You can't have enough bags

Here we have 24 shopping bags which I have made out of curtains bought from charity shops. I deliberately chose thicker fabric so the bags would stand up to carrying heavy shopping. I was a bit limited as to which colours I could choose, as you know with charity shops, you have to go back time and time again, to see if they have any new stock in. You may be lucky, or you may not, that's what I like about charity shops, you take pot luck.

Anyway, these bags are going to be sold at the School Christmas Fair on the 15th, along with any other nicknacks that me, Sue, and Janet can find. The money raised is for our rescue cats. At the moment we have Tiger, Lilly, and Willow in residence in Sue's chalets, but that could change at any time when we hear about other pussies that have no home. We want to be prepared, so a little bit of money in the kitty, ha ha, will cover cat food and vets costs.

Now I am getting a little bit bored with churning the same stuff out over and over again, I will have a little break and do something else. I think repetitive work stiffles the imagination, dulls the senses, and eventually you become conditioned to a certain way of life. I don't want to be conditioned to anything, I've done all that, now I am free to choose.

Our 20 21 Visual Arts Centre has an exhibition starting on the 22nd of January, it's called, guess what, Canvas Bags Exhibition. This is right up my street, got to have a go at this. The blurb in the brochure says, 'Make artworks using plain canvas bags as a starting point. Artists are free to draw, paint on, or otherwise customise to their hearts content.' Now I take that to mean, do whatever you like with it.

Everyone has two of these bags, one is for the exhibition and the other is to be sold. Now it's up to me to decide what to do with it.

My first thoughts are that it isn't robust enough, it is too flimsy so needs a lining, and the handles are too long and not strong enough. It also isn't really big enough to be a shopping bag, 14.5" x 15.5", so I might start by taking it apart and re-jigging it from scratch. Lots to think about, I'm going to enjoy this project.