For a dear friend

Hen is a dear friend.

Sometimes, dear friends present one another with gifts;

this will be his:

eventually

Onion liquor

Tonight I was boiling up some onion skins to make dye from, when all of a sudden Hen and I became dear friends 

me and Hen

from the future

It was a bit of a witchy thing to do but the results are probably worth being dunked for.

Once.  

Really quickly.

I learned this technique from my time spent in the 17^th century, as Prudence, where my school friends and I were taught how to dye the wool that would make shawls to adorn ourselves with.  Everyone else wanted the pinky red one, dyed by crushed up creatures.  Thankfully I was the only one to want the beautiful golden yellow one, so I got it.  But only to borrow for that one short day. 

This liquid onion-skin stain can probably be used at some point, almost as an ink...

The finished non-skeins of hair

for tiny wigs

A blog about shit

I wanted

to be sick.

Oh the horror!  I have inadvertently used shit (or something equally repugnant) to create my latest component.  I am very upset about this.   It was an utterly disgusting realisation to make...

Everything had been going so well.  I scoopled up a bag of earth to myself one afternoon at work, feeling very pleased not just because I had got me some earth with no trouble at all but also because it was from the very same vicinity as I had gathered my rootish things about four years ago with Natalie– this was too good to be true! 

Later on I laid it out on my windowsill at home to dry.  On a plastic bag, of course. 

Days passed and the earth dried in lumps to its basic grey matte finish and I was excited about mixing a few more ingredients in before coating the hog hillock in the fruits of this labour.  I did the mixing in two portions, mostly because my guesstimation skills can sometimes be a bit off and I didn't want to be short on mixture.  The first batch was a delight!  The gold powder and other colourings combined with the earth were a treat to behold when I dried out a tiny practice bit; it cracked up a treat and sparkled with a dirty yellow brilliance.  I breathed in its earthiness (a lovely fragrance usually, and this was no exception) mixed with art ingredients (one of my actual favourite smells). 

And so I mixed up the second lot, fishing out any stones I deemed to be too big as I went, same ingredients, same final look.  Perhaps a little darker but I was ok with that – everything else is quite light in tone and I feel a nice dark grounding colour is just fine.  I poured the first batch into the second and mixed it.  

And...something wasn’t right.  The smell was kind of...off. It was a mildly vomitous waft at this stage but I thought nothing more of it and put the lid on my container of shit, I mean hillock mud, and left the room for the day. 

And then Christmas came.

 Which meant that I had to pose with various yellow things.  And family members.

 

So the pot was left on my desk in the room just doing its thang for a while...

Three days ago I picked up one of my art knives.  I think it originally belonged to my grandma, but I’ve had it for years and I’m pretty sure it is mine now as I am almost certain there is no need for knives in heaven.  

I was to use this to do the pasting.

And thus I did.  Behold the results.  

The dried and cracked and near perfect results.

 But oh!  If you could only feast your nostrils upon it!

At first I was hopeful that the smell would go as the mud dried.  So I closeted the hillock in the room.  And I kept on hoping...

Then I wondered if encasing it in some matt varnish might work, but the look of that wasn't ideal.

So I SLATHERED the stinking beast in a can of extra firm hold fragrance free hairspray.  That worked a little bit, but I knew in my heart that I would never, ever be able to touch it without gloves.  And I couldn't inflict the stench or the knowledge of shit upon my hogs.

And so, after a phone conversation with my mother and several curses placed upon cats, the hillock was bagged up and thrown away.  I salvaged the bones though and they are currently soaking in a bleach solution.

I just feel so dirty.