This week.

Here's some whimsical, colourful tosh in a huge pile.

Plenty of sifting and sorting and here are the highlights:

Paper dolls galore. Would you look at Dick, what a beautiful boy - and those lederhosen were intended for him because they had his name on.

I'd wear this outfit of Jane's in a trice.





I like these fold out decorations so much, they're magic, exciting every time.



And some gaudy neon teacups.

And some calmer, less zingy things.



The biggest needle point hoop to date.





This dressing gown is already sold to Miss Wood, who looked awesome in it.

A Bournvita mug.



A very big Welsh flag which is riddled with holes . . .

 . . . a lot of which have been meticulously darned, what a nice thing a good darn can be.

Filthy linen fishing bag.

towel rail.

Some welly boots for your next am-dram production of Educating Rita

Stacking chairs from a church hall which I'm keeping for when I live in a house big enough to host the top secret meetings of The Gentlemens' Club.

A kite . . . gee the sky was grey today - a deep shade of tarmac grey.

And I've adopted one of the baskets for my permanent collection.

Toot from the coop.

Well here you go, some of my mucky delights . . . a tractor seat.

A lot of decoy pigeons.

This chap is the best - he's made of papier mache which is quite unusual. I didn't know what you'd do with a decoy pigeon but apparently you put it in a field until other pigeons come and check he's ok - "yeah, he's ok, seems really nice, just a bit shy" then you can shoot them all. Hooray!
Which explains why so many of the decoys have bullet holes.


Look at their little faces, how could anybody shoot them.



A very dirty lamp.

I never normally clean my stock but I thought I'd better make an exception.

A heat lamp.

An egg box that I would use as a storage stool.

Egg baskets - I got lots of these, I think they're wonderful.

Then there were a couple of anomalies, like this soap box, don't know what it was doing there.

And this tumpty little wooden chap.

There you go. I'm off to market tomorrow, so bed real soon.
Until next time.

Working with Eva

Yesterday I had the lovely Eva Roovers in my studio. She's a photographer of still lives and portraits. I've said for a long time that I will let her plunder HQ for using in her work and yesterday was the day it finally happened.

(This hat has a grisly secret, I will tell you more soon).
Initially I thought I would just be providing a resource but actually it felt a lot more like a collaboration. A happy collaboration. Sharing the toot in different ways is always exciting, like with that Andy Holden and the Saturday Drawing folk.
It was so good to see whimsy bits, the pieces I just buy because I like but can't seem to sell, being cooed over: like the tiny urchins and enormous hanging basket.

 A successful day all round and I'm really looking forward to the outcome, I'll be sure to post it up here. Woop!

Scrabbling through chicken muck.

This week i have been hunting for toot in an old chicken farm, with permission of the owner of course, and I found plenty. I'll show you the bits I got soon but for now you'll have to look at how amazing a place it is.









You can't beat a little natural distress to wood . . . and there's nothing worse than wood that has been purposefully distressed . . . especially by a woman . . . wearing a cowl neck.

I declined to take any of the wine.

A creepy cold-room which was pitch black with all these special racks for hanging chickens by the neck, real horror film stuff.



The legs of the owner.

I really like the locking mechanism on this engineers cabinet, beautiful. Unfortunately I couldn't take them as they were full of all the bits for two enormous generators that used to be mounted on wheels and used to power searchlights.

And a house to look in as well as sheds.

Beautiful tiles.

Stonking period fireplace.

And an old mill building to look in.

The ladders inside worn to curves and gone through in places.



And that's all. The toot I garnered to follow . . .

I am making art.

Actually . . . I am art.

Next Sunday Rosalie Schweiker will be presenting me at Sluice Art Fair. (Sluice is at the same time and in the vicinity of Frieze, but it's free)

All I have to do is set up my stall and sell my toot. This new and exciting artwork will be called:

We buy from the poor and sell to the rich.

It will take place between midday and three on Sunday 16th October, do come along.