the sap is rising

[devi]

After spending December doing nothing (well, more coughing than I would have liked, but not much else) I am suddenly all a-flutter about art and crafts. Seriously, I need eight hands, Kali-style. At this moment, one hand would be leafing through a decoupage book, another would be snipping away with a cuticle scissors until the air was full of confetti-like bits, another on the mouse looking for information on book-binding, another stirring a pot of hot wax while its neighbour poured more hot wax into a candle mould... you get the idea.

My main worry is that I'll be so flustered by all the options that I'll end up doing none of them.

It's at least partly my old art teacher Mary's fault. Mum and I went to see her when I was home. I hadn't seen her for at least ten years. She was everything an art teacher should be, eccentric and theatrical and fond of odd tangents (she liked to rant about standing stones). She used to paint huge, gorgeous sheela-na-gig figures blending into landscapes. One of them hung in her classroom. Stepping into her sittingroom at Christmas, I met it again, taking up the whole wall facing me. When I'd picked myself up off the floor and finished being overwhelmed by enthusiastic hugs, I found myself blathering about calligraphy and Blake and the craft stuff I'd been doing, and Mary was encouraging me to get a market stall ('it's how I started') and telling me that Pauline Bewick did all her art in a caravan so pooh to my complaints of not having a workshop, and then producing presents as if she'd been expecting me, a moonstone pendant and a handmade candle in the only colour they'd been sold out of at Watkins the previous week.

I went away with my head buzzing. I think she applied some sort of metaphysical jumpleads to my brain.

I mostly just want to make stuff for the fun of it. But I do wonder how practical it would be to rent a market stall for a day somewhere. I've been doing some web searching, and it seems markets only get mentioned on the web when they're in danger of being replaced with glass office-blocks. Ho hum.

(If anyone's ever sold stuff this way, or knows someone who has, please do shout out.)

Now it's quarter to one and I'm wide awake. I don't have work till the afternoon tomorrow. It would be very silly indeed to put a pot of wax on to heat up at this stage of the evening. But when has that ever stopped me before?

Comments

[ex-humanfema327.livejournal.com]

I think it's about 40 to have a stall at camden or less for that one near Liverpool st which I have completely forgotten the name of but it's covered and lots of fruit and veg but also crafts. I think about 20 there, though it was a while ago when I asked. this is why berlin is cool, the rents are so cheap there you could have your own shop.

[bluedevi.livejournal.com]

Old Spitalfields Market? I like that one. Only twenty quid? That would rock.

Trouble is, the only thing I could find about it online was a news story that the number of stalls had been halved, and that it was going to be turned into a sort of flash mall for City workers. But you never know with markets. Camden's been about to die for the last four years.

[ex-humanfema327.livejournal.com]

That would be so tedious if true. There are enough malls in the world. And of course it's called spitalfields, it came into my head just as I was falling asleep. I tried to go to work yesterday and forgot the way which was quite funny. Mmm, london.

[skorpionuk.livejournal.com]

I know absolutely nothing at all about market stalls, but it sounds like a cool idea. Why not dig out London markets from a tourist guide (or the Blue Guide maybe), and check them out? absinthecity has mentioned Spitalfields in her LJ previously as being good, too...