Studio Notes no. 219

Always in progress & new stories

photo: Bits & bobs for a new mixed media postcard book - Since taking this photo I have worked on a few more pages. I hope to have this book completed soon.

hello Everyone,

I hope you are well. This morning has started with cooler breezes floating into the attic - and I am so grateful. The recent heatwave has been mentally and physically exhausting. At the moment I am dealing with some health issues and so the heat really impacted my well-being - and I remind myself of the many, many people who have ongoing and far more serious challenges.

I have worked gently and slowly on a variety of things. Last Sunday I wrote to you with great plans for stitching - and some of that got done, and other things not. For example: wool knots! Who was I actually trying to kid there? I can’t even think about wool in a heatwave - - -

But I did get a small collection of new hand stitched pieces into my shop. Stitching with a fan directed at my hands. Taking my time. Stitching takes a great deal of time. I priced things modestly. There are two pieces remaining in my shop. A photo of one piece is at the end of these notes.

Drawing

I love to draw and yet some days the painting takes over. All good. At the moment I am in drawing mode and happily so. Thank you so much to everyone who has purchased a lucky dip drawing! You are helping me keep going. I am working steadily on lucky dip orders.

Here is a drawing in progress - it’s possibly called ‘cut and come again’ and is one in my curious flora / botanical series… I absolutely love drawing these personable yet some on the verge-of-fading flowers. There are a few more curious than others. Still a lot of work to do here, but I will pace myself and hope it all comes together as I would like.

Here’s a detailed look.

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Shop News

I’ve decided, from July, to return to updating my shop on Wednesdays AND Sundays. Just a small collection of work each time, maybe just one or two pieces. I will be focusing on smaller work and drawings in July.

Future updates then:

No update today

Wednesday 1st July - 7pm with preview from 4pm

Sunday 5th July - 7pm with preview from 4pm

Lucky dip drawings continue to be available through July

Thank you for all your kind interest and continued support, it is very much appreciated.

Link to my shop at the end of these notes

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New stories

I have a few longer fiction pieces / stories for you this week. I do hope you enjoy reading and thanks always for your encouragement.

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A Nap Before the Carnival

I remind myself: today is the day of the carnival. It coincides with the waning of a heatwave. So it’s like a celebration - no more absurd heat! For now!

There will be noise, there always is with a carnival going on outside your home. It comes with living right here, right now, with so many adept organisers in town, who just like children with trumpets and bagpipes. It will be noise waving and throbbing like the sea, but not like the sea.

Perhaps it would be a good idea to take a nap before the carnival begins. Before I can have a nap, though, there are things to do. I go to the supermarket and a woman holding a box of gooseberries turns to me and says: Today is the carnival. I am going home for a nap!

I am just learning the art of the nap. It’s still baby naps for me.

My energy is low, it’s like a skirt dragging through dirt. I clean the bathroom, congratulating myself through every stage of sanitation.

I realise, possibly, there’s no right moment for a nap. Maybe I just won’t have it in me to sleep. But you never know, I might get lulled by the noise and just nod off whilst sharpening a pencil. Has that ever happened before, to anyone? Falling asleep midway through sharpening a pencil?

Yes, of course. I remember now. Everything has happened before, everything: carnivals, heatwaves, trumpets, gooseberries, naps, pencils.

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Picasso’s Pencil

The couple went to a small seaside resort neither had known existed. It rained and they felt at home. Their small cottage felt larger each day. Mornings were spent walking, sketching, and afternoons eating cream teas. They knew now it was possible to exist on a diet of scones, cream and jam so long as the cream was reasonably local, the jam a bloody hue.

On their last day they walked a different coastline route and along a cobbled street of old timber buildings found a small museum. They expected it to be filled with fishing-related bric-a-brac. He hoped for wax figures of long-ago working folk. She hoped to find some decent postcards. Instead, they were given a key and allowed to let themselves into a cellar, dark and sulphur-odored. They learned the place used to be a jail and for a while after that a place naughty children were locked up overnight to be scared into reformed behaviour. It was, quite simply, a despicable cellar. And yet she admired the high window and the view of wildflowers drooping after rain.

