Tag: Museum of English Rural Life

Maria McKinney’s Sire exhibition at The MERL – extended until October!

Maria McKinney Sire Exhibition
Maria McKinney Sire Exhibition – “Feed / Harvest” sculpture

Good grief. I started this blog on the 13th of March. It’s been sitting in the “drafts” folder all this time, and the exhibition finishes at the weekend!

UPDATE! The exhibition has been extended, and it’s now running all the way through to the 27th of October!

Maria McKinney Sire Exhibition
Maria McKinney Sire Exhibition – “Environmental Footprint / Cornucopia” sculpture

According to the brochure, “Maria McKinney’s Sire is an innovative exploration of selective breeding and genetics in contemporary cattle farming”. It’s also a fascinating juxtaposition with The MERL‘s own collections, both in terms of the methods used to create the sculptures, and the way that they’re displayed alongside one another.

Maria McKinney Sire Exhibition
Maria McKinney Sire Exhibition– “Environmental Footprint / Cornucopia” sculpture

I took quite a lot of photos of the sculptures, all of which are made using the plastic straws that are used to store semen during the breeding process. This one, which is my personal favourite, is titled “Environmental Footprint / Cornucopia”. I absolutely love the contrast of its visual relationship with the basket work of various types that are stored above it, as well as its reflections in the glass doors on either side of the space.

Maria McKinney Sire Exhibition
Maria McKinney Sire Exhibition – “Environmental Footprint / Cornucopia” sculpture photographed on a large white bull

This oddly-angled photo does no justice at all to the main part of the exhibition, which is nine enormous photographs depicting bulls wearing the sculptures. They represent the different qualities that are considered desirable to breed into modern cattle, whether that’s increased milk production, climate resilience, or lack of horns. The best way to see these images at their full scale is quite simply to rush down to The MERL and have a look at them!

Both the images and the sculptures are displayed in The MERL’s first floor mezzanine space, which is also home to their strawcraft collection and their collection of livestock portraiture. Being able to see both the museum collections and the art exhibition in the same space enables the viewer to clearly see how studying these objects and paintings has been influential in the development of McKinney’s artwork.

I could happily waffle on about the juxtapositions of modern plastics versus natural materials, and the stark contrast between the lush green fields of the animal portraits and the heavily industrial surroundings of McKinney’s bulls… but honestly, if you’ve got time this week, I heartily recommend that you pop on down to The MERL and have a look!

A slightly unexpected change.

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Well, this week’s a bit of a strange one. That’s because (barring holidays and illnesses), this is the first week in six years that I haven’t been working or volunteering at the Museum of English Rural Life.

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No more staff entrance for me – I’ve handed in my notice, handed in my key, and to be honest, it all still feels very strange indeed.

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I’ve written about my various roles at the museum on a number of occasions, and I’ve really, really enjoyed spending my time there over the past six years.

(This little upside-down piece of glass is one of my favourite parts of the Waterhouse-designed building.)

So why leave?

Well, one reason is that the fibromyalgia’s been getting on top of me. It’s been mostly stable, but not improving, and having a job that was mainly sitting down, particularly in a cold environment, wasn’t really doing me any favours. I was spending more time recovering from the work than I was actually doing the work, and that seemed silly.

Another is that my job-share colleague decided to take the plunge and leave the museum to start a course in clinical aromatherapy. This made me think about the massage qualification which I completed in 2006, and then wasn’t well enough to follow up. I’m doing my two distance learning courses in Aromatherapy and Herbalism (albeit very slowly), but perhaps there was more I could be doing.

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A couple of weeks later I spotted an advert from the local Physiotherapy clinic, asking for help over the summer. I spent a day doing a voluntary session there, just watching what was required, and chatting to everybody who came in for treatment. By the end of the day I was very tired from having been standing up and dashing around for hours, but I didn’t have that terrible grey fibromyalgia exhaustion which leaves you unable to do anything, yet simultaneously unable to sleep.

About an hour after I got home I received a phone call asking me to go in the following morning for a bit of a chat, at which point I was offered the job of Physio Assistant. Hopefully not just because they’d already got a badge in the drawer with my name on it!

A hard weekend of thinking followed, and a decision was made. The clinic is a five minute walk from my house, so no more commute, and I save around £35 a month on bus fares. The hours are about the same, the money’s about the same, the job makes direct use of a qualification I worked hard for and would like to expand upon, and there is room for expansion into other roles at the clinic in the future.

Decision made.

I love the museum, and have made a lot of good friends during my time there, and I know I’m going to miss it terribly. But I think this change will be good for my health, and I have to put that first.

