Happy Earth Day

Humankind has not woven the web of life.

We are but one thread within it.

Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves.

All things are bound together.

All things connect.”

Chief Seattle, 1855

Zuni Fetishes

These are mountain lion and bear, my Zuni fetishes. And believe me, they're not bright orange and yellow really! I love them and really want to add wolf but haven't been able to find one yet.

This was a classic case of fiddling. I started out on a blank page and decided, instead of using pen and ink and then painting, I'd draw the little sculptures in watercolour pencils and have no outline. Well, that didn't work because I still had an outline which I couldn't get rid of even after using water over the pencils. And they also looked really dull colour-wise! That's fine in the flesh but no good for a drawing I decided. So I went over the watercolour pencil with some liquid watercolours I have. That's where the bright got in there! Then I thought I'd outline them with pen & ink. Then I decided they needed shadows which ended up looking a little clunky. And then (!!) I recalled reading in a book on art journals about making a background on a page by sponging acrylic paint through plastic tapestry canvas. SO I DID THAT TOO!

There can't be many people who put in the background after the foreground surely? Anyway, I left it on my desk for a while and visited it every now and then to have another look and then I decided, to hell with it - I'll post it. It's been too many days since I had something to post and I've been feeling a little out of sorts about that.

So here it is folks. Another PC mess! Or maybe I'll call it 'quirky' which is probably the same thing.

PS. As I'm writing this I'm listening to the most fabulous operatic compilation CD - truly inspiring.

Fly Like the Wind

I was looking through some old pads of paintings and sketches and such like the other day and I found some of my practice pieces for a calligraphy course I did with a couple of friends some years ago.

I remember really enjoying the course and doing quite a bit of lettering afterwards. I made 'Thank You' cards and birthday cards and one Christmas I made all my Christmas cards.

So I thought I'd see if I could remember some of it. I found all my old dip pens (I must have about every size anyone ever made!) I did this trial in my new journal book, but I prefer how the lettering looks on rough watercolour paper so will try something else. It doesn't really work over two pages of my journal either and my scanner doesn't seem to be the best in the world but I'm sure I can overcome all of that.

Half the fun of calligraphy is finding a quotation that lends itself to being presented in a visual way - it's also the challenge! Looking at work that professional calligraphers have produced is both inspirational and depressing, but I think I'm over worrying about that. EDM group has helped a lot to give me confidence to post some of my trials!

First day of Journaling

I started a new sketchbook which I'm going to try and keep for journaling as opposed to just sketching (with a few comments!). I've begun to read Gwen Diehn's book, The Decorated Page, and decided to try and work through it.

This is my first attempt and is based around some ears of wheat I collected on my walk with Misty yesterday. I'm a little unsure of exactly what a journal is supposed to include, but think it's probably just anything and everything that grabs my mind or reflects my day. Whether I'll be able to keep this up every day is very doubtful, but a few times a week would be good. And especially those days which have a real impact on me for some reason - sad days, or happy days or just grrrrr days (like today has been so far!).

This entry was drawn in pen & ink and coloured with acrylic inks. The journal is a Fabriano one with really heavyweight watercolour pages and a snazzy red and white patterned cover. Very yummy and it took a lot of courage to make the first mark!

Still working on the 'backgrounds'. So far lots of mess plus one rather nice one that I have no idea what to do with!

I also did a quick sketch for one of the EDM subjects. Pen and ink and watercolour this time and in the old sketch book.

Baubles and Beads

This is my necklace tree. Actually, it's a mug tree but I use it for my necklaces.

To be honest with you it's not really red - it's cream. I painted it cream originally and then put in the messy background and the tree looked a bit overwhelmed, so I changed the colour to red. That was a disaster so I frantically wetted the paint and blotted it out so now it's a rather horrendous looking mixture.

I think this is a good lesson for me to know when to stop fiddling.

I put in the date at the top with my new Lamy Joy calligraphy pen. It has three sizes of nibs - 11, 1.5 and 1.9 and this is the latter. I ordered a converter with it so I could use any ink in it rather than just cartridges and I filled it with Noodler's grey which is supposed to be one of their bleed-proof inks but isn't really.

