Armadale Pop Up 2026

 We had a marvellous weekend of art - chatting and talking and sharing and selling - and we were both, as they say in the classics, knackered by the end of it!

We went from an empty hall to a display and set up, with tea and coffee and tables for sitting and chatting and a warm welcome for everybody.

It was one of those misty grey days - but our signs were bright and cheery!

Such a great hall.

The kitchen area for self-serve tea, coffee and biscuits.

Tables for sitting and chatting and having a cuppa. Hydrangeas from our garden, plants gifted by a neighbour who had taking cuttings from her mother's garden in the Netherlands  - a long history and they are still giving.

Barry's watercolours displayed on the grey plinths we made for my exhibition Hame back in 2024. We gifted them to the Museum afterwards for their ongoing use and we can now borrow them back for art shows. Such a lovely circle.

Some of Barry's shiny stuff.

Some of my shiny stuff.

My display trick! I kept the earrings on their black inserts; but propped them on pebbles. Worked brilliantly.

My Conversations with Women Friends cards look great against the black with their mad tangles of red thread.

And my Glimpses.

It truly was another wonderful weekend. We were both amazed at how many people stopped by and by the way they engaged with our work and its stories, and how generous they were in their purchases.

It is nice to have such a great venue in our small village, and so great to have so many wonderful locals and visitors to share art with.

Now to do all the wrapping up and finishing up... have just washed the table cloths today; delivered artworks yesterday and returned the plinths; paying for the hall and doing the banking remain...

Skittery and scattered

It is always of interest to me how the jet lag plays out. I am utterly functional and can do pretty much everything, but I get tired at odd hours, and occasionally wake at inopportune times, but one of the things I notice most is how hard it is for me to settle into making.

And so it has proven once again. My mind has been turning over lots of new ideas and plans, but the sitting down and starting takes time. I have happily researched and investigated, purchased some things like Letraset, been on the hunt for old wooden cotton reels and the like, but the actual doing? Not so much.

These cotton reels have got me thinking...and I would love to find some more of the taller ones so am having a happy time sticking my nose into every charity shop or collectable shops and sorting through the haberdashery. As an aside, before we left a friend told me about a friend of hers, who volunteers at a haberdashery op shop. An op shop/charity shop just for haberdashery and sewing notions! What a splendid idea. 

Out our bedroom window each night, the sky is always worth a look, especially this portion of the hill with the fence line.  I keep looking at it and wondering what it is trying to tell me. The best I have done so far is it feels like the fence is stitching the land to the sky. As if it is joining the celestial to the corporeal. There is something in there I want to explore... just not sure exactly what it might be.

I have been thinking about containing small amounts of text in 5cm x 5cm squares. I started out with just my handwriting in capitals, and then turned the square around and over wrote it. It makes an interesting texture. Very dense. Completely illegible. Looks a bit scary. Not sure it is saying what I want it to say just yet.

This is pretty typical of this time. Things are saying something, but I am not yet grasping them. Or I am not yet able to get them to say the right things! This too shall pass.

I have drawn some lines in the next square for my next thought...

And so, instead, I continue to look at the landscape, soak in the softness and the light and get inspired in so many different ways.

The cottage with the hillside of crocosmia/montbretia we have planted dazzling and bright.

Sunlight on the hay and the crofts. More fence lines...

Looking out along a headland.

The mist was in.

The late evening sun caught this line of cloud above the hill line. It was like a bright torn edge of some paper. Or worse - like a fire pouring over the hill.

And bringing some of the garden into the cottage.

Softly, softly. Gently, gently. The making will return.

Safe arrivals

We are back at the cottage safely, after a smooth travel experience - not something you can bank on these days. We had several fall back strategies should the air space over the Gulf be closed...

We spent our first night in Scotland at Pitlochry - a favourite spot to wander around. It is a sight to behold with its many baskets of hanging flowers; and this time we also got to visit the Book Shop at the Pitlochry Railway Station. What a brilliant idea this is - who hasn't sat at a train station wishing they could buy a book for the journey?