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As a result, the past few weeks have been full of training (turns out treating people with lasers isn’t anything like as exciting as James Bond made it out to be), as well as working my first few Physio Assistant shifts, and working my notice at the museum. It’s been hectic, but I think it’s going to be okay.

The only down side of the new role?

After all these years of eradicating all traces of synthetic fibres from my wardrobe, and insisting on natural fabrics and organic cottons… this is the label from my new uniform!

Still. I can wear my Monkee Genes dark blue chinos with it, and comfy trainers… and no more worrying about Smart-Casual. From now on, when I’m not at work, I can wear anything I like!

It’s not all work, work, work…

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A question I’m asked fairly often is whether I plan to eventually give up my job and work full time for myself, making and selling things. If you’d asked me a few years ago, the answer would have been a resounding yes! I’ve had a couple of periods in between jobs where I was lucky enough to be able to work for myself full time, and whilst I did enjoy it, the pressure of needing to bring in a steady income coupled with the isolation of being alone at home all the time made me, quite frankly, go a bit bonkers.

For the past five years I’ve been volunteering and subsequently working at The Museum of English Rural Life, in a whole host of different capacities.

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Chicken-wrangling, during a visit from a local farm…

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Dressing (approximately) as a Victorian, for a Dickens at Christmas event…

…and bonnet-wearing, with colleagues, for #museumselfie day on Twitter, in the photo at the top!

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As Learning Assistant I had access to the most fantastic supply of materials, so I could work with the Toddler Time group, and with families to make all sorts of things…

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… like this “pomme pomme” for Apple Day!

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This paper puppet, inspired by our life-size straw effigy of King Alfred…

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…and these adorable little Christmas trees. Recycled cardboard tubes and paper plates are an extremely versatile mainstay of toddler craft projects!

Admittedly I’m not working with the toddlers at the moment, having asked for a small cut in my hours to try and get my health back on track. But I am still working as part of the Visitor Services team, which means mostly half-days on the front desk meeting and greeting visitors to the museum, helping to look after the shop, and being on hand at lots of different types of events. I haven’t stopped working on the craft projects completely (I’m currently putting together a printing activity for our Village Fete), and I’m lucky enough to work with a great team of colleagues – many of whom I now count as friends.

Handspun and hand dyed yarn from The Outside, with hand carved drop spindle

Of course, we all have days when we wake up in the morning and think, “I wish I didn’t have to go to work today”, especially when the making is going well, and I don’t want to have to take a break from a particular project. But having a steady part-time job gives me just enough income that I don’t have to rely on my artwork to pay the bills. This alone is incredibly liberating, as it gives me the freedom to experiment with different projects without having to worry about whether they’ll sell. It also gives me enough time to actually do the work, as well as being fantastically inspiring! Since being at the museum I’ve learned to make felt, to use a drop spindle and a spinning wheel, and been privileged to work with lots of other fantastic artists. There are tools and textiles in the collections which are endlessly fascinating, as well as tremendously knowledgeable colleagues to talk to. The garden is beautiful, and there’s always something different going on.

There’s a school of thought which suggests that the only ways for an artistic type to actually earn a living are either by teaching, or working part-time for somebody else. At the museum I get to do a bit of both, and a lot more besides. What more could I ask for? I used to think that my eventual goal should always be to end up working solely for myself, making a living from my artwork and sewing. It turns out that having this balance suits me much better, and I hope it can continue for many years to come.

(And thanks to the marvels of Modern Technology, this should magically update itself while I’m at work today!)

 

Garden in the frost

MERL Garden

I seem to be going through a phase of taking only terrible photos of my sewing (possibly because it’s so damned dark out here in the Shed), so I braved the frost yesterday and took a few pictures in the garden at work.

Frosty flowerhead

I’m still using my camera completely on automatic, until I can afford an update to Lightroom. Then I’ll set it to manual, start shooting RAW files, and edit away to my little heart’s content!

MERL Garden

I’m really lucky in that the Museum of English Rural Life‘s garden is beautiful at any time of year. It’s open whenever the museum’s open, and it would be lovely if more people wanted to come and take pictures of it!

Frosty rosehips

These are the same rosehips I photographed back in October – see, I didn’t pick all of them for dyeing with! Which reminds me, the ones I did pick are still sitting in the freezer, waiting for me to find the time to do something with them.

Fennel

I think this is fennel, silhouetted dramatically against the sky. Well, that was the idea, anyway. I think Skycarrots’ silhouettes are much more dramatic than mine! Hers are hemlock, and they look very ethereal.