I'm thinking of experimenting with lettering a bit. I've seen a few people doing this and it can be great fun. But first I'm going to have a go at putting a background onto paper using acrylic paint and a brayer (aka a lino roller). I watched an interesting YouTube video recently which showed techniques such as winding rubber bands or bubble wrap or anything with texture around the roller. It looked fun! And messy ...

Thoughts from the Garden

I often go to sit in or wander around my garden when I want to think about things. Although we're near a busy road I automatically filter out the sounds of the traffic nowadays, and the sounds and smells of the garden come through in sharp focus. It must be this that helps me focus my thoughts.

I was thinking about something that one or two of us had mentioned on the EDM forum in the last couple of days which was about the fear of doing art. It seems I'm not the only one who spends a lot of time thinking about what I'm going to put onto paper, reading about the various methods available to me, deciding which medium would be best and generally prevaricating. I now know prevarication for its real name - fear.

Once I've decided what I'm going to sketch or paint, I spend a lot of time visualizing it in my mind's eye. I can see every nuance of every hue I'll use, each mark I'll place on the paper to form the composition, and exactly what the finished piece will look like. Naturally, it's beautiful, colourful, perfect in every way. And all the time I know that it will never look as good as my imagination has painted it. So I put off starting, think of something else I should be doing; clean the cooker, tidy up my painting materials and put all my drawing pads in a neat pile, take Misty for a walk. Anything that will put off having to put that first mark on the paper. Because if that first mark isn't absolutely perfect the whole thing will be a disappointment; no good, rubbish, fit only for the recycling bag.

And that is what my fear is. I recognize it for what it is and I know, without a doubt, that if I get rid of all that angst and just get out a pen, pencil, paintbrush, marker pen - whatever - and go for it without thinking about it, then even if I do consider it to be rubbish at the end it will have been a step towards being able to produce something worthwhile one day.

But how to get rid of the fear? The answer lies in the garden somewhere, I just know it.

Chimneys and Broadband

I’m sitting in my kitchen with the laptop, no broadband and no phone and my house is over-run by strange people and loud noises.

We’re having the chimney lined after all sorts of scare stories about the risk of chimney fires, the chance that the interior brick lining of the chimney’s going to crumble away etc. etc. A couple of months ago when we had the chimney swept I had a good look at the stuff that came down – huge chunks of black, vitreous stuff, the product of too many pine logs burned in the wood burner. It’s quite possible apparently for this stuff to catch fire in the chimney so I put a ban on use of the wood burner until we had it done – much to the disgust of my husband who was convinced it wasn’t really necessary but just a ploy of the chimney sweeping company to make a sale. But he does love his wood burner when the days get cold so eventually, with winter just over the horizon and the thought of another exciting delivery of logs, he gave in. How many people like stacking humungous amounts of logs tidily in the wood shed? Must be a guy thing!

It’s pretty well a whole day’s job and the room where the woodburner’s located is in the middle of the house so I get stuck either on the side where my study, bedroom and loo is, or in the kitchen. Accepting the fact that I’d be spending most of the day making cups of tea and coffee for the workmen, I decided to de-camp to the kitchen with my laptop.

The young guy is up the ladder on the roof, feeding a bloody great silver tube down the chimney while the boss of the operation’s in the sitting room yelling up the chimney to his mate and guiding the silver snake round the inevitable bends (why do they always put bends in chimneys?). While the young guy’s on the roof I get him to dig up the pine tree that’s decided to take root in the brickwork at the top of the chimney. My husband’s been threatening to do that for nearly a year now, since it was just a little tiny treelet, but the pitch of the roof and the fear of heights seemed to put him off. They tell me that if we’d left it there it would eventually have become a full-grown Scots pine growing out of the middle of our house (or what little would be left of it). Actually, thinking about it, it sounds quite fun.

While all this is going on the BT man turns up to try and sort out my broadband which has decided it doesn’t want to share a line with the telephone thank you very much and huffily switches itself off every time someone picks up the ‘phone. That and being abysmally slow (half a megabyte would you believe due to the distance we are from the exchange!) has been thoroughly tweeking my nerves of late.

