Just drifting along

Isn't it proving to be a gorgeous late Spring, early Summer?  Lots of sun but tempered with soft breezes. The light is wonderful and the garden is very lush. I love it in the early morning or evening best and this year we seem rabbit free so lots of plants that usually get decimated seem to be thriving
The swallows have long returned to our little pig cott and are flying and twittering everywhere. I even saw swifts flying overhead yesterday, a first for our little patch.

The garden is teeming with bumble bees and the weather indicated it was a good time for a moth trap so we had one the other night. Numbers were good but not significantly so for this time of year and some of the usual suspects were conspicuous by their absence. If the warmer weather continues we should see some bumper evenings in the next few weeks so we'll keep trying but another first for us came in the form of the Leopard Moth in the final photo. It was so large that it did not go into the trap. I found it resting on the corner of the shed and popped it into an inspection pot for a closer look. It was gorgeous and then it sat on my hand for a few minutes warming up before it flew away. It made my day. A good reminder to appreciate the natural wonders around me.

Jan Miller workshop

 I have just spent three wonderful days in the company of six other like minded women enjoying a workshop with Jan Miller. I have come home with a head full of thoughts gently planted there by this lovely person. It has been three days of revelation about what I value in my work - or more about  why I don't value it enough. I have a new regard for the overlooked and discarded. I see the joy in seemingly unrelated things being placed together and have a new regard for processes I have tried and so say 'moved on' from. Hmm. I need to retrace my steps with a few things I think and re-evaluate.

I stayed away from textiles unlike the others who dyed so much fabric in the tea bath that it went black with the amount of iron and tea bags that kept being added to it. It ended up like treacle but they produced some stunning results.

I have to absorb in workshops. I make mental notes and take photos. If I close my eyes now I can see the table laid out with some of Jan's treasures - calligraphy tools made with found materials, smudge sticks from sage tops, tree bark lined with vintage fabrics, folded boro like textiles and long, landscape textile 'maps' with simple, exquisite stitches detailing Jan's movements around her allotment.

I opted to work with paper and with books. I often call it my default mode. almost apologising for not thinking of anything more original, but as of now, I am stopping that. I have come to accept that making books is what I'm about. It's not the only thing I do but it works for me to cement all the ideas from a workshop and I made three yesterday that I love and want to do more with.

I fell in love again with waxing paper this weekend. It's been too long since I did this. So simple yet so satisfying. I'm even eyeing that bag of linen and rusted fabrics I've been hoarding and rumour has it that I might even take up the needle......

It was one of those workshops when everything seemed 'right' and I feel incredibly lucky to have been a part of something so special.

Workshop frenzy

 I think 'workshop frenzy' is a misnomer for the title of this post but one of the photos I took of last Friday's workshop shows Gill working like a demon so it seemed apt! Thank you to the group that came and raised funds for the charity Hands Up for Uganda. Let's hope we bought a few more bricks to build something much needed. In return they got a notebook to record the process - so they knew I meant business from the off - and all the materials to walk away with both a soft cover and hard cover version of a coptic stitch notebook. Not everyone finished both books but I know they will be completed at home and all of them were wonderful. I also know they will make more and I love a workshop when you know that everyone just 'gets it'. It really was a lovely day in great company despite snow in Shropshire in late April.

 ..... and just because I want to.... I met a lovely girl at a recent workshop I taught and it was mentioned that she made jewellery related to butterflies. So, I asked if she did moths and she said no but she was up for the challenge. This photo does not do justice to the scale and detail of these two moth brooches I am now the lucky owner of. I sent my photos and this is what Martha came up with. The Elephant Hawk Moth now adorns my printmaking apron (an idea I nicked from a friend!) and the Garden Tiger is waiting for its moment in the spotlight. Guaranteed that if I wear certain pairs of earrings people always stop me and ask where I got them from. If I was wearing these two in the street I think I'd be inundated and would need to ask Martha for a set of business cards! Seriously, this girl is talented and if you have a commission contact here her.

Explorations

 Well, I don't know where March went. I know I was busy but I hadn't realised how tardy I have been in posting. I have even been slow to keep up with others so I value your patience if anyone is out there still reading these random thoughts.
There were a lot of book workshops happening in March and I even fitted in a solar plate workshop for myself which was very interesting. I have plans afoot to push this print technique further this summer. It needs UV light to work so either an exposure unit or the sun is required. Hmm... the sun eh?  I'm writing this at 8.00pm and we have just had a snowstorm. I heard a rumour that it was Spring in the UK but obviously not every day as yet, just the occasional one. It was cold enough for snow today so I suppose I'm not surprised that we've finally had some.

And yet last week, we had a couple of beautiful Spring days, which thankfully coincided with a visit to Wales by Fiona and Barry. I have long been a follower of Fiona's blog and we've shared some lovely exchanges of books and prints over the last few years so can you imagine how excited I was when she suggested that we meet up whilst they were on an extended break to the UK? We had some good fun whilst I did the tour of Pembrokeshire  for them and when we said goodbye I felt like I had known them both forever. It was very special and a friendship I will treasure. Over the years I have met and made friends with some lovely people via this blog so I must treat it with more care and lavish a few posts on it every now and again!!

 And if you're wondering where this is leading and how come the photos seem to have no relevance to the text, I ended the week with a three day course with Bobby Britnell. I've left Bobby's monthly drawing group for the summer to concentrate on getting some of my own ideas formulated. In a group with 7 others we explored themes and ways of working all through the weekend. I am the only non textile person in the group but that's fine by me. My source material - top photo - is actually the drain cover outside my back door coupled with the marks left when I moved the barrel of herbs right next to it last autumn. This is not what I expect to be working on but it was a starting point and sometimes the oddest things throw up the best ideas.

