Katherine Hall

Stock’s away! Ahem. I could probably think of many more stock-related puns, but I think I’ll stop now. And I won’t ask Alex or we’ll be here all week.

I like making stock. I’m not talking about stock photography, I can’t be bothered with that. I like making liquid stock from bones. I wasn’t going to mention cooking very much here, but several people have remarked on my stock-making habit, so perhaps it’s worth covering.

We have roast chicken occasionally, and when we do, I always use the stripped carcass to make stock. It’s really simple to do and massively tasty in risotto, amongst other things. Putting chicken remains in a big pot with some onion, celery, other veg and herbs and boiling it for as long as you can stand (1-2 hours) is rather satisfying. It makes our house smell of nothing but chicken for several hours, but the results are wonderful. I usually get 8 plastic tubs of stock to put in the freezer. I can only make more when the last lot is used up, we don’t have room otherwise.

So there you have it, stock. It doesn’t take much work and goes a long way. Even the remains look quite tasty:

The foxes love ripping our bin bags apart on Thursdays to get at this stuff. You don’t have to. Come round for risotto some time instead. Toodle pip.

You may remember Giles from a few months’ ago. He’s the light turquoise monster that I made.

There was such as response to Giles’ arrival, that I was asked (maybe begged) to make one for Christine. So I drew a sketch, which was approved, and I set about it. Well, time passed, as it must with the birth of any new arrival. But fairly soon there was another visitor in our house, and just in time for Christmas.

This is Giles and his new buddy messing around by our Christmas tree.

The time had to come when the new white monster was adopted. Christine came and took it home, but not before naming him Ben and straightening his tie. I mean, he couldn’t go to work dressed like that!

So bye, Ben, it was fun making you. Giles misses you, send a postcard or something.

Housekeeping posts can be a bit dull, so I’ll keep this brief.

I re-designed this website. If you come here to read this, you’ll know. (It’s been done for a while, to be honest, I had a weird January.) I’m going to use my website at kathall.co.uk to bring together all my stuff – the photography, craft, knitting and scrapbook. So, you RSS subscribers, come and look and see the prettiness!

(Phew, that’s broken the typing block. I’ll write some, ya know, proper posts now. As Alex keeps telling me, just START. He can be annoying. But right. Which makes him more annoying.)

In the meantime, here’s something interesting:

I came across this site a few weeks’ ago. It’s a great idea and might even prove directly useful for me, one day.

Kickstarter is a site where people can set up a creative project, say how much funding they need and ask for donations. The funding will only be given to the creator if the total is reached, so nothing gets under-funded with higher-priced expectations.

Landscape photographer Dalton Rooney also mentioned it on his blog, so it made me join in. I’ve contributed to Brandon Schulman’s project ‘A Portrait of America Left Behind’.

His photos look great and I’ll be very excited to see his prints when they come. With 11 days to go, Brandon only needs $500. Join me!

UPDATE:

Brandon got the funding and is shooting the photos now. Can’t wait to see the results.

I’ve found a new project and it could be dangerous to my attempts at anything else creative. It’s a game called noticin.gs.

It’s a photo- and internet-based game. The idea is that you take pictures of things that you see that are interesting, unexpected or unusual. Then upload them to Flickr, tag and map them and each day your photos are awarded points according to their content, location and your other entries. Look at noticin.gs for the specifics.

I started playing last Monday, and have uploaded quite a few shots (which you can see on Flickr).

Now, I wouldn’t want you to think that I was competitive, but this is the top ten after my first week (Yes, I am Kat 30):

Ahem. But apart from temporarily satisfying my mile-wide competitive streak, this game has proved useful creatively-speaking.

I’ve discovered the joys of taking photographs with my iPhone. I always used to carry my big Lumix around with me, but it’s heavy and given the size of my (albeit capacious) handbag, I’d have to choose between that and knitting, so the Lumix has been left at home more and more.

But the iPhone has something that I can’t get with the Lumix – it’s more portable and I can do more and more quickly with the photos I take on it. I can alter the colour and add some tilt shift with a couple of nice apps (Mill Colour, Tilt Shift Generator and Camera Bag) and I can upload them in the queue for soup at Pret. You can even get Photoshop for the iPhone now. With the Lumix, I have to wait till I get home for all that excitement. The iPhone camera is pretty poor resolution, and there are no other controls on mine, but I’m going to carry on and use both cameras. It’s the practice that matters.

As for the game, I think I’ll stop trying to beat everyone. Maybe I can cope with not being the top again. The new topic that gets extra points is pictures of things that are mainly red, so I’m just going to look for those. Constraints can be useful too. If you want to give me more constraints for future projects, add something to my list.

Some time ago, I wrote about a photography subject that was exciting me. I still have that idea rumbling away at the back of my mind. I may not be taking as many pictures as I was a year ago, but most of them are around this theme.

I’m drawn to images which show light in a different, well, er, light. Where it feels like light is more than the element which helps us see things, but has more of a presence or even personality than that. Or perhaps light can take on a persona depending on what it falls on. I think that’s why the fence picture keeps grabbing me.

And even though it’s Autumn now, there’s still some good light left, and in some unusual places.

I’ll get my camera…

Thank you for all your suggestions of creative ideas / words / topics to work on. Some are surprising, some are simple, some are from another planet! It’s very helpful to get them and I’m very grateful.

Well, I was grateful, until I tried to actually produce something based on one of them. Sheesh. Actually, it hasn’t been like that. One idea jumped out at me. It was ’stereo and mono (not Bono)’ (so Fourstar will like that).