All books are donated and all sales go to the six charities they support. We got a couple of goodies and a cook book!

I think I need to find me a railway station with a vacancy....

And so to the cottage where the summer of rain has meant we have loads of growth - we have apples, potatoes, flowers and plenty of weeds!

We have since weeded the apple and hydrangea garden and it looks much better now! Before we left in May we planted out several containers with potatoes. They look utterly straggly, but we have harvested one pot and eaten them all!

Flowers are still going strong and I have brought some into the house just to keep the smiles going.

Out in the rockery.

Some of the wee heather remains on the hillsides.

And the cove looked majestic on our first morning here...

'Tis good to be back.

Glimpses

 I have been working on finalising three verses/poems that reflect some of our time in Scotland.

I have called the series Glimpses. Each one is a glimpses of a scene I have become familiar with, and fond of, in the north of Scotland.

The chaffinches that visit our kitchen window are absolute favourites and still stop me each and every time. Yet, they move so swiftly I often only catch a glimpse. 

The changing nature of the hillsides as the seasonal colour changes take effect, incrementally, yet creating such vast contrasts, inspired glimpses of the turning.

 

Trees of the blanket bog came about following a conversation with my brother in Australia:

 

“It’s Autumn there now isn’t it?” he said; “How’s the colour?”

 

I turned and looked out the window.

 

“The colour’s more down south, like Perthshire, up here, we don’t really have trees”.

 

And I told him what we have instead are power poles. That these are our ‘trees of the blanket bog’; and how at certain points in our regular drive, we glimpse them, scratching the sky.

I have been working on them with my beautiful new typewriter and some lovely Japanese papers. 

There were typos, and layout mistakes, one time I didn't return far enough and the new line started in an indented position...so many things to focus on.

I was working towards using the Moleskine notebooks I mentioned back here...but after attempting to glue

the paper onto the lightweight page part, I was disappointed with the buckling and the way in which it flattened and deadened the lovely paper. So...B was right! And I had to ponder what to do instead. 

In the interim, I went and worked on my second doodle page - which was calming and mind-emptying, so I didn't get too het up about my failure.

I knew the typed pages were good and showed promise. I had stitched the typewritten page to another page of the same paper and they created a lovely framed/bordered look. But then what to do with them?

I tried them out on some Arches Velin paper, cut as if to make a cover. I liked the look, but then thought about attachment. Would I sew right through them into the cover? That was problematic as any sewing would cut through the words which were split over the gutter of the page. Glueing them was another option - but I really didn't like how much it deadened the work and didn't let it feel alive.

So I did a mock up in plain paper and much smaller than the real thing. And wondered how it would go if I simply machine stitched from the stitched border to the top; and from below to the bottom?

This was functional - it held the paper page in place; but also met the form requirement of letting the page have lift and life. Felt like I was onto a winner!

And so I went and folded the page and set each page into a cover and sewed from the border to the top and to the bottom. And left the threads...

And attached the title to the front of the cover. And they were done.

I have made four of each verse, and now I know what I want to do, I have the capacity to make more. But this is a good start, in readiness for the Pop Up in Scotland in August.

Departing and arriving

We left the cottage on a bright sunshiny day, just right for a road trip.

We made it to Aberfeldy, one of our favourite places to stop, and settled in for the night. In the morning the mist and low cloud was in as we visited some Standing Stones nearby.

 

Which seemed to echo, or mirror, our morning walk in Maleny this morning!

We have arrived safely and are happily settling back into life and friends and community here.

Arrival...

 We have landed safely at the cottage and are settling into our rhythms and routines. Spring is being tempestuous and still hasn't settled into a reliable sense of warmth or steadiness, but we are enjoying the moments in all weathers.

Here is a compilation of our first week - some of the things we love and enjoy.

As we drove North.

The cottage.

The daffodils - one (or more) of every sort that is flowering at the moment.

The first of the lambs are arriving...

Hanging with our friends...

A drive along past Ben Hope.

And as ever, the light, the light! 

Morning walk sun showers...

'tis good to be back...