house in the dark and coming home in the dark, which makes me feel like some sort of hero even though my hours haven't changed at all.

On Monday I took 25 students into London to see a day of lectures by amazing artists including Eileen Cooper and my beloved Grayson. The artists were fantastic, talking about their experiences and answering some very odd questions. Textiles genius Rosalind Wyatt did a live calligraphy demonstration and then spent ages signing students' names onto their sketchbooks using her special Indian ink. Grayson Perry deftly tackled teenage heckles about his transvestism with humour and good grace. The man is a potting god.

I have now officially retired from the blessed 'User, which is pretty sad. Please ensure that you write to the magazine saying that I was the finest writer ever committed to print, and that you have now gouged your own eyes out as there is nothing left worth reading anymore.

The other bad news is that it's only WEDNESDAY.

Hey, why not make these very easy pocketbook slippers? I did this one on Saturday. I will get the boy to take a proper photo when I''ve done the pair, as it is surprisingly hard to photograph your own feet.

In other news: work, cold, London, the boy, blah blah etc.

I have been crocheting with this coloured scientific wire. Groovy, huh? I bought loads of scientific wire at The Bead Store in Soho. It comes in lots of funky colours including, improbably, fuchsia. I wonder if scientists ever actually use scientific wire these days?

The boy has been very patient in his admiration of my crocheted wire, even when I shove the spiky little bundles in front of his computer screen and exclaim 'LOOK WHAT I MADE' every 23 minutes. He takes each one in his fingers and proclaims its wonderment to all of South London. Perhaps he is on Lithium or something.

These green beaded rounds remind me of anemones. I think I'll make loads of them and turn them into a crazy anemone necklace. Hey, there's that woman! With the necklace! Do you think she's in some way 'special'?

That is all.

Whee! Slides at Tate Modern
Londoners! Why not check out this stunning interactive artwork by Carsten Holler this weekend? Not sure I'll work up the nerve to go on these as they are very five floors high and ruddy fast. Tempting, though ... maybe a stiff drink at the bar will steady my nerve.

Artworld's Most Influential Not Actually Artists
Disappointing and yet comfortingly predictable.

Turner Prize-Winning Transvestite Potter Unprepared for Fangirling
Oh yes. I am taking some 6th Formers to a lecture by Grayson Perry, The Sexiest Ceramicist Ever. Sadly (for Grayson), there is an opportunity to 'meet the artist' afterwards. Embarrassingly (for my students), I'm not sure I will be able to stop myself from screaming and clutching at his lovely leather jacket. Oh Grayson. You and your angsty pots.

Have a lovely weekend, everyone. Please think of me naked tomorrow morning when you are snuggled up in bed. x