photo: a recent embroidery artwork (brooch) - one I was particularly pleased with (sold). More embroidery pieces will be coming - and I am grateful for all the interest.
Hello everyone, I hope you have been well over the past few weeks. Sorry for no notes last Sunday but it had been such a busy time and I wanted to get my thoughts together for this 100th.
When I began writing here I simply wrote and put together a few pictures with the hope that someone might find it interesting enough to glance at on a Sunday morning. My main hope was to make connections with people near and far, to be able to reach out to you if social media platforms imploded, but more than anything I just fancied the idea of writing to you and sharing a tiny bit more.
I’m a quiet, private sort of person really - I admit it I am not an extrovert with a lavish life style! But you have worked that out by now, if you have been reading even just a few of these weekly newsletters. It cheers my heart to know you enjoy my small stories especially. I’m hoping to write many more. I’m also making time to work on my sketchbooks because I know you like seeing them and that is enough encouragement for me. Now I want to make more videos and you will find a link to one (very short) video at the end of this post. I’ve everything to learn about video-making and will hope to improve!
Thank you for subscribing and following along. I’ve tried different formats and attempted to share in different ways - and will continue to experiment and go off on tangents because I can. I’m most grateful to the small contingent of readers who have set up regular donations to support my writing - and to everyone else who buys a coffee when they can. I would like to keep these notes free to all subscribers but paid subscriptions offering extra posts is something I may introduce next year. But, be assured, there will always be free Sunday notes for as long as I am able to write them!
GIVEAWAY I have had some new sketchbook postcards printed. To mark this 100th studio notes I would like to give away a set of three cards to three subscribers. You don’t need to ‘enter’ or leave a comment (but you are always welcome to leave a comment if you like and I am happy to hear from you). All you need to do is be a subscriber. So if you are not a subscriber yet you have until next Friday to sign up. I will be picking three names at random and will email winners. Thank you!
(The postcard sets will be available to purchase from my shop from next Sunday.)
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a new book (for myself)
Several weeks ago I began making bits and bobs - mostly monoprint drawings - with the idea of putting a small book together. I knew this book would be a keeper (one for myself as a first book in my new home). It was strange to look through all my previous books for ideas and think of them as little journeys who have now come upstairs to the attic with me. I realised that looking at previous books was a little overwhelming as there are so many ideas teeming out of their pages. I would just have to put this new book together, once I had enough material and have done with it!
So eventually, after several drawing sessions I felt I had something to work with but the drawings alone were not enough for me so I put them away.
Then I began working on new autumn paintings on paper - and struggled a bit with the shift in size and working on paper - and oh dear did I love one of the paintings but it just didn’t work as a whole! So, again, I put things to one side… I have learned to just ‘leave it’ and am grateful to turn to something else to think about. Stitching keeps me very busy these days.
I looked again at everything - and in a charmed moment began to cut up the ‘loved but lost’ painting and all the little drawings I had made, along with old postcards, my favourite squared paper - but not too many different elements I told myself!
Keeping it relatively simple, I put together the book with brown paper pages for warmth and simplicity. This book is simply ‘Untitled September 23’ - and is special to me because it marks a moment when I began to feel at home again.
photos: pages from Untitled September 23. A small book I made for myself. My sketchbooks and small/tiny books are often the only things I get to keep and I feel it is important to make them - to give time to them as a record of where I am creatively.
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a few small stories
Church crows
Now we have no garden as such (tiny patch by the ‘front door’), the churchyard is the nearest place to sit outside. Some days the benches are all taken by town visitors eating their frozen yogurt or drinking coffee. But if I walk beyond the church into the wider graveyard there is such a - I hesitate to use the word ‘lovely’ but yes it is - a peaceful even welcoming space, with so many fascinating weathered headstones and little gardens within gardens. I know I shall spend more time here. One game I play with the crows is ‘take my photo if you dare’. I can eye a crow, say good morning or afternoon to a crow who sits not far from me on a stone. There may be more than one. They might just be eyeing each other. But as soon as I get my phone to take their photo - you know they are having none of that! They flit and turn their backs, hide in the trees, skim across headstones and up to the church tower. Se you again, I say. Come back another day, they caw.
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Egrets
The light is shifting toward a mellow gold but the sky is bright blue. We are sitting on a park bench with beech and oak trees for company, watching two small birds of prey circling above us. The pair swoop, sunlit. They might be kestrels, I say, or maybe - and my poor mind fails to come up with an alternate small bird of prey. Instead I offer: maybe egrets? Yes, my daughter says, dreamily, egrets.
But no, not egrets! I admit I am hopelessly wrong. An egret is a wading bird, a heron. I feel I must be sent into the reading corner with a big book of birds and not be allowed any tea until I have improved my ornithological knowledge. It really is too bad that no one has ever taught me about birds beyond the sparrow.
But I have learned and will continue to find things out for myself. I wake the next morning and realise the birds of prey we were watching were sparrowhawks. Of course they were.
**
Shop news: I am continuing to update my shop on Sundays at 7pm and Wednesdays at 8pm (UK time). Recently I have added embroidery pieces to my shop on a Wednesday and paintings/drawings on a Sunday - but this will not always be the case and I will be mixing things up in the weeks to come. Thank you so much for all recent orders and interest.
Thank you for reading here, for all your kind comments and for subscribing. If you would like to support my writing by buying me a coffee that is always much appreciated.
and finally a link to my very simple, short video of the untitled book
Oh! Cathy! It's your 100th Studio Note, (congratulations), and I managed to be quick enough to get one of your tiny paintings. I am so happy, as we are off on an adventure, and in the transition of leaving the house we live in, and moving into a motor home, and your tiny painting will find a place on one of the tiny spaces on our walls.
I love your 'Untitled September 23' book, and feel inspired to try making my own small book to note this time of change.
Thank you for your your small stories; as always, I read them out to my husband for us both to enjoy.
Equinox blessings to you and your loved ones.
Your Sunday messages are a much-awaited treat for me. I love your poetic world, your paintings, your sketches, the notebooks and the little stories. A paid subscription, yes, after all it would be like subscribing to a 'gazette', that of Cathy Cullis's poetic journey. It's a real job too, I know because I used to keep a blog. Good evening, and thank you for what you share here.