a print queue

sometimes I can't wait to print each lino block as soon as it's finished and see the results of all the patient gouging and find out if the plan has worked and all the words are the right way around and all is well....


this time I've started saving them up ready for a big self-indulgent printing day (maybe friday morning if the mood takes me!) when everyone else will be banished from the house and the fact that I still haven't built any kind of drying rack will mean that they might not be allowed back for a couple of days...

allotmenteering

We've ended each of the last few days with a visit to the allotment, once the 'cool' of the evening arrives, to recover from days crabbing and rockpooling, playing with friends at the park and cycling miles in the sun.

Today we took fish and chips (with mushy peas) and ginger beer.

Even without rain the weeds are flourishing but once I plant my courgette and squash jungle out they will not stand a chance - the lounge is fast becoming a no go area as the seedlings turn into plants, you can almost hear them growing and indoor watering is starting to take nearly as long as outdoor...

days out instead of working

I'm easily persuaded to be outside when the weather is on summer setting and school holidays are happening around me.  We stopped at Raglan Castle in South Wales on the way back home this week.  It's great - it's rambling, ruinous and pretty precarious at the top of towers and ancient staircases.  Last time we went a reenactment society fired a cannon just as our then 3 year old history fan walked through the entrance, so he didn't make it very far ...this time, 3 years older he was disappointed that they weren't there....

New prints are coming though - early May deadlines are starting to beat the weather on my priority list and the world needs a picture of birds in pajamas...

p.s. are we allowed to ask for rain??  I'm getting tired of watering the same teeny tiny seedlings at the allotment each day - big grateful plants at the height of summer are fine as I can see the food growing but tiny specks of green that don't seem to be getting bigger....

rumbling tummy time

We've been in deepest Wales, where mobile phones don't work and internet connections are via phone lines and really, it's not worth the fiddling - hurray.  No contact with the outside world and no reason to look at a watch, just going by rumbling tummy time...

Helping on the farm in the sun, we found the perfect useful job for all ages - clearing the hay fields of mole hills so that the mower blades don't get blunt from chopping through all the little mounds in the summer.  Big people can use spades and see it as a challenge to clear the whole field, but smaller people can kick them down and race about or carefully take them apart with a garden trowel until they are perfectly level...

and I thought I'd share one of my favorite pictures 'Puffin Race', because I'm just having the last one framed up this week and then they are all gone and I'm quite sad about that as I won't see them all again!

National Beanpole week 23 April - 1 May

Image via here

It's national beanpole week on the 23rd April.  We’re all being encouraged to live more sustainably and during National Beanpole week, we are being asked to think twice about using imported bamboo canes, when setting up our trellises and wigwams this spring ready for your beans and sweet peas.

I for one (and most of my allotment site) are guilty of using canes, when we could choose locally grown hazel beanpoles cut from Britain’s coppiced woodlands. Monty Don on Gardeners World is always enthusing on the merits of hazel poles. They look gorgeous, rustic, and traditional.

Have a look at the website www.beanpoles.org.uk for more information on events and where to find a locally coppiced poles.

I am getting rid of my bamboo canes and the allotment, you should too!
x

it's a high tech business

it's not just anyone who can take up lino printing - just look at the huge amount of equipment needed...

I've never used a press for printing since leaving college and find my trusty box wood burnishing tools (on the right) to be the best - but if you look closely you can see how worn out the edges are, all those hundreds of prints have taken their toll, and now there's some awful news...my suppliers no longer sell them.  eeeek.  There's nothing better in my world for getting my prints exactly right.  If anyone knows an art shop with a dusty drawer full let me know, I can't imagine anyone did a roaring trade, but I need a new one about every three years...

favourite pictures

Have you ever seen the images that Edward Bawden created for the London Underground?  They are fantastic and we have a few prints of them around the house.  This is my favourite...

but there are lovely ones for London's Parks and Gardens as well - what a great advertising campaign.

In holiday news we are mostly eating!  It's nearly 10.30 in the morning, so breakfast is a distant memory for some and a feast of bagels and quails eggs is now being demolished.  Only a couple of hours 'til lunch when another vast spread will be needed...I expect we can fit snacks in around all these meals too.

choosing pictures for shows

I'm busy choosing pictures for shows, ready to sort out frames and lists and prices, and think I'm going to go with this picture "Crowds get bigger towards the back" although it's a little different from some of the things I normally supply to galleries.  Some in our house find it a bit creepy though...

We've been playing outside all week as well, visits to allotments, bike riding and a day at Bristol Zoo filling our days quite well so far - a bit greyer today so a good chance to refill the cake box and make some flapjacks after all those great picnics have emptied the cupboards!  Small people seem to roam the house all day saying "i'm hungry" and there really is nothing left here that counts as food in their world...

lots of projects

We've all been busy with lots of projects recently - all really important and being taken very seriously by the participants!!  Have you seen the Little Drifters Project  from last year?  A day in the woods last weekend resulted in our creation, made entirely of things that were found...

and best of all it floated really well!  HOORAY

then a few minor adjustments were made and it started taking on water, so only a picture from the dry dock where it now is for repairs...

and I'm now speed lino cutting in order to get the huge list of new images I've written for myself ready for the beginning of May - luckily it's the Easter holidays so I'm getting plenty of quiet time each day to keep on track, aaaargh...

keep on cutting...

I'm trying really hard to do a whole lot of lino cutting at the moment - art fairs and art trails are approaching fast  - but it's sunny and school holidays and I suddenly have an urge to reorganise the entire house, a very bad thing to do today with weekend visitors coming and two energetic helpers...

...I've also got a box of cotton sitting next to me waiting to be made into summer clothes and that is suddenly urgent too, as summer is here.  I can never resist the colours and can probably spare the time to put them in rainbow order first, because things like that are important, 

 and then back to the lino.

zing

I couldn't resist these zingy oranges at the fruit shop this morning in the fantastic spring sunshine...

Are we in the mood for school holidays OR WHAT!!

girl with duck feet

this picture belongs to the category 'pictures that just happened on their own' and therefore cannot be explained - I do however find the image strangely pleasing and am sure it must relate to something deeply repressed!

busy vegetable day

today is grey, everyone here is coughing and has somehow ended up not at school - it was meant to be my day at the allotment...

so with soil and seedlings in my mind we've spent morning making tiny flags for our own special seedling pots and planted the biggest seeds we could find, for me the most exciting plants on the veg patch, THE PUMPKINS AND SQUASHES

we've planted 25 so may need to build an extension in the Autumn just to store them - lets be optimistic about our growing skills!

lots of other babies are doing well too - lettuces, sunflowers, sweetpeas, tomatoes, cabbages and caulis are all still safely inside away from slugs and weather...

last year we lost lots of things to the local wildlife, but I'm sure waving this bag at them all this year will make the difference!    

slugs however, as everyone knows, can't read...

works in progress...

I've been working on a few new prints this month and have printed proofs of the designs.  I love how linoprints look when blown up big and my teatowels designs are turned into screenprints this way to make the most of this....

here are a couple of larger than life sections of prints...

and in gardening news, our christmas Amarylis is finally about too open, having done nothing for ages and then grown two feet tall in the past month...I love them!