One man's meat...

Nothing much to report(but has that ever stopped me before?) except that I have had one of my Marrakech felt pieces accepted for The West Lancs Open Exhibition at The Chapel Gallery in Ormskirk. (This is for JP. I can't reply to you any other way. Its on Now. I went on Friday to the preview..mine is in the bit leading to the toilets!!! Some kind of judgement I suppose)

I have also done my annual accounts and sorted through the pile of slithery books pamphlets cards and papers on my sewing room table, so I feel a load off

It made me think of another open exhibition I submitted for about 12 years ago.
Do you want to hear about it?
Are you sitting comfortably?

Then I'll begin.

I was new from City and Guilds and had had a year or two doing my own things.
I had two pieces I wanted to submit to an open exhibition. A Celtic panel and Three little purses based on Tropical fish.(They look a bit like This, I don't know why I didn't submit these instead)
Yes, three purses, so I had to find a way to combine them to make them into one piece.

I looked into having a perspex box made but it was fiendishly expensive .
Then I had a brainwave...they were based on fish, so if I had a piece of driftwood it would enhance the sea connection.
Now, the seaside near me is not the kind of place you would be likely to find driftwood.
Blackpool, Southport, no pebbles or driftwood so we went a bit further afield and drove to Sunderland Point,(Do click that link, there's a lovely set of photos there) near Lancaster, where you have to cross a causeway at low tide, and there's a wild pebbly beach full of all sorts of junk.

We strolled along looking for the perfect piece of driftwood, collecting a LOT to choose from.
My husband even picked up the back end of a boat and was going to use it to make a sign for his studio. Not exactly appropriate in a moorland mill village.
As we got back to the car a local resident looked at our bundle and said 'We'll have to start buying coal if you keep coming '

Once home I selected the perfect piece..a block with three rusty bent nails, around which I entangled the purse cords so that they looked like flotsam (or jetsam?) and duly submitted my purses and my Celtic panel for the exhibition.

Time passed
My letter arrived...one piece accepted, one rejected.
'Oh well ' I thought, 'that Celtic piece was perhaps a bit traditional.....but I knew they'd like those bags.'
I went to collect the rejected piece.

Shock Horror!
They rejected the purses but wanted the Celtic panel.
I expressed my surprise at the choice.
She asked what it was I'd had rejected.
I said 'Three little purses like fish.'
'OH!' she said, 'We loved those bags........







......we just didn't like that driftwood they were attached to'.