Time again in Scotland

 We have returned to the cottage, as Autumn begins its ease into winter. A long journey but always wonderful to arrive, home again.

On the drive North we stopped at Carn Liath broch and had a wonderfull wander around in the sunshine.

The sung glittered on the sea, beyond a field of wheat I think.

My daily photos from the headland are of sky, sea and land, and here are a couple of favourites so far.

Being back has meant some wandering around and discovery of 'old stuff' like these ropes within an old abandoned boat.

Rusty nails are forever favourites.

And I did begