Playing House

Since my last blog post I have become a grandmother. Little Eben couldn't wait to meet the world and was born a month early. He is a beautiful, healthy boy and I feel blessed to know him. 

One of the things which this whole experience has brought to the fore is how much has changed in the baby world in the last 30-odd years since my daughter was born, by which I mean everything from attitudes to home birth, advice on pregnancy and beyond, and the range of 'stuff' available to care for mum and baby. To me, 36 years seems quite a short time, but I feel like a stranger in a strange land when I watch how my daughter equips and acquits herself when looking after his needs, and I marvel at it a little.

Of course, much is still the same as well, the basics never change and the most important things: security, warmth, food and shelter, remain. And, of course, love. A loving family and a happy home are surely what we all wish for our children, and their children too.

The pictures above are a couple of the happy houses I made as new year's gifts this year.

Last of the Summer Wine

Autumn has arrived. Time to say goodbye to lengthy, warm days and the sun waking me too early in the morning. I gather what will probably be pretty much the last of the sweet peas as the winds begin to whip through the garden and whistle in the chimney. I have had the First Fire ritual - the lighting of my wood burning stove for the first time in nearly five months - and basked in its warmth. The flowers fill the room with a heady, summery scent; I chose particularly fragrant varieties to grow this year and will sow more soon in anticipation of starting the cycle again.

It's also new shoes season. Another pair of my favourites, would you believe those are the same shoes and were once the same colour? They have served me faithfully for two years of twice-daily, lengthy dog walks through mud, grass, gravel tracks, ice, snow, rain and sun and I have finally worn through the soles. So, into retirement they go. Or at least semi-retirement: they're so very comfortable and soft I doubt I'll be able to let them go completely! Some goodbyes are best delayed.

Practical Magic

Autumn has slipped into winter and I am slowly making adjustments to my different, solitary life. I say it's different but in truth I have always been a fairly solitary creature, although that was often by choice and not circumstance, as is the case now. I'm not sure there is any virtue in this except, perhaps, that without it I may never have become as interested in the natural world as I did from an early age. The drawback, as may be predicted of course, is that when you are solitary you cannot share the magic of a moment with anyone other than, possibly, your dog.

Until quite recently I used to wonder why my mother had drawers and drawers full of photographs that she took on her old box Brownie. Often mundane images recording days at the beach, flowers in the garden or even the pattern of the new wallpaper in the kitchen. But then it occurred to me that we shared certain traits. One was a very patchy linear memory making it difficult to recall the sequence of things as they happened and another was the desire to be able to look back, confident that we had actually done this or seen that at that particular moment and not merely imagined or dreamt it.

And so I find increasingly I am carrying my camera with me as an aide-memoir to record those things which I wish to recall.

Waxwings photo © Paul Gale

I did not have it yesterday however when I had a magical and completely unexpected encounter with 30 - 40 Waxwings in the nearby small park where Sam and I often walk. They are not winter visitors to this area usually, preferring the east coast and Scotland in general, yet here they were, trilling away and stripping the berries from the Rowan trees. There are blessings everywhere if we are able to see them. 

When Life Throws You Lemons .... Make Cupcakes!

Well, dear readers, my protracted absence has been due to the aforementioned lemons. Things have changed mighty quick for me and turned my life upside down, which is both terrifying and oddly exhilarating. I am now officially off the map, in totally uncharted territory, but I realised something the other day. 

I suspect that a great many of us have a secret fear. You know, those ingrained beliefs that if 'X' happened you'd never get over it/survive/be happy again. They aren't the sort of monsters we usually talk about or even acknowledge to ourselves, except in times of deep misery, but they're always there, somewhere, in the back of our minds. Sometimes they can be useful, making us try harder at things and urging us not to give up, but mostly they just lurk around providing us with random moments of happiness-squashing terror. So a few days ago I was walking home after having to deal with a fresh set of obstacles in the path of my new life when it suddenly struck me that the two things which had been my own personal life-long fears had happened to me. And the sky hadn't fallen. This was a very important discovery. Not only had I survived, but I no longer had to worry about these twin monsters and give them space in my frankly overcrowded brain. 

I'm hoping this is just the first of a whole lot of perception altering revelations but even if it isn't I'm incredibly grateful for this particular one!

