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...

Look in, Look out

It was a couple of years ago now that I did a workshop with artist Jilly Morris but it is one that sticks in my memory for the sheer enjoyment we all had on it. Not surprisingly, I have kept up to date with her activities ever since and before Christmas Jilly was the latest artist in residence on the  Look In, Look Out project, based, to date, in Hampshire. The website for the project details its inception and ongoing issues and is host to other films as each artist in residence had one made during their six week tenure. They make for a fascinating collection and  reading through Jilly's blog for the period is also very thought provoking. I so looked forward to each week's installment dropping into my inbox. Now I can't wait to see what she will produce from the time spent on the estuary at Lymington Haven. Along with the responses from the other artists there will an exhibition in March. I feel like a short break to the New Forest coming on. See what you think. Let me know.

With gardening in mind

 I've always been a great believer in fate, coincidence, serendipity, call it what you will. I also believe deeply that you can make your own luck with positive thinking. Or maybe I'm just a glass half full type of girl and see everything that happens in the way I want to see it happen. Who really knows.... but here's a great example.......

In yesterday's post I received a printed postcard from Fiona and Barry, letterpress printed on their own equipment. The new year greeting on the reverse is accompanied by some fabulous plant related Australian stamps. As he handed it over, our postie - who had obviously read the greeting - said what a great thing it was to receive. He was so right.  I have long been drawn to Fiona's blog and her passion for books, prints and the written word and she was uppermost in my thoughts when I later went in to the local 'books for free' shop yesterday afternoon.

 I genuinely believe that I must have had thoughts of letterpress and typefaces at the forefront of my mind as I just walked over to an overflowing box of distinctly old books and found the signwriting and advertising books immediately. Now is that fate or is it  not? The other little book is destined to get its covers used on a special project but I've started reading it and it is entrancing so it is reprieved for the moment.

 There are some wonderful illustrations in the advertising book and the signwriting one has got me practising the drawing of shadow capitals everywhere. Then I realised that this book linked in to another thing that had arrived via e mail  this week. As a long time recipient of the Uppercase magazine newsletter there was a link in the latest one to German calligrapher Nicole Sprekelmann, who, alongside her writing, draws into a mindfulness journal. If you take a look at her website on the blog page you will see what I mean.....

 .... and it was seeing Nicole's drawings that made me think about mindfulness too. It's a word we cannot escape from these days. I was even given a book about mindfulness drawing for Christmas and whilst making this year's plans for our garden this week I found these lines from Andrew Marvell's 'The Garden' written in 1681:

Mean while the Mind, from pleasure less,

Withdraws into its happiness:

The Mind, that Ocean where each kind

Does streight its own resemblance find,

Yet it creates, transcending these,

Far other Worlds, and other Seas:

Annihilating all that's made

To a green Thought in a green shade.

 

 Now I call that fate that I should come across a quote in my reading that is so relevant to my thinking that day. So much so that is spurred me on to make a book that will record all the thoughts and plants and ideas that will be garden specific this year. I'd seen a book online and had no idea how to make it but tried out a few ideas and now have the perfect place to keep ideas and write plant combinations or draw things.

And the first thing to put in my book is my card from Australia. Folded neatly it announces the date and when the page is turned shows off the gorgeous plants on the stamps it came with. So, fate or coincidence or serendipity.... the right thing came at the right time for the right idea. I call that perfect.

So, at last, the year has begun....

 I love winter and the start of a new year. I've stopped making unreasonable resolutions for myself and pragmatically just take it a day at a time. I long for cold frosty mornings with a sharp nip in the air instead of this interminable dreary wet and windy weather. I feel for the many people who have had too much rain inflicted on them during recent weeks and long for respite for them and for us.

I become even more obsessed with trees now. I love their silhouettes and will make special detours when I'm out and about to see my favourites before they change in the Spring. My most favourite tree of all is the large ash tree at the house end of my garden and I've lost count of how many photographs I've taken of it over the years. I stand there most afternoons when it's not raining and watch the starlings fly over. There seem to be  thousands of birds and you can almost time your watch by them as they choose the same time to fly past every day.  A winter treat that never palls. Even better when  smaller groups appear during the day and decide our ash tree makes a great stopping off point. It can get pretty noisy but I love it all.

 On the few dry days we've had since the New Year we've managed to get out and about walking. The beach walks have been great but this week we had two consecutive dryish days with some intermittent sunshine so we managed to get down to our local woodland for a couple of really long walks. Recent winds have brought down trees and some pathways were blocked. At one point we had to limbo under fallen trees to keep going. We were there on our own on Friday and the only person we met was the ranger from National Resources Wales who was surveying the woods to establish what rain damage there was to remedy. The woods can be packed when there are lots of visitors and tourists around so to be there on our own was magical.

 I couldn't resist the skyline but became entranced by the reflections of the trees in the numerous puddles. This one below was small but the water was so clear and the reflection quite beautiful. It's a shame I can be seen leaning over it with my camera but the next one shows that all of a sudden it started to rain and the reflections disappeared, as did we, trying to get a bit of shelter!

Whilst we got soaked by yet more rain it was wonderful to have the freedom to just be outdoors. Since then the weather has returned to persistent showers and winds. It reminds me of a poem I found only recently by  Scottish poet, Norman Bissell, who I need to find out more about as he seems to say what I think. His words are a perfect fit for how this year has started :

Sometimes here

it's hard to tell

the sound of the wind

from the sound of the waves.

Or the sound of the waves

from the sound of the rain.

Or the sound of the wind,

and the waves and the rain

from the sound of my breath.