Frosty rosebud

Unbelievably, there are still lots of buds on some of the rose bushes. I love the delicate pink tips of this one, and its tiny string of frosted bunting.

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And last but not least, that clichéd frosty morning photo of a spiderweb! Two days of heavy hoar frost has broken most of the webs into tatters, but this particular bush was absolutely covered in them.

One of my intentions for next year is to really try and make the most of this new camera, so hopefully there’ll be a lot more photo posts coming up in 2013!

Vaguely Victorian: Part Two

Victorian-ish outfit

Here you go – for those who were wondering, this is what the vaguely Victorian outfit looked like at the end of a long day, in a lovely Victorian staircase hall.

Contrary to a few people’s concerns, I did not boil to death with so many layers of clothes on. The skirt was quite heavy, but the bustle was so comfortable I kept forgetting I was wearing it and trying to squeeze through spaces that were impossible to negotiate with such an enormous bottom!

At the end of the day I also learned that it is possible to run for the bus in a corset and bustle – although I wouldn’t recommend it! In fact it’s not the ideal outfit for bus travel generally. You can’t get upstairs, for a start, and I was a bit worried that the driver would ask me to buy two tickets for taking up so much room!

I must admit that, without the complicated underpinnings, I’d actually quite happily wear this outfit (or something very similar) to work on any old not-particularly-Victorian day.

Crafty King Alfred

King Alfred Paper Puppet

Have I mentioned lately that I love my job? I run the Toddler Time sessions at the Museum of English Rural Life (every Friday during term time, 10-11 & 1-2), and part of that is to come up with an activity every week – preferably one that’s linked to the museum’s collections in some way.

This is a sneak preview of Friday’s activity – a paper puppet of King Alfred to colour in and cut out. You fasten all the pieces together with split pins, in case you were wondering. One of the highlights of the museum is a six foot straw sculpture of the king in question, so I thought it would be nice to make a little something in his honour.

I drew a quick pencil sketch, and had planned to recreate it in Illustrator. But the scanner won’t speak to my computer, I couldn’t get a photograph that was clear enough to be useful, and so I decided to go back and do things the old fashioned way. I traced my sketch onto a new piece of paper, drew over it with two different thicknesses of pen, and rubbed out the pencil lines. On Friday I’ll fit all the pieces onto A5 paper, then use the photocopier to enlarge it onto A4 card.

Sometimes it’s so much easier to do things the old fashioned way!

[edit] If you’d like to see some of the puppets that the toddlers made, I took some photos. Can you tell which is the one I made myself?

MERL: Farmyard Fun!

Meet Izzy and Fizzy – a Herdwick sheep and lamb from Miller’s Ark.

Over the summer, Miller’s Ark brought a garden full of animals to MERL, and I was lucky enough to be volunteering that day. The children were allowed inside the pen with the sheep and goats, so I spent most of the afternoon supervising them, and making sure that everybody had washed their hands.

There are loads of photos on MERL’s Facebook which show all the animals, and hundreds of visitors having a great time.

I also learned about The Herdy Company, who are committed to giving back a percentage of their profits to look after the Lakeland landscape. I think my favourite things are the stitch markers and the herdy banks. As they say, why should the pigs have all the money?

I had a fabulous day at the MERL farm – it was great to see some of the animals that would have played such an important part in everyday rural life, and to see the visitors enjoying them too.

MERL: Bread and Butter

Hand made bread

Look, I made bread! Normally I’d use the breadmaker. This time I was volunteering at the Museum of English Rural Life, where I was helping to teach small children (and their parents) how to make their own bread and butter.

We used the bread recipe from the flour packet, which you can find here. We weighed out all of the ingredients in advance, so all the kids had to do was mix the dough and then knead like mad!

There were some already-measured ingredients left over at the end of the day, so I had a go at making my own loaf. It didn’t go too well, which was a bit embarrassing when a room full of children had made it look quite simple! I didn’t use enough liquid in my dough, so it came out a bit on the heavy side. I also forgot to compensate for the speed of the fan oven when I baked it at home, but thankfully I managed to rescue it before it burned to a crisp! Despite being a bit dense, it tasted pretty good.

To make your own butter, you need the following:

  • A tub of cream, at room temperature. (Ours had been opened and left overnight.)
  • A clean glass jar. (Ours had been sterilised in the dishwasher.)
  • Two wooden spoons, or a piece of cheesecloth

That’s it!

Simply spoon in the cream until the jar’s about  one third full. Make sure the lid’s on very tight, and hold the jar with one hand on the top and one hand on the bottom. This makes sure that the lid doesn’t fly off, and also means that your warm hands aren’t all over the jar, heating up your butter. Now shake the jar.