A Little More Inspiration

Come to the edge, He said. 
They said, We are afraid. 
Come to the edge, He said. 
They came. He pushed them... and they flew.     

Guillaume Apollinaire

Gratitude

Today I had to go have some minor medical treatment and, as always, this gives me the glums because it's part of the ageing process that stuff stops working properly and I rail against it. But I am also grateful for many things which are coming with age, not least that I now have more time to spend on things which feed my soul and that I seem to notice life's details more and marvel at their simplicity and complexity both.

Being forced to slow down is not necessarily a bad thing.

Spring Cleaning

Well alright, it's a little early for Spring, but I thought a bit of redecorating and remodelling was in order so I spruced up the blog a bit. Haven't quite finished yet but I hope you approve - feedback is most welcome!

One of the main reasons for doing it was that I wanted to be able to add in some larger images and so needed to stretch the page a bit. So, now we are (hopefully) in wide-o-vsion!

Forty Years On

A new mixed media piece which was inspired by my memories of the first moon landing, the 40th anniversary of which was this July. How time has flown.

I was watching the very wonderful Alan Bennett the other night on TV. He was talking about the writing process and 'being a writer' and how one is only a writer when one is actually writing. Research, all the hours spent in contemplation and creation, are just postponing the actual act of writing. Having published a book merely shows that you were a writer, once, not that you are one now.

He was, of course, being ironic but also touching on something that most creative people either feel themselves at some time or other or have foisted upon them by those who would like them to get a 'proper' job and stop mucking about. My own feeling is that people who choose not to develop a creative path as a writer or artist which, by its very nature is most usually a solitary affair, do not understand - maybe do not care to - that not everything is achieved by being outwardly busy amongst lots of other busy people. And if you are engaged in creative endeavours it's also not uncommon to feel that the muse might, at a moment's notice, pack his or her bags and leave, never to be heard from again.

It's hardly a  new notion but one which, from time to time, bears restating I think.

The All-Seeing Eye

Last week my trusty Canon camera decided it had had enough and started to do all manner of bizarre things with the photos I was trying to take, adding its own Photoshop-alike effects without my say-so! Oddly the video capture still works but nothing else. So, time for a new piece of kit, and here it is.

I've only had it a couple of days but I'm pretty impressed with this little Lumix. I tend to do a lot of indoor photography and, as I don't have anything in the way of special lights etc, I rely on my camera to make up the shortfall a lot of the time. Well this one seems to handle less than perfect lighting conditions admirably with no fringing and good detail, and the auto focus is pin sharp. So far, so good!

All this means I have finally been able to get pictures of my new yarn batch for listing. Hurray!

Where Is My Mind?

I am being a baaad art girl at the moment, not much new work being worked on, no indeed. Too many distractions, too little time (and energy, thanks to my insomnia stepping up a gear). I have got a couple of cute notebooks done - see above - inspired by the 27 Houses I showed you the other week. My favourite Murano paper for covers and hand drawn row of houses, so each one is original and different. The lime one was in an Etsy treasury which was on the entrance page of the site and it (the book) got 300 hits in the space of about an hour! Wow!

But I was talking about distractions, before I got, er, distracted. You will have heard me bleating on about the state of my studio for some time now. Well, I decided the other day that the only solution is to completely rearrange everything: workspaces, storage etc. (I just know I'm going to regret this). Anyway, Vincent very helpfully put up a row of narrow shelves to store all my miscellaneous pots of stuff and paints so that was what really got me started. With much huffing and puffing I managed to move the huge work table that we share into a better position against the wall so now there's much more space.

The plan is to have a separate small table for cutting - paper, fabric for quilts and so on - and a desk where I can have my sewing machine set up permanently, which will leave the big table for painting, collage and book binding. Of course there is a TON of stuff to sort through and find proper storage space for before that stage is reached, but it will be so much more accessible and pleasurable to use once I'm done - well that's what I keep telling myself anyway. Wish me luck!

27 Houses, Or An Exercise In Patience

And so, dear reader, I have been absent for some time, partly due to more health issues and partly because, put simply, I was tired of talking (or writing in this case). I'm sure pretty much everyone has phases when they just can't be bothered to some extent and I suspect that the way this manifests itself will depend largely on your own personality. I am naturally inclined to be a cat who walks by herself and consequently my solution is to do even more of that and for more protracted periods of time. It usually helps, and sooner or later I resurface ready for whatever's next.