Now I have broadband back and the phone works too. The chimney’s lined, the roof tree’s been removed and everything’s back where it oughta be. I’m off for a walk with Misty!!

My First Novel

Well, I'm gonna write it sometime. And right now's sometime!

I was searching around looking for inspiration and I suddenly remembered something I'd started a couple of years ago on an Open University short course. The problem was to find where on earth I'd put it. I searched through all the files on my computer and found the first chapter. Sitting down reading it I realized I'll have to make some changes (complete re-write!) but it's a good base to start from. And then, blow me down with a feather, I found the last few paragraphs of the last chapter. How on earth had I managed to write the beginning and the end (typical of me) and where for God's sake was the middle? Arghhh!

I started going through all my old notepads which are full of freewrites, journaling, moans and sketches, looking for anything that might fill the gap (and gaps don't get much larger than this one). And there, on the last two pages of an old, battered Paperchase e-co A4 notebook, I found the bare bones of a complete plotline through 18 chapters.

And my heroine? Why, none other than Sadie Larson, sassy, gobby private detective...

Spectacles, schmectacles

You would think, wouldn't you, that buying a pair of specs would be the easiest thing in the world. The amount of choice available in most large opticians is massive - every shape, colour, style you can imagine. I thought, 'Hmm - I'll just pop in and choose a couple of frames and get them made up to my prescription - shouldn't take more than half an hour.'

Half a day more like! By the time an assistant came over to me I had about eight pairs I liked clutched in one hand, another three stuck in the neck of my T-shirt and was trying on a twelfth.

'Can I help you, madam?' She glanced with barely disguised horror at all these expensive frames (I assumed they were expensive - I don't like tat!) hanging off different parts of me.

She led me over to the back of the shop where she offloaded the frames onto the relative safety of a table and sat me down. Then she unclipped the security tags from all twelve pairs so I could try them on properly. After trying them all on at least twice, some of them more, I settled on my favourite couple of frames and she called up my prescription on the computer.

'Oh dear,' she said. 'You can't have either of those with your prescription. This one,' and she pointed to a beautiful fuchsia pink beauty with a thin, oblong frame and slightly blingy arms, 'is far two shallow. Your varifocal requirement won't suit that at all. And this one,' an electric blue half-frame with arms that faded from blue to purple, 'won't do either. You need a full frame for your prescription.'

'So which of all these would work for me?' I asked her, pointing to the rejected pile of ten frames and thinking I would have to settle for second best.

But no, none of them were any good. They were either too shallow, too narrow, not enough frame etc. etc.

So back we went to the rows of frames to start over. We looked at Prada, RayBan, Oakley, Dior, Armani, D&G... We even looked at some cheap ones! And nothing, absolutely nothing I liked would work with my prescription.

By this time there was a fairly healthy queue forming at the reception desk and most of the rest of the staff had gone off on their lunch break. My assistant's voice had gone up an octave or two - definitely the first signs of panic setting in.

So we turned to the problem of the lenses. Should I have extra thin lenses? Aspheric? High index? Glass or plastic? Arghhhhhh - my head was spinning from all these options. All I want is some colourful, blingy specs so I can ditch my contact lenses before the bags under my eyes get big enough to hold the entire English Channel because they're being pulled around so much.

What on earth is a Chaffinch to do?

Watermelons and Zen Students

Watermelons and Zen students grow pretty much the same way.
Long periods of sitting till they ripen and grow all juicy inside, but when you knock them on the head to see if they're ready— sounds like nothing's going on.

Peter Levitt, from 'Essential Zen'

This quote came to me courtesy of Tricycle.com and I thought how nice it would be to post it on my blog and find a really great picture of watermelons to go with it. It's a great example of the power that both the written word and visual images have to make your mouth water.

Plenty going on in my head today though. I spent an hour taking photographs of a couple of a couple of camera lenses I wanted to sell on Ebay, another hour filling in the forms for each of them and they both sold immediately! Wow - what's going on? Did I happen upon a collector of camera lenses? Needless to say I'm a very happy bunny and I promise (honest) not to go and spend the proceeds immediately.

I'll wait til the weekend!

