I had some leftover ink and made some monotypes with it – just swirls and wipes. The ink is oil based Cranfield Safe Wash and so I also employed a spray bottle of water.

After they had dried, I decided to add another layer, another process – I used thread. I played around with the burnt paper and threaded paper I made the other day.

My daughter walked in while I was doing the next one – oh, do different stitches she said. I’m not making an embroidery sample I replied, but then I did end up experimenting with different stitches and combinations of colour. I much prefer the lines in which the stitches aren’t apparent – where it looks like a line made by thread.

I punctured the paper from the reverse to make raised bits to add texture – nothing new, I’ve seen a lot of it on Instagram.

And held up against the window:

I’m still thinking about Shiota’s threads.

And threads on top of threads.

As I’ve been sewing recently, it’s taken me right back to my childhood and me staying up all night to finish sewing some pieces which I had made for my O’ level coursework which was due in the following morning My mother and father had gone to bed, it was just me alone with the darkness and stillness of the house. I don’t like pulling all nighters – it’s a strange time when the house seems to come alive with all sorts of strange noises. It did cross my mind at the time that my parents didn’t really seem to care. Maybe that was just their style of parenting – they turned up to parents’ evenings, but never really hassled me about homework, and didn’t even bat an eyelid when I came home from school one day and declared that I didn’t want to go to university. I’m sure they did care, they just didn’t feel the need to helicopter, or maybe they thought that I should learn life’s lessons the hard way. And of course, that’s just my recollection of it – it’s my map which doesn’t necessarily represent the territory.

My mother was never very good when someone was ill. It could easily be mistaken for a lack of empathy but I think it was that it made her feel out of sorts. Even so, a lasting memory is when I was about 9 or 10 and we went to London for my sister’s birthday. We’d had some lunch and my sister had left some food, and so I finished it off. I’m not quite sure what happened – my mother put it down to greed, but looking back on it, it was probably food poisoning, because that is the only possible explanation for why I was so sick for the rest of the day. I remember complaining that I didn’t feel well as everyone walked on ahead of me, having to resort to being sick into litter bins as I tried to catch them up. Even when she saw that I was unwell she kept on walking. I think that she felt mortified that it was happening in public, in front of other people. She always used to say that if we ever fell over we should get up and laugh it off, to avoid embarrassment. She disliked any kind of public display of extreme emotion.

It’s a wonder that I haven’t grown up to have issues…

I’m interested in trying combinations of processes, like print over cyanotype. I used a piece of scrap cyanotype for this one and I like the effect – I’ll experiment some more.