Lovely day out to the Yorkshire coast today, managed to miss the April showers altogether. I don’t think we’ll be so lucky the rest of the week!
Postcardy pics first then some gorgeous textures.
Whitby
Sandsend
Groynes at Sandsend
Weathered cross-bedded sandstone, Whitby pier
Textilia III’s latest exhibition opens soon at the beautiful Farfield Mill, near Sedbergh (that’s on the Cumbrian edge of the Yorkshire Dales).
If you’d like an invitation to the preview on 5th May, just let me know – I’d love to see you there!
Previously scheduled to end in June, this exhibition at Sheffield Millennium Gallery will now continue until October.
My “Sea Forms 1” piece (above), inspired by plankton, is included along with another about Coral Bleaching, and lots of wonderful work by other artists/makers in a wide variety of media.
“Under the Sea explores the beauty and importance of the oceans, their significance for our planet and what we as individuals can do to help protect them for the future.”
See my earlier post for more info.
This week I’ve had to knuckle down and produce a few more of my “Botanic” bowls. I’d completely sold out of the two most popular designs, Cottage (or Country) Garden and Meadow. It always takes me a little while to remember exactly how to do them, regain the knack, but I think they worked OK. I don’t have a pattern as such, so every one turns out slightly different – that’s the way I like it!
These two are now in my Etsy shop.
Cottage Garden
Meadow
Loved this month’s images from Underwater Eden, and I think one or two of the samples might lead somewhere! As always, they’re very different to the work I’m doing for exhibition and sale – which is the whole point.
Week 9: Slate Pencil Sea Urchin
Free machining.
Week 10: Jewel Anemones
Organza coloured with transfer paints, free machine embroidery, cut out using soldering iron.
Week 11: Northern Red Anemone
Hand stitch in two shades of fine woolly yarn.
Week 12: Urn Tunicates
Flower stitcher zigzag circle on velvet, cut and pierced with soldering iron, green felt behind to show through holes.
Week 13: Skin of a Lunartail Grouper
Merino fibres and commercial felt applied with embellisher machine.
What a week we chose for a bit of time off! The weather has been amazing and nature has gone crazy.
A highlight was a trip to Farndale, in the North York Moors NP, where millions of gorgeous wild daffodils carpet the banks of the little river Dove and the woods and fields beside it.
Unbelievable (and worrying) to have temperatures of 23c up there in March; it’s rarely that hot in summer.
Another sunny day was spent at Leighton Moss RSPB reserve, where we enjoyed watching all kinds of water birds including a rare visiting glossy ibis, plus marsh harriers. Quite a few butterflies too. But the avocets are still my favourites, so elegant and dainty.
This picture was taken with a compact camera at x40 digital zoom, hand held! Not too bad? The birds weren’t still for a moment, and neither were my hands, apparently; this is the only photo where I managed to catch a beak!
Today it’s cooler but sunny again, and I’ve seen wood anemones, violets, primroses and even bluebells in flower just up the road in Strid Wood, Bolton Abbey. Lovely, but far too early – I think I’d rather savour each stage of spring in turn over a couple of months.