A Wake Up Call

I woke up this morning feeling pretty miserable. To be truthful I was feeling sorry for myself; going over all the 'why am I so useless?', 'why can I never finish anything I start?', 'why can't I be who I want to be?' thoughts that come at me in the early hours.

Quite often I wake up with a feeling of fear that's amazingly strong; I lie there, trying to find the source of this fear, yet what I'm really trying to do is ignore the fact that I know the source. It's a fear of the future; a fear of growing old and a fear of the possibility that I will look back on my life in old age and think, 'Well, what was all that about. What did I really do to make my mark on the world?'

And I remember an exercise from a life coach that I once saw. You write your own obituary and in it you detail all the wonderful things you'd really like to do and be, as if you had done and been them. This obituary was then a game plan for the rest of your life; to work towards doing and being the person in that obituary.

Now, I think a lot of the tools that life coaches are taught to use are rather over-egged these days - there are just too many of them saying the same old things. But this one stuck in my mind as a useful way of reminding myself that I only have one life and it's going by ferociously fast and that I really do have to work at becoming more than I am if I'm to live up to my imaginary obituary.

This morning, I read a post by sbass at The Inkwell about the loss of her mother to lung cancer earlier this year which, devastating though it was and still is, has brought an additional dimension to her life which is, unexpectedly, a positive dimension.

It was a bit of a wake up call for me to be honest. I was lucky enough to survive cancer some years ago so what on earth have I got to be miserable about? If I'd been fearful for the future then I might have had justification, but now...?

So I'm taking an inventory of the things I want to do and then I'm going to go about doing them. The first one is to WRITE. I don't know whether I want to write short stories, a novel, fact or fiction, poetry or just a journal - all I know is that I've wanted to WRITE for years now but all I've actually done is to turn prevarication into a fine art. I've had the pens and pencils lined up on the desk, the special ink bottle ready, the absolutely nicest journal I can find ready to write in and what have I done? Nada; zilch; sweet sod all!

And what am I going to do about it? I'm going to sign up for the Open University course in Creative Writing that starts in October. I will then have to start WRITING. This time there'll be no escape - if I don't produce WRITING, I'll flunk it. If I don't WRITE my fellow students will know me for the quitter I am. Or rather for the quitter I was!

John Lowrie Morrison

Today I bought my first JoLoMo painting - 'Croft and Boat North Uist'. Actually it's a limited edition giclée print, but nonetheless beautiful. Maybe one day I'll be able to afford an original.

It's small, about a foot square, in a large white frame and it was just made for the white wall in my hallway.

JoLoMo is a Scot who paints wonderful, highly coloured images of Scottish land and seascapes which just lift the spirit when you see them. I've loved them for years, ever since I first saw an exhibition of originals in a nearby town. Hopefully this is just the first of a collection. I'm already planning to paint more of my rooms white to show off this imaginary gallery of wildly colourful art. And that's saying something because I hate decorating.

Trying to Write

I'm looking out of my study window, through the two wolfhound sculptures that sit on the window sill, and out into the garden. The view from my seated position is of trees and shrubs and the colours I see are almost entirely shades of green, backed by a pale blue sky.
The rhododendron is still only in bud but will shortly break out into vivid pink flowers. For some reason the rhododendrons in my garden are always behind those of everyone else. This may sound paranoid, but my poor old backward shrubs are weeks behind everyone else's and are in flower long after all the others have died. I'm living in a rhododendron challenged space - a parallel world.
There's a slight wind creating movement in the foliage. An occasional pigeon visits the ivy that has been winding itself round one of the pine trees since long before we moved here so that its trunk is almost as thick as that of the tree itself.
The sun has just come out, completely changing the colours and accentuating the difference between the different leaves. Some are golden, some silvery; the pine needles are the same dull, blueish green as they are all year round. The pines stand like sentinels in the garden, watching the other trees change from pale green to deep green to yellow, then red, and finally brown, but barely changing colour themselves.
It won't be long now before the roses are out. There are three rose bushes just behind the wooden table and bench, the tops of which I can just see from my position. When the roses come out I'll move my chair a little to the right and put the wolfhounds on another window sill so I can watch them while I'm trying to write.
In the background is the hum of traffic on the road outside, reminding me of how near to the busy main road my house stands. But I've got used to it over the years, and though I'd dearly love to live somewhere quieter I also dearly love living in this house, surrounded by its beautiful garden. So I switch off the sound of the traffic and try to write.

