photo: recent mixed media sketchbook pages
Suddenly autumn, sudden rush of new birds, many rose hips, starlings on the grapevine…. The golden light brings me such a cheerful moment, even an hour or two…. I have been grateful to a few visitors this week, for giving me their company as I wait for my foot to heal. There have been bright mornings when I have sat just inside or just outside the kitchen door to photosynthesise. I have sat watching bees and falling leaves, spiders and valiant flowers. The rush of goodness is intense. I could not hide from the sun all year; cave dwelling is not my thing.
I could sit and stare all day, but my hands would get bored. So I hobble from desk to kitchen, to chair. I have been forced into not sitting and doing just one thing. Which is just as well as I am at my best when mixing it….
This week I have spent some time working with so many different media. I feel slightly dizzy with it all. Let me list the ways I have worked, in no particular order: spinning, knitting, hand stitching, drawing (pencil, pen), writing, painting, cutting out shapes for collage, monoprint drawing, sticking things down.
The latter is most important and gives me a great deal of satisfaction. I was one of those children who looked at sticker books and journals, albums and so on with a mild sense of: why? But now, now I love sticking things in books, making books, keeping sketchbooks, and more than anything composing a scene to stick it down. I will use the end of a paintbrush to scoop out the last of the glue from a glue stick. Which I have had to do because I can’t just run to the shops to get more glue when I suddenly need it. I used to hoard glue sticks. Where have they all gone?
photo: recent mixed media sketchbook pages
Same could be said for my scissor collection. Where have all my scissors scarpered to? I don’t want to find any down the back of the sofa. I am quite sure I have a scissor ghost thief on the premises. They like my vintage and antique scissors best of all. And why would anyone have blunt antique scissors, you may ask? Well, why indeed but someone has to collect them. Just as I collect old iron keys that do not open anything I own. But these things offer stories. They are ways into thinking and we all need prompts into the past, to keep the present feeling safe/sane.
So to help myself keep a sense of perspective, that is the reason why I collect old things. Yes, it’s a mental health issue. I shall therefore do my best to carry on collecting. But meanwhile, I need a new glue stick….
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Postal strikes
Royal Mail workers have planned a series of strikes in the months ahead. It is my wish that these disputes are resolved as quickly as possible. I hope the workers are offered a fair deal. From what I have heard it is a story all too familiar - a company wants to change the way workers are treated and employed, and this means less stability and certainty in a time of great uncertainty….
This is to say, to explain that unfortunately some delays are likely to occur over the weeks ahead. I will be sending out packages as quickly as I am able but please allow more time for your orders to arrive. November is going to be a particularly difficult month, if things are not resolved. Thanks for your understanding.
photo: recent fifteen minute sketchbook pages on my desk
A few Small Stories From This Week
Magpies. Trying my best to not see one at a time. One for sorrow, we don’t need any more of that. The magpies here are boisterous, vocal and shine in the sun. They are so much more than black and white. Their blue chests glimmer as they strut along the path. One or two come into the garden and squawk at each other, they make me laugh and cry, for I miss seeing them elsewhere.
Meanwhile, there’s a very soft thud-thud by the window. I know now it is grapes falling from the vine. I turn my head to see a flurry of spotted chests and wings. Starlings are acrobatically moving through the vines, taking the best juicy fruit. They bicker and flee. They won’t hang around long enough for me to get a video or even a decent photo, so you will just have to take my word for it. I know they will be visiting long after the grapes have gone. They will visit the garden all through the winter, still pecking at a few wrinkled fruit on the icy earth. They are often the primary bird in the winter garden, which is their playground, larder and shelter spot.
When you seldom leave the house strange dreams might come for you. I dream that my daughter has gone on a school trip to Argentina. (Of course, she is no longer at school, but I am sure parents of grown children still have these dreams?) She has gone all the way to Argentina without me even packing her clean underwear! IAnd why, why Argentina except that it is a long way away. I don’t even remember signing a permission slip! I am a terribly fraught mother, who telephones the school, who tries to book herself a flight to Buenos Aires only to be told by someone that the trip is to some remote mountain region and there will be no hope of getting knickers out to her before they return. I have never felt more mortified…. In the morning, before my daughter goes to work I say: I am so glad you are not going to Argentina today. She simply pats me on the shoulder…. My note to parents of smaller children is simply: the anxiety never ends.
photo: mixed media work from 2012 - one of a favourite series - I would like to revisit these ideas some time
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Thanks always for reading here, for your likes and kind comments. I appreciate your support so much and am grateful to everyone who kindly buys me a coffee over at my ko-fi page. Thanks! This really makes a difference and helps out.
Cathy, if you happen to have some “earth friendly” packing peanuts, you can dissolve a few of them with hot water and they will make a glue for you to use! I’d love to say that this is my own invention, but I learned this little trick from India Flint who will take some packing peanuts with her on her travels so that she always has glue at hand!
I find this post to be especially rich with your current thoughts, images, and stories. I’m guessing that the sharing here has been enriched by the fact that your mobility is currently limited primarily to home, and at home it is limited to long stretches of observation from one favorite spot to sit and watch your world’s activities. Your creativity refuses to be tamped down during this stretch of forced quiet, and spills out onto empty pages, knitting needles, homespun yarn, hand dyed linens, scissors, paintbrush, glue stick, paintbox, needle and thread. i imagine we will soon be seeing some paintings of starlings at the grape vine, just beyond the kitchen window. i wonder if they picture you sitting there, and if they could hold a paint brush, how they would choose to paint you onto an empty page of their own? i think they would paint you in a frock of small black and white gingham, to mingle with the magpies just beyond the garden wall that is warming from the autumn afternoon sun. xox Nina