a little make

I made this little string of birds for a friend's birthday this week. I hadn't made anything crafty for a good long while and it was fun to get the fabric and thread out for a couple of hours of snipping and threading. I'd forgotten how absorbing it is to lose yourself in something like this. I used wool embroidery thread for the details and added a bit more colour than I would usually use, as my friend is a colourful person. I was pleased with the result and luckily, so was she.

Next week it's my own birthday and I'm planning a week away in a favourite part of the country. I'm going to take my camera and sketchbook and see what happens. Back soon.

spring

The first of March is the beginning of Spring for me, whatever the calendar or anybody else says. March is about birdsong, rabbits, primroses, the clocks going forward, more light, green buds, the beginning of the blossom, my birthday. All these things are Spring things. Therefore, it is Spring. The words 'March' and 'winter' just don't go together for me. Spring runs from March until the second week in May when it becomes Early Summer for two weeks. Then, it's summer from June until the end of August. The first two weeks of September are either Late Summer or Autumn depending on the weather and then it's Autumn until the beginning of December, and Winter until the first of March. I do not waver from this, not ever. The so-called 'first day of Spring' on 21st March? Pah. You're three weeks late, mate. The over-excited BBC presenters on Springwatch? It's already May by the time they appear and that's Summer in my house. Airline 'summer' schedules beginning on April 1st? That's got to be a joke, surely.

No, it's Spring. There's a little posy of Spring flowers from the garden to prove it, look.

the perseverance of bulbs

The force for change in a bulb is immense and unstoppable. Only two weeks ago I posted a photograph of this little pot of hyacinths in their stubby green-shooted infancy. Ten days later they were bursting into life and beauty, and today they look like this:

What you can't see is the scent, the pure white, heady and elegant perfume that wafts around the house when it is warm, and is held close and tight to itself when the rooms cool down for the night.

When I was an art student I filled a sketchbook with drawings of tulip and hyacinth bulbs from their tiny first shoots to their final blowsy browning overblown fullness. There is something powerfully optimistic about bulbs and their wilful desire to grow towards the light and then bloom, fully themselves, knowing that this is their moment.

a thousand and one days

It's three years since I started writing a list of five happy things every day, a sort of gratitude journal, a sort of diary, a sort of storytelling. It's become the thing I do every day, the thing I refer to if I'm unsure when something happened, the thing I laugh about to myself at how many times tea-drinking is mentioned, the thing that centres me and lets me know I'm alive. Today I've reached 1001 lists, all of them telling their own story and all of them part of the whole.

I also bought some white hyacinths and potted them up with hazel twigs, ivy leaves and moss. I also had dinner with my son and watched the jackdaws flying over to their roost and started to read my new Tessa Newcomb book. It was a good day.

You can read about how I started my Five Things lists here. If you like, you can have a look at them all here.

turning over an old leaf

An old leaf is just as inviting as a new leaf I can't help feeling, and an old leaf is what I feel like after the ravages of 2012, which was probably just about as bad as a year ever was.

But an old leaf is fine, and after a few weeks of lying on the ground, nestling into the soil, being blown about, and being frozen solid so that all its veins, edges and naked structure are revealed, an old leaf can become very beautiful and very much part of the cycle of things.

Lots of things changed last year, and lots of things will change this year. I'm planning to make sure that many more of this year's changes are positive ones, and I hope to begin by being present on these pages a little more.

the first cut

On Sunday I went to see Manchester Art Gallery's new exhibition 'The First Cut' which is all about paper, mostly paper cutting, but also other techniques including making huge leaves out of seaweed and hemp.

These delicate cutwork birds made from old maps by Claire Brewster were my favourite, perhaps because they symbolised a freedom and lightness of touch that I felt the rest of the exhibition lacked. Apart from the seaweed leaves and an enormous, gestural piece by someone I can't now remember, I must admit to an uncomfortable feeling of claustrophobia while walking around. There is something very tight, controlled and almost slightly verging on madness about the process of cutting tiny work from paper, the sort of thing I have seen prisoners or mental health users produce. Very reminiscent of outsider art in its varying forms. Some artists such as the perennially popular Rob Ryan manage to capture a poetry and humour that lifts their work, but I'm afraid a lot of it seemed too intense and gave me a bit of a constriction in the throat - not really something I usually look for in an encounter with art! What a difference from the outdoor freedom and space of last weekend's trip to the YSP.

Do leave a comment if you have been to see the exhibition - I would be interested to hear other perspectives.

out for a walk

Here I am resting at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park after what seemed like a very steep climb but which was in fact a pathetically gentle incline... 

...unfortunately I fear my girth is not too far away from looking like this grey-green lady's, elegantly reclined though she is, which added to the puffing and panting as I laboured up the hill.

It's lovely at the YSP, and I'm so glad I went. A great combo of art, fresh air, sunshine, autumn colours, walking, coffee and cake. Not to mention the lovely scenery of the Pennine hills on the drive over.

I didn't quite manage to banish all my worries from my mind, but I certainly did a better job than if I'd stayed at home moping.

That's all for today, but I thought I'd try to report for duty a bit more often on here... I did a bit of painting on canvas last week before the old anxieties took over and spoilt the fun... hopefully I'll have something to show soon.