weekend work

It was such a lovely weekend and we spent a lot of it at the allotment pottering around in the sunshine.  Several squashes that had been passed over as far too late to come to anything have managed to ripen themselves up nicely as well in this mild spell which is a great bonus - squashes are my main allotment obsession and nothing is more satisfying than not being able to carry them all home.

There is still time to enter my insect giveaway  which is running until midday on 21st October (I promise no live insects will be sent to you if you are the winner) so why not leave a comment there too?

Giveaway

Look it's my first giveaway!!  I'm excited and I can't even enter...

The giveaway is for this 'Dungbeetle' canvas bag - and who wouldn't want to put their shopping into a bag decorated with a ball of poo?

There might even be a couple of other insect related goodies tucked inside for the lucky winner.  All you have to do is leave me a comment (preferably with an insect related anecdote/fact/joke) and a winner will be chosen by the random method of a small child pulling numbers out of a hat (or more likely a bowl, but I'll leave the exact container a mystery for now...) on Friday 21st October.  How simple.

This is an insect giveaway though, so if you hate insects or have a phobia it may not be the giveaway for you...

MY GIVEAWAY HAS NOW ENDED - SORRY YOU MISSED IT!

lino blocks

I thought you might like to see the lino block for 'Cat on Stilts' (well the cat part of it anyhow).  It was one of the images on my previous post, so I wont put that up again, you'll have to scroll down...

Lino blocks often look pretty interesting to me, especially once they have been inked up and a couple of galleries have even asked me to frame up the block alongside prints for shows.  I never have though.  It is a great way of showing people how you make the print!  I was just sharpening up the cat fur in this picture which is why he's covered with 'bits'.


Next post is giveaway post, my first, how exciting.  A clue - it is going to be a useful insect...

ready to go...

A happy day spent up to my elbows in bubblewrap and packing tape.  I'm sending out lots of work to galleries in the next couple of weeks, topping up my fantastic regular stockists and also (fingers crossed) trying three new galleries this Autumn which is very exciting.  I'll let you know who they are once the work is on the way...

Todays parcel is for the gallery at Snape Maltings, who have shown my work for quite a few years now.  If you are in the right part of the country Snape Maltings is well worth a visit, there is always something going on - farmers markets, boat trips, brilliant childrens activities - as well as the concert hall (and gallery!)

I'm sending a few framed and also a big batch of unframed prints - here a couple of my current favourites (are you allowed to have favourites of your own work?) "Malodorous animals" and...

..."Cat on Stilts"...

I can feel an early autumn giveaway coming soon too...

aren't people clever?

I taught a beginners lino printing course last weekend and thought I should show you some of the results.  Everyone was a true beginner and they really went for it, with only a few moments of 'blank page' nerves!

Above is a sheet printed with the test pieces of lino, for trying out tools and getting a feel for cutting before tackling the 'real' thing, but don't they all look great printed together.

Then everyone got stuck in and we all managed to have something printed by the end.  Hurrah.  No blood and no tears.

(In case you think I was being incredibly mean and giving the poor students super bumpy paper to print on, these photos are of the prints they made on the walls of the shop.  Yep, they'd printed all the paper, card and tissue and moved onto the walls....it was that kind of workshop)

I'll be running another of these courses at Paper Village in Bristol on 27th November if you are around. Might be useful for those moved to make their own cards etc for that looming day of the year!

free food

This year a lot of plants have appeared in our garden and allotment that have self seeded.  Once I recognize what the seedling is trying to be I tend to just leave them to get on with it unless they are really in the way.  It's also really interesting to see when they naturally germinate, especially when compared with the ones I am trying to force to grow in little pots way out of season.

This year there was so much self seeding going on that I can only put it down to a complete lack of weeding meaning that everything was pretty well established before I got there.  We had five or six sunflowers in the garden, which had much bigger flowers than the ones we lovingly grew on a windowsill.  We now have five well established alpine strawberry plants which have fruited solidly for the whole summer and are still going now (the one in the swede patch is a little hard to get to, what with all the netting, but worth it for that taste).

And we have tomatoes.  Literally hundreds of cherry tomatoes, mainly yellow and mostly growing in what was the pea patch.  They are sweet and delicious and out performing everything in pots in the garden.  Now we are on a full tomato diet as they will end as soon as the weather turns and people are starting to complain about tomatoes with tomato sauce for dinner again...I love it because they taste great and are all free...

...so I have 'sun-dried' several trays full in the oven, put pints of yellow pasta sauce in the freezer and tonight we have made yellow tomato ketchup.

lino printing workshop

 
This weekend I will be running a lino printing workshop at Paper Village in Bristol as part of their HUGE printing project.


It is running this Autumn with workshops in nearly everything printwise.  I'll be there this Saturday though, helping people get to grips with the tools and hopefully not wiping up too much blood...