Anyway, I have spent the last few days with a high fever of semi-hallucinatory proportions which turned out to be related to a tooth infection and is currently being nuked by some heavy duty antibiotics. It has been both frustrating - dizzy, weak and devoid of energy - and curiously soothing in a way that I haven't experienced fully since being confined to bed as a sick child.

Patience is not often one of my strengths but I have had to exercise it a good deal lately. All the 'must dos' and the inner promptings to get on with life have had to shut up for a while as I make my recovery. I practice looking at clouds and listening to the house martins screaming as they swoop after bugs outside my window. I doodle 27 houses in my sketchbook, comforted by the familiar repetition of the shapes and the movements of my pen on the paper. And I feel better than I have in a long while knowing that I'm right where I need to be and that, in truth, I always have been.

You Complete Me

Gosh it's an effort at the moment. All I want to be doing is hibernating. I want to fill my tummy full of pine needles like the Moomins and sleep until Spring. The world seems to be going in slow motion and I feel like I'm swimming through treacle, waiting for the daffodils, waiting for warmth, waiting for colour, waiting for my muse to come home. Soon, soon.

Confessions Of A Messy Artist

I am it's true. I daren't show you pictures of my studio at the moment as it's enough to make any reasonable person run screaming in the opposite direction. So I am going to clear out, reorganise and make it nice again. Simple huh?

Well I am a believer, as you know, in positive affirmations so the first step is declaring that I'm doing it. I am also visualising a beautifully organised workspace (this has always been problematic as I have virtually no suitable storage) with a harmonious, creative vibe to it. It will take a while but the longest journey and all that.

So in the meantime here's a bunch of cute notebooks which I just listed on Etsy. Now where did I put that skip....

Logan's Run With The Scissors

I went to get my hair cut this morning (yes thanks, I'm very happy with it). It's quite a hip, national chain - you know, all black, white and chrome fittings - and I've had the same young hairdresser for about four years now. I sometimes joke with her that she is absolutely not allowed to leave as she always gets my cut spot on and I've had many in the past who didn't. But this morning she was talking about moving into teaching hairdressing in the long term.
'After all,' she said, 'you pretty much have a sell by date in this place.'

And this got me thinking. I started looking around at the other staff there and I suddenly realised that not one of them is over thirty and most are much younger than that. It had never occurred to me that trendy haircutting was such a young person's game but I guess it is.

Today's drawing is called, with apologies to Mr Eliot, I Have Measured Out My Life In Fondant Fancies.

Doh!

Sorry about the mess folks, I was concerned that the new template was too top heavy and taking ages to load so I decided to revert to something simpler, and in the process seem to have lost pretty much everything but the posts! Hope to have things restored fairly soon but for now here's an intermission (you have to be British and of a certain age to remember this...)

Like My New Dress?

So I decided to have a bit of a change and dress up the blog. What do you think? I'm still getting used to it and feel a bit like this little guy, except perhaps not quite so glum!

Get 'em while they're hot!

I will be closing my Ebay store later this week. Some of you may be aware of the ongoing problems between Ebay and its sellers which are resulting in a sellers' strike this month. Well my store closing has nothing to do with that, but with the fact that art sales seem to be in a decline on the site currently. I will be focussing my efforts more on Etsy and my website from now on, although I plan to still list auctions on ebay.

I do want to say a huge thank you to all my customers who have been an absolute pleasure to serve and I welcome you to my other venues and hope you will continue to find art and craft there to delight you! If there is anything in my Ebay shop you wish to buy before I close up, I am offering free shipping all this week here

In Search of Lost Time

This is a piece of work which Thea did as a Mother's Day gift for me. It is taken from an old Polaroid of us which I didn't even realise she had and I was so delighted to get it.

I feel a kind of wonder that this once was us - she is a beautiful woman now and I am middle-aged - and that a photograph can bring that into such sharp relief. It is way too obvious to say that we have changed. But seeing this moment frozen in time has the same effect as Proust's madeleine: suddenly I am back in that summer garden and I can feel the texture of the clothes we were wearing, the scent of the grass and the warmth and liveliness of my baby girl. Who said that time travel is impossible?