printing on wood and piles of wood

I've been printing a lot of circles onto very thin sheets of veneer this week which is very satisfying.  The  grain of the wood looks lovely through the printing in a way that my inadequate camera will never convey!

There is also a lot of chopping and sawing going on here - after all the recent wind a lot of branches were down locally and so our wood pile has been growing nicely.  These logs look beautiful too, with the white wood, dark bark and patches of lichen covering them.  

So it turned out to be a wood based week for us all.

girls with unusual pets...

I like the idea if having an unusual pet.  Something to make the neighbours talk...
A small armadillo, a pelican, a tank full of leeches??

In my sketchbook I have been drawing girls with pets for quite a while and finally got round to carving three of them in lino last month.  Here is number one.  This lass has a very large cat...

There is a certain amount of silliness in setting myself the task of turning line drawings into lino prints and maybe a screen print would be the way to go, but as it is has mostly been raining this year I didn't have much else to do in May.

Next post I will probably show you some logs in the sunshine as I have now turned to sorting out the swamp/jungle/chaos of my outside habitat...

last week

Last week our garden blew down and then all the bits were washed away by the rain.

It's been an extreme garden de-clutter...

As all the alliums were lying down, very much in the slug zone, I've been enjoying having them in the house instead and they are lasting brilliantly.  Look at this beauty (in front of a newly painted wall, colour 'Mouldy Dolphin' for house decorating fans...)

 We spent the rest of the week playing tug-of-war in full waterproofs with some neighbours and then retreated indoors to do marbling.

We did an awful lot of marbling because it is completely addictive and very magical.  If we know you and you have a birthday coming up you may recognise the wrapping paper on our soon-to-be-delivered gift....