November Perpetual Nature Journal.

Hello to everyone! Here are my pages for November in my perpetual journal. Some pages are beginning to fill up and I am glad I put in some extra pages at the beginning and end of the month. The black and white wren is one of my favourites and I have just finished the jackdaw on the last page. So a bit of a black and white theme going on here. I am stitching the wren at the moment in black and white threads. Love to you all, enjoy the advent season and keep safe and well.

 

Oak tree embroideries.

I thought I would talk to you about my latest work. In the summer Radio 4 had readings from The Oak Papers by James Canton. I loved them and sent for the book which I adored. It is about the solace that being close to Nature- in this case an ancient oak tree - can bring to mind and body. I knew what he meant and understood it. It is also full of the facts, history and myths around the oak tree and how important it has been in this country.

I sought out a few of our local oaks and have been observing, drawing and spending time with them. One especially, an oak tree in -The Enormous Field - an earlier set of embroideries which you could find here following the labels at the bottom. So I have made a start on this new set of work about oak trees. I have been posting them on Instagram as I work them so you can watch them develop.

The idea is that they will be shown at Fresh Air Sculpture at Quennington, Near Cirencester next June when hopefully the pandemic will be behind us and life will have returned to a new normal. Meanwhile I just keep on stitching and that sustains me. Keep safe everyone and take the image of the acorn with you. As James Canton says it is a great symbol of Hope.
 

October Perpetual Nature Journal.

Here are my October pages. Mostly leaves, nuts and berries. Perhaps not so many entries as some months but it will fill up over the years, if I can keep on with it. I love doing it and can see my drawing improving over the last few years. Well that sounds conceited but seeing that improvement spurs me on. National Lockdown has just been announced so there may be more time for drawing but we have stayed quietly at home anyway. Enjoy this Autummn colour it has been glorious.

Little Dunnock - ever present in the garden and a real joy to watch ferreting around in the leaf litter.

 

Perpetual Journal September.

September pages from my perpetual journal. What a change from last month - Autumn colours, berries and leaves. We normally go away in September, alas no holiday this year, so there wasn't a lot of drawing from 2019. But we have our new kitchen and Alan has had his hernia operation and mending slowly so we can't complain. Just to stay well is a bonus and counting our blessings.Love to you all who read this blog x

 

Wild flowers of the Cotswolds in stitch.

I have been working on this piece for 3 years. Not continually but as July comes around and these flowers are on the ridge in the hay meadow close by. Finally finished it ! The flowers are cushion calamint, scabious, bladder campion, knapweed, ox-eye daisy, and lesser bindweed or convolvulus. The butterfly is a common blue or though they are not so common any more. It is 40 cm x 14 cm - so long and thin, not ideal for photography. Trying to finish a few summer pieces before we get deeply into Autumn.

 

Summer cloth - slow stitching and hand embroidery.

I have been working on this summer cloth for the last 6 weeks. very enjoyable too ! The circles came from my large circular meditation cloth - same motif around the border. I used colours from the garden and wild flowers. The birds, butterflies etc outlines came from the drawings on tracing paper I make to transfer drawing to cloth. I end up with pages and pages of these outlines and they are beautiful in thier own right. I just put the ideas togther to contrast.

The idea is to conjure up all the things I like about summer. An evocation of the season. A rejoicing too. As it takes so long to stitch it like recording time within the work. Looking at some pieces I can remember the music or story I was listening to as I stitched. Thats why embroiderers were sometimes accused of magic and witchcraft. They trapped things into the stitches. Lets hope I have caught summer here and can loook at it in the long dark cold days of winter. It will be shown at Quenington next June.

 

Perpetual Journal August 2020

August journal. Its been a busy month and now its over we have a new kitchen so its all been worthwhile. We have never had a new fitted kitchen and all our appliances were very old so this has been a complete change. Meanwhile in the great outdoors, the seasons have moved on and cooler nights and an abundance of fruits and berries means Autumn has come.

 

Glos Guild Gallery now at Chapel Arts, Cheltenham.

The Guild has moved tempororaliy to Chapel Arts in Cheltenham while the Museum has building work done. This new gallery is only aprox 100yds down the road from the Museum (away from town, same side of the road.)It will be open 10-4 Weds to Sat. Do go and see the new gallery and have a chat to Jo our wonderful gallery manager. It opens today (Aug 5th)

These are the four new pictures I have for sale there.

July perpetual nature journal.

 Here are my pages from July in my perpetual journal. As you can see some pages are filling up and it really is such a colourful time of year. We have had a real mixture of weather - warm again now and a brilliant year for butterflies. We are joining in with The Big Butterfly Count and spotted 8 different species in our garden yesterday. 

Little book of lockdown 2

 I finished the second little book, this one inspired by walks and the garden during lockdown. If you follow my Instagram account you will have seen this patches in the making.

 The hay is being cut and baled up. Always in this field there is a ridge that can't be cut and so the wild flowers are left to prosper. My next piece of work is about this ridge.

 It was thrown up during the second world war as tank defences, or so the story goes. It is always interesting to see what flowers and when.

 Knapweed.

I love Scabious and its delicate shades of mauve.