He looked into a glass cabinet and saw a small stub of a yellow pencil labelled: ‘Picasso’s Pencil’. It was covered with grim teeth marks. He did not point the pencil out to her. She would only go on and on about Picasso. It would be Picasso’s life story for hours and how wonderful and awful he might have been. So he kept quiet about Picasso’s pencil, telling himself, it was quite impossible to be a genuine artefact, if a pencil can be such a grave thing. What would a pencil once owned by Picasso the internationally famous artist be doing here? There had to have been a local called Picasso, or nicknamed Picasso.

She was not interested in things in glass cabinets. She stared about the cellar, re-decorating it, mentally. As they handed back the iron key, the museum attendant said: you must have enjoyed your visit. A statement they agreed to agree with. They found themselves outside again, not expecting sunshine and finding little.

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Touch and Run

The children have made up a game. It started this morning, in the middle of the road and was something to do with touching the tree stump, then running all the way to the cul-de-sac and back.

And then you had to shout: Berry Berry! This was by the fence to the garden of Mr and Mrs Dock, because Mrs Dock was called Beryl but Mr Dock, who was called Bertie, would always be in the garden shouting: Berry, Berry! Should I bring the washing in? Or, Berry, Berry, I think it’s going to rain!

They never did see Berry. They never ever caught a glimpse of Mrs Beryl Dock. They just knew she lived in the house and had to believe she was making those cooking smells. She was there in the house, they imagined her, putting her hair in curlers. Bertie Dock, they saw him, pegging out the washing, wearing an apron!

By the time the ice-cream van has been and gone, no one can remember the rules for the new game. They collect sticks and stones, but that gets boring. Then Andrea says they can go and play in her garden. So long as they are quiet. So long as her mother does not catch them. That can be a game, flitting across her large garden with the magical pond.

Not all the children have ever been here before. It’s so much bigger than their gardens. Like a park with a house. There are lots of little paths dug all around the rhododendrons, pond and shed, then back round to a greenhouse and patio. They seem to spend ages just rushing along these little paths, hunting fairies or robins. Then someone spies a man sleeping in a deck chair.

Shhhh, Andrea says, with her finger to her mouth and holding her guts. That’s my father she whispers, he’s sulking. Why is he sulking? Because my mother won’t allow him to have a model railway.

Now all the little paths around the garden make sense. The children are angry, sad and confused about why anyone would not be allowed to have a model railway in their own garden. If you have the room and the tracks all mapped out, you need trains. They all imagine things differently. Some children imagine trains they could sit upon, others tiny trains the size of matchboxes. It does not matter, Andrea says, he’s not getting his way.

So now a new game is born: Poor Daddy! You have to creep out of the bushes, touch the man’s head or at least his hat and whisper: Poor Daddy!

One of the smaller children is too scared to play the game. What if the Daddy wakes up and is very, very cross? Her own Daddy would be off his head with shouting if woken. The girl goes to a shady patch and quickly squats to pee. Andrea says it’s not berry respectful to spend a penny there, on the strawberries, but too late.

But then Andrea’s Daddy wakes up and everything’s fine. He’s happy to see the children. He takes them on a guided tour of where his new railway is going to be. It seems he has woken up from his nap and quite forgotten he can’t have it! Oh dear, Andrea, the children whisper and snigger, and follow her leaning tower of a father around the garden.

He really is a nice man, with his sad smile glowing in the sunshine. Some of the children wish he was their Daddy, this was their garden, they would make sure he got his railway. They would beg the Mummy. The rabbit is dead, the cat is dead, please may we have a railway, please? That’s how you do it. Where is Andrea’s mother? She is at the hairdresser. She is always there.

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Rabbit in stitch - One of the four smaller portraits in stitch I offered in my shop this week.

And finally, a very brief clip of birds - the swifts seem to have enjoyed the heatwave even if many humans did not. This is a view from my attic home.

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Thanks always for reading here and for your kind support.

A coffee is always welcome