As I said in the last post, the process of knitting or crocheting something doesn’t feel that creative, not at my skill level anyway. Perhaps it’s because when the yarn and pattern are selected, and the instructions followed, the end result is pretty much known. Whereas with other types or art / craft – drawing, printing, textiles, collage, paper, whatever – are more about the process.  They aren’t constrained by a need to produce a useful object, so they’re not as functional. It more about decoration, design, feeling. Projects like this are all about the process, the iterations, the materials, the emotions, the music, the time.

So I got the Pritt-Stick out.

I have a large box filled with images I’ve pulled out of magazines and paper from all sorts of things. I took a handful and pulled a few out of that. ‘Stereo and mono (not Bono)’ suggested to me something in black and white (mono) with a bit of colour and a bit of three-dimensional-ness to suggest stereo. As Bono was verboten, I didn’t need to consider how to fit U2 in there.

So I got some paper, sorted through my images, did some tearing and arranging, and stuck that down. (Ah, the joy of Pritt-Stick. It always feels like I’m back at Primary School, making messes with glitter. Sorry, making lovely Mother’s Day cards with glitter.) This is the result:

I then stuck other things on. An Emily Dickinson poem and some tracing paper, and I started stitching into it, like this:

And like this:

And it’s not finished yet. I have no idea at this stage what finished will look like. I think I’ll know it when I feel it, but until then, on with the Pritt-Stick and thread.

I’d like to know what you think, particularly Mr C who made the suggestion. What were you expecting? What do you make of this? I don’t know what my answer is yet…

After the excitement of getting some suggestions for creative projects, I ignored them all. I made a monster instead. Here he is:

(Not very threatening, is he? I’ll take name suggestions. Giles, maybe?)

I made the monster because it was cute and because it wouldn’t take very long. I had the wool and the right sized crochet hook, so off I went. Then I realised something. For me, the overall project of crocheting or knitting something isn’t that creative. The creativity is in choosing a yarn and matching it to a pattern and maybe a person. The creativity is in the purchase, choosing and decision. After that, it’s just following instructions. I want the thing to turn out they way it should, and I’m not massively skilled in these techniques, so I have to do as I’m told. That’s not all that creative.

As further illustration. Today I happened to be passing iKnit London (a wool shop of infinite variety and colour, by Waterloo station) between some meetings. I had a little time to spare, so I popped in, as one does. Ahem, sorry, as *I* do. And I fondled many a skein until I found some yarn I couldn’t leave behind. Look:

The top one is a beautiful, soft, Merino sock yarn that might be made into a present for someone. The bottom one is berry purple silk and feels incredible. I only bought one skein of each, as they were rather expensive. So now I have to find a pattern to fit them. But then, the thrill will tail off (until I wear something I make from them, perhaps). I think with this kind of project, it’s the thrill of the chase, the initial phase of the process, that’s exciting and creative, and the next bit is almost dutiful.

So, I don’t think it really counts towards my weekly creativity.

(I have to come up with another knitting or crochet project, because it’s my knitting group tomorrow and I haven’t been for ages. And I can’t turn up without a project. That would be akin to walking in there naked, smearing myself in mayonnaise and setting fire to a sheep. Sick and wrong. Okay, maybe that’s a teensy exaggeration. But bad form, anyway.)

So over the weekend, I started something else. I’ll show you the WIP (work in progress) soon.

I thought I did. But I think perhaps that I don’t. Not so much.

It’s been over a year since I last wrote on this blog. It’s been an interesting year of very little photography. I stopped. That need was gone. I stopped feeling that I had to document everything. Why? I don’t know. Perhaps that was something I needed to get out of my system to begin properly. Like writing some pages to throw away, for practice.

Or perhaps I’m growing as a person (!). I was a bridesmaid for my friend and couldn’t take any photos during the wedding or reception. I was in the action, not observing it, the photography was completely out of my hands. So, for a change, I was present in the experience, rather than seeing it through a viewfinder. I think that did me good. I certainly remember the wedding more.

There are some images that still grab me. So I will still take pictures, but with a more careful, considered approach. I want to keep photographing things that feel important, but also to make room for other creative avenues. If photography took over my life, it would leave little room for collage, textures, knitting, craft or crochet.

I’ve been getting into a situation of thinking I must specialise, that I have to have something that is ‘my thing‘. I wondered what I’d make a documentary about and couldn’t think of just one subject. But I have to get that, for me, that is right, and good. I need all these things to be part of the overall creative thing.

So I’m taking a different approach, I’m branching out. I’ve started a ’scrapbook’ of other people’s work for inspiration and to keep track of work I like. It’s quite large already, go and take a look.

I’m also going to try and do something every week, to create something new. Having constraints of time, or materials can be really useful, particularly for the indecisive person [I don't know who I mean.] So you can help me out. I’ve set up a form where you can submit ideas, suggestions, words, whatever. Like ‘blue’, or ‘mice under the stairs’, or ‘bake me a cake, bitch’. (OK, maybe not that. Although I do bake. I also eat.) And every week, I can pick from the list and tell you what I’m going to work on, with how I’m going to do it or something. Then I’ll have to show you how I choose what I do and what I’ve done, or whatever. Who knows yet?

Goodbye to Magic, the cat who would get dusty sleeping so long on a windowsill. Who will lick the margarine off the toast knife now? Your Flora days are done.