As you keep shaking, you’ll see the cream start to go through some changes. At first it might be quite runny, but it will start to granulate and separate into yellow fat and white liquid. Eventually the buttermilk will separate out, and a large lump of very squashy butter will form.

Drain off the buttermilk – you can use it to bake scones or pancakes, or if you like the taste you can just drink it! You’ll need to pour some cold water into your jar to rinse off the rest. If you don’t get rid of the buttermilk, the butter can go rancid very quickly. Rinse until the water coming out of the jar is clear. The cold water will also help your butter to become more solid.

Once the rinsing’s done, you can pat your butter between two wooden spoons, or squeeze it through cheesecloth to get rid of the very last remains of the buttermilk. Pat it into shape and leave it in the fridge to harden, and it should be ready by the time your lovely loaf of bread comes out of the oven!

If shaking a glass jar seems like altogether too much hard work, you can also make butter in food processor. You have to pay attention though, and stop immediately the butter’s formed. If you keep going, you’ll get… well, I don’t know what it is, but it’s definitely not butter!

Falling in love with a concertina.

Wheatstone English Concertina

This is my lovely Wheatstone concertina. I bought it about a year ago, and have been playing it a little bit ever since. I don’t normally post about music very much, because this is supposed to be a sewing and knitting and generally crafty blog, but summer’s clog dancing season, so I might mention it from time to time.

Last week I went to a workshop at the Museum of English Rural Life, given by Karen Tweed, who’s an accordion player. I felt slightly awkward, being one of only three people to turn up with an instrument that wasn’t an accordion, but I had great fun. The workshop was slightly too difficult for my current level of skill but it pushed me to play more quickly than I’ve done before, and that’s definitely helped my practice since. After the workshop there was a concert by Hilary James and Simon Mayor, and then a wonderfully inspiring performance by Karen.

I came home absolutely smitten with the accordion, and the ability to carry practically an entire orchestra around with you in one handy box. I recently borrowed a tiny 12-bass accordion from a friend, although I haven’t yet managed to learn to play, well, anything. I can’t cope with trying to do so many things at the same time! Piano on one side, buttons on the other, notes and chords, bellows in the middle, plus reading the music… it all seems a bit much.

This weekend I went to Chippenham Folk Festival with Aldbrickham. I had a little look in the musical instrument tent, as you do, and accidentally fell in love with a new concertina, made by Marcus Music.

Marcus makes brand new hand crafted concertinas, and they’re absolutely beautiful. I’d previously been looking at antique ones because the general consensus seems to be that most modern concertinas are mass-produced and not very good, but these were hand-made and absolutely stunning. He makes a 37-button English concertina with wooden ends and seven-fold bellows. (Mine’s a four-fold.) I had a little play and it felt absolutely lovely. The buttons are slightly closer together than on my own instrument, which makes it a little bit easier on my small hands. The bellows are really smooth and free, and it makes a much louder sound than my Wheatstone without being at all honky or squeaky. My concertina’s a 48-key, so I’d have to be absolutely certain I wasn’t going to miss the extra notes, but I think if I’m still playing the concertina in a year’s time (which I plan to be!), I might have to invest in one of these.

This morning I did as much practice as my poor old thumbs could stand, and really enjoyed it. I’m still very much a beginner, so I’m at the stage where making any kind of progress at all is really satisfying. But even though I’m no virtuoso, there are some problems with my current concertina which are making a new one seem very tempting. It has a leak that needs repairing, and the bellows are very stiff, which is why it makes my thumbs hurt after a while.

I could send my current concertina off to Marcus and have the bellows repaired or replaced. He could proably also replace the missing leather from the finger plates. But with an antique instrument, I don’t know whether it’s a good idea to replace something as fundamental as the bellows. Does it become a different instrument then? Does it lose its value if the original bellows are missing? Or does that not matter, as long as it becomes playable again and I no longer need to sell it? I don’t know.

Either way, I can’t afford to buy a new concertina right now. So, I’ll keep learning to play the one I’ve got, and I’ll keep saving up for a better one, and I’ll see how things go.

Women’s Land Army boot

Women's Land Army boots, at MERL

The Museum of English Rural Life have an exhibition on at the moment called Land Ladies: women and farming in England, 1900-1954. It’s on until April 19th.

The boots above were issued by the Women’s Land Army, and they belonged to Doreen Thorpe who served in Hertfordshire, Middlesex, Derbyshire and Yorkshire.

I’m impressed that they’ve survived completely unworn, not least because it means that we can see all the details on the stitched and hobnailed soles. I particularly like the horseshoe heels which I hadn’t seen before.