I did lots of drawings, painting, printing, sgraffito into gesso work and graphite rubbings etc. I loved it and have a head full of ideas but they'll have to wait. I am teaching a book workshop this weekend followed by a print workshop so my stuff will have to go on hold but I am raring to go. We all meet again in August and that seems so far away, yet I know that if I lost March, I could easily lose May,June and July unless I stay focussed. So, I'm making a timetable and hoping to stick to it. There's lots of coastal path walking involved in my project so let's hope, as I look out on snowy ground in April , that Spring morphs seamlessly into Summer and that I have the perfect weather for it.
I'll keep you posted. I promise.

Taking advantage

 After the dreary weather we've all been subject to recently it is a joy to wake up to sunlight and you can't help but want to get out and make the most of it.  I am lucky to have a number of habitats to explore local to home and one day this week just cried out to be enjoyed by the water's edge. I often take a camera but forgot this day so went back the next day with it for a specific reason which I'll share.....

 Tenby's South beach and dune system is a favourite for a winter day or summer's evening walk. It is either very quiet or just peopled enough to make it feel like you're not in a crowd. I am always scanning the strandline for things, often ranting at the amount of plastic washed ashore or marvelling at a particular shell or rock or pattern in the sand where it is crossed by the returning tide. Until this week I had never seen any goose barnacles so I had to go back the next day with the camera and hope that they were still there.

 And they were. Thousands of them festooned on a rope about 12 feet long. They had obviously been battered about overnight and were now covered in sand, no longer the clean and fresh specimens from the day before. I later read that boat owners cut their ropes adrift as the sheer weight of these barnacles is a hindrance to their passage. Like all things they are fascinating when you try to find out more.

 I admit to being a compulsive collector when I am out on any walk, no matter where it is. If something will fit into my hand and if I think that removing it will cause no detrimental or significant loss, it somehow finds its way into my pocket. That it is small and can be carried lightly is a rule... so no tree trunks then, despite being a thing of beauty. I always try and limit myself to three things maximum per visit but when you walk on the beaches so often those rocks mount up and it is finding rocks that give me the greatest pleasure.

I love finding stones with complex patterns or forms or even simple ones. These three were what came home in my pocket on Wednesday along with the bird ring. OK, I know that makes 4 things so I broke my own rule but it was plastic and at least the bird was not still attached to it! I don't know when I'll use any of these items but they are all adding to my visual memory and waiting for their time in the spotlight.

Want to join me?

 I have been busy in the past few days getting my samples ready for a weekend retreat I am teaching next month for the Wolverhampton Embroiderers Guild. I am looking forward to  a full on two days in the company of 16 creative women - 17 if you count me!

I have also been making samples and taking photos of books for a workshop I am going to teach later in the year. This may seem early to tell you about it but  I am so excited to be teaching a one day workshop at my friend Sue's workspace, The Yard Artspace, in Cheltenham.

 The date is set for Saturday October 15th from 10.00am to 4.00pm. I will be providing a pack for those who want it of paper, cover boards, linen thread etc for £5 which is passing on the costs as they cost me. The fee for the day will be £70 and my expectations are that everyone will go home with at least one completed book but hopefully two, plus all the knowledge needed to make many more. I don't want to mention the C word but they would make fabulous gifts for the end of the year. There's nothing better than receiving something hand  made and personal is there?

 We'll be focussing on the french link stitch either as a stand alone stitch or combined with gathering stitches and sewn over ribbons and tapes leaving a decorative exposed spine. I'll be demonstrating how to make this book with both hard and soft covers and also looking at how we can add ribbon or elastic closures.

You can see from these samples that I made last week that the covers do not have to be paper alone. I used a vintage tray cloth I had for this one above along with some hand made paper from Khadi. I also repurposed some photographic cabinet cards I had  and although it was fiddly cutting the rounded corners it is a lovely book in the hand and I shall be making more of them alongside some other samples I've been working on using  the covers of discarded vintage books. More of those later along with details of a coptic stitch workshop I am also teaching in Shropshire in April.

I hope some of you who have left comments in the past are handy to Cheltenham and want to give this a go. Anyone who is interested please e mail Sue directly from her website. Go on, do it. I promise we'll have fun.....

Quick collagraph

 I went to Cheltenham yesterday to join a one day workshop led by my lovely chum Sue Brown. It was entitled 'Quick Collagraph' and I just felt that,despite supposedly knowing what I'm doing, that a day spent with other printmakers would kick start me into action for 2016.

I'd made a couple of simple plates at home but then threw the kitchen sink of techniques at them whilst I was there adding stuff like reinforcing rings  and masking tape etc. None of the plates were sealed so the ink did not get cleaned off between printing meaning we obtained interesting tones with each subsequent pull. We also played with chine collee techniques and whilst I love the quick prints I produced, as ever, I love the plate itself. How it turned out purple , blue and brown is just lovely.

 The other girls on the course said I could post some of their photos too:

You can see that for a small group we were very productive. Some were new to collagraph and you could tell they'd caught the bug by the end of the day. I spent my long car journey home full of enthusiasm and planning some new plates and some future workshops to combine books and print.

Sue and I are going to agree a date soon for me to run a book making workshop at her space at The Yard. This will be in the autumn in Cheltenham so if anyone is interested in being kept updated let me know or sign up for Sue's newsletter on her blog. There are lots of lovely courses coming up in 2016 and the atmosphere created there is fabulous. I met a really great crowd of people yesterday and now I'm raring to get to that press of mine... quick...