The Best of Days and the Worst of Days

It's been the best of days and the worst of days!

At work this morning things were really getting on top of me. It's all so complicated now - there are so many things to think about and to remember and I'm really worried that my memory isn't up to it anymore. But if the adverts are to be believed, using it is the antidote to losing it, so you'd think my memory would be brilliant!

But this afternoon... now that's another matter entirely. It was absolutely lovely - the sky blue but with a cooling wind. I walked Misty at Gullidge and we both got pretty hot - although at the top of the field, alongside the paved track, the wind was quite fresh, at the bottom it disappeared completely so Misty was panting a bit.
After I brought her home I walked down to the lake with my camera and a bag of stale bread. I went out onto one of the fishermen's platforms and threw some to the ducks and that started the stampede! I had crowds of ducks all around; every time I threw some bread in they all rushed towards it - how the manage not to collide and hurt themselves I have no idea. The swans started across at a more leisurely pace, line astern, following Mum. Dad brought up the rear looking rather above it all. I fed the cygnets by hand - their beaks didn't hurt me although they snatched at the bread. I offered some to Mum but she didn't take it and nor did she eat it when I threw it in the lake in front of her. I think she was happy to let her kids have it but just wanted to make sure I was nice to them. Dad stood off a way and watched - he didn't deign to eat anything when I threw it for him either. I took loads of photos of the ducks and the swans and cygnets:

Then I walked into the bottom of the field opposite the lake where the wild flowers are and took some photos of those too. It was very windy though so I played around with camera settings to see what worked best. I guessed a high ISO and about .1500 sec exposure. I'll download them and have a look.

Requiem for a Horse

A horse was killed just down the road from my house today.

I came home from work and the traffic was backed up. When I got near I saw what I first thought was a large white dog lying beside the road, but as I got up to it I saw that it was a white horse. Next to it stood a man sobbing his heart out; I don't know if he was the owner of the horse or the driver whose vehicle had hit it. The horse had no saddle on so maybe it got loose and ran out into the busy road.

I don't know any of the detail - I just know that a beautiful creature was lying by the road, possibly dead, certainly with very little time left to live.

I do know that I was grief stricken for the poor animal and that it made the sun go in on my day. I also know that my grief was probably more for this animal than it would have been had a person been lying there. Why is this? I think most people would consider it to be wrong, but it is certainly the truth. I believe it's to do with the innocence of animals.

Knitting!

Yesterday I had a sudden urge to take up knitting. How peaceful and soothing it would be to sit in the garden on a warm, sunny day, knitting and meditating. Aahh - I'm relaxing just thinking about it.

The last time I had one of these urges was about two years ago and I have the piles of knitting books, needles, balls of wool and other strange-looking bits and pieces whose purpose is a bit of a mystery to prove it. I think buying all the accoutrements was probably a whole lot more fun than getting down to it and knitting something. I found a half-made, holey woollen object hanging off a knitting needle in one cupboard but I can't honestly say I remember what it was going to be.

So... what to knit? I have two problems here; first, I absolutely hate handknitted clothes - almost without exception you can spot them from 50 yards and almost without exception they're a sludgy green colour! Second, I haven't got a clue what all those weird knitting terms mean; "yarn over" or "slip" or "pass slipped stich over". I know "knit" and I think I know "purl" and I can "cast on" although I haven't a clue how to "cast off".

After several re-thinks and frantic searching through the knitting books I found the perfect answer. It's a cushion. It's knitted entirely in knit stitch. It's all in one piece. Sounds like my sort of cushion cover. As long as I can find out how to cast off in time (if I can't it's going to end up as a helluva long, wide scarf!) it sounds pretty easy.

Only one problem. How many rows of boring old knit stitch can I actually get done before I get fed up with the whole thing and take up fishing. Or gardening. Or cooking. Or...

Google Weather

Lately I've become addicted to checking out my local weather by putting it onto my Google homepage - well I'm a Brit! It's allowed.

I've noticed that it changes with alarming frequency, sometimes several times a day. It can start off with black clouds, white rain and a grey background, changing to white clouds, white rain and a blue background. A few hours later there'll be half a yellow sun shouldering its way between the white clouds and white rain. Then, just as I think the next development will be a whole sun with no clouds and a blue sky the damn sun gets pushed aside again by the white clouds, white rain and grey sky.

That's British weather for you...

Trying to Write

I'm looking out of my study window, through the two wolfhound sculptures that sit on the window sill, and out into the garden. The view from my seated position is of trees and shrubs and the colours I see are almost entirely shades of green, backed by a pale blue sky.
The rhododendron is still only in bud but will shortly break out into vivid pink flowers. For some reason the rhododendrons in my garden are always behind those of everyone else. This may sound paranoid, but my poor old backward shrubs are weeks behind everyone else's and are in flower long after all the others have died. I'm living in a rhododendron challenged space - a parallel world.

There's a slight wind creating movement in the foliage. An occasional pigeon visits the ivy that has been winding itself round one of the pine trees since long before we moved here so that its trunk is almost as thick as that of the tree itself.

The sun has just come out, completely changing the colours and accentuating the difference between the different leaves. Some are golden, some silvery; the pine needles are the same dull, blueish green as they are all year round. The pines stand like sentinels in the garden, watching the other trees change from pale green to deep green to yellow, then red, and finally brown, but barely changing colour themselves.

It won't be long now before the roses are out. There are three rose bushes just behind the wooden table and bench, the tops of which I can just see from my position. When the roses come out I'll move my chair a little to the right and put the wolfhounds on another window sill so I can watch them while I'm trying to write.

In the background is the hum of traffic on the road outside, reminding me of how near to the busy main road my house stands. But I've got used to it over the years, and though I'd dearly love to live somewhere quieter I also dearly love living in this house, surrounded by its beautiful garden. So I switch off the sound of the traffic and try to write.

Scents of an Early Summer

A warm day. At the bottom of the field where I walk Misty at lunchtime the scents of summer are all around. Like ephemera they dance away from me just as I think I've caught them. Tantalizing scents from my youth waft by, laughing as I reach out towards them - nature's perfumes - my inbreath longer and longer in its search until I have to let go, still just missing the memory.

But the joy of reaching allows me to truly take in and ponder on the scents; herby, grassy, warm with the merest hint of sweet - maybe from the falling May blossom, maybe the foliage itself, newly grown and stealing the blossoms' grip on the branch.

And all the while, on the breeze float tiny seed spores, their white, delicate parachutes carrying them away to begin again the joyous cycle of life.

My new best friend!

A diamond came to live with me today. The most beautiful diamond I've ever seen - or at least that I've ever seen close up. It's a brilliant cut solitaire on a platinum ring with a plain, modern claw mounting. It's almost colourless and sparkles like moonlight on water.

As I type it throws multicoloured flashes of light through the air and if that's not an incentive to keep writing I don't know what is!

I learned a lot about diamonds after we first spoke with our jeweller; about the four Cs, Carat, Cut, Colour and Clarity. I learned how colour is notated for diamonds - D is the most colourless and therefore most valuable; mine is a G. Carat is, as everyone knows, the size of the diamond - 1 carat is 0.2 grams; mine is 1.39 carat. Cut is what gives the diamond its brilliance; the facets that are cut on the surface of the diamond reflect the light back and forth within the gem. Finally, clarity of the stone is determined by the amount of faults or marks there are within the stone, called inclusions. Almost all diamonds have some sort of mark within them, many not able to be seen by the naked eye; the fewer there are, the more valuable the diamond.

My diamond has a very few small inclusions, but to balance that, the colour is at the top end of the scale. It's a good balance I think.

Never in a million years would I have been able to afford a diamond such as the one that's come to live with me. To just try something like it on in a jeweller's store would have been something I'd never have considered.

So to those thieves who burgled our home a couple of months ago and took every single piece of jewellery I had, including the rings my mother left me when she died last year, I say don't bother coming back; you won't find anything there.