Weekly Bird in the hand

Gosh, the week has gone quickly! Can't believe it's Saturday already and time for another "bird in the hand" - my list of things I'm grateful for this week.

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• Hospital staff that are taking care of my brother in law in England. Hope you improve quickly Robert.
• Being able to live in San Miguel for a few weeks and already bump into people we know. Then having the time to sit and chat with them over coffee or a meal.
• The joy of being in a class three times a week - like my sculpture one - and really feeling I am making progress.  
• Doing art and craft with other people. At home, it's just me alone in my studio working away.  I am really enjoying the interaction and being able to bounce ideas off others.
• New friends.
• Warm weather - especially grateful when I hear about bad weather elsewhere!

Hope you've had a good week.

Weekly Bird in the hand

Here is this week's list of things I am grateful for - my "bird in the hand"

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• Laura - the massage therapist at the spa in San Miguel.  She gives the best massage I have ever had.  I had one after our horse riding which totally revived me and then had another one yesterday which was just so relaxing.  To have someone take that much care and pay all that attention to you for two hours was just amazing. 
• Mario - a great guide who took us to Guanojuato on Thursday.  I'll show some photos of the trip in the next couple of days.
• Rita - my sculpture teacher - for being so encouraging and a wonderful, fun teacher.
• My parents for being willing to get out of their comfort zone and join us in San Miguel and try lots of new things too.
• Bright colors.  You'll see when I post photos from Guanojuato just how wonderful the colors are here.  It just makes me happy to see all these colored houses and bright art....here's a taster

• The "bird a week" challenge group. We are now up to 18 members! It makes me so happy that others want to join in the challenge. Thanks all of you who are participating.  Two weeks down, fifty to go!!!

2/52 Bird a week - the girl with a bird nest in her hair

For the second week of the "bird a week" challenge, I sculpted a bird using clay.  He sits happily in a nest made of hair on the lady I sculpted.  This is my first clay sculpture ever.

For those of you who have followed my creation this past week, the lady now has her neck hollowed out (!) and I also gave some more attention to her eyes and hair, and added some eyebrows. 

I thought I would finish this sculpture off on Wednesday but I tried to "dress" the lady a little and didn't like the result.  So today is the end of the wet clay phase - hopefully -  and then the little lady and her bird get to dry out for a few weeks before firing. Fingers crossed they fire well....

If you are joining in the "bird a week" challenge - please add your link to your blog post or flickr photo below and then add the link list to your blog too.  If you haven't joined and would like to - please go to the flickr group. 

The girl with the bird nest in her hair

As I've been working on my clay sculpture, I wanted to bring a little bit more of myself into the piece - make it definitely a "Ruth" piece - and so, did you guess from yesterday's photo?  I purposely cut the top of the photo off but wondered if anyone would guess.....?

Yes, I made her hair into a nest and put a bird on top!  Now I feel it is a Ruth sculpture!!  What do you reckon?

I had a vague memory about a story from my childhood about a girl with a bird nest in her hair.  Did you ever read it?  The story goes that a little girl grew her hair long but then didn't want to brush it. You know how little girls' hair can get so tangled so that it hurts when you brush it? Well, that was the case with this girl.  So she told her mother she wasn't going to brush it.  The mother said she had to, otherwise birds would come and nest in her hair....

But the girl ignored her mother's warning and didn't brush her long hair.  Sure enough, as warned, little birds came and started nesting in her hair.  They were just tiny little songbirds to start with and so the girl actually quite liked it.  However, after a while, bigger and bigger birds came along and also wanted to nest and then it got quite painful.  The girl didn't like the big birds trying to nest in her hair - and so eventually, she had to admit that her mother was correct - and so, with her mother's help, got rid of the bird and began to brush her hair regularly.

And so, here is my sculpture now - with a little bird nesting in the top.

I also hollowed out her shoulder area, added eyebrows.....and in my next class I have to hollow out her neck, but then she'll be just about done and will need to be left to dry.

Hope you like how she is coming along.  I haven't thought of a name for her yet? Any ideas?  "Nest" is a girl's name apparently - it's Welsh - but I don't think that's right for her.  I'll have a think today and see what I come up with......

Sculpting class #2

I am afraid to say that the batteries on my phone had run out at my second sculpting class on Friday - so  I couldn't take any photos!  And it was so much fun - sorry you missed it! I'll describe what I did so you can follow along....

The above photo was how I left her after my first lesson.....From here, first of all, I took the pole out from her head which had been there for support. Then I worked a little on her sinuses as she said she was having trouble breathing.  Next came the addition of two little ears and then I moved on to perform brain surgery!  This involved slicing off the back of the little lady's head and scooping out the "brains"!  Cleaning it out really nicely!!!

I've often thought about frontal lobotomies and what 'interesting' surgeries they were, and here I was doing more than a lobotomy! My lady had been covered in plastic sheeting since the first lesson to keep the clay wet, so the surgery went smoothly!

After scooping out the inside of the head, I then put the back of the head back on, and gave my little lady some hair.  I decided to put her hair up.......and this shows how it is coming along - the little block is still under her chin to hold her head up while the clay isn't dry:

I had another class today but I'll save those photos until tomorrow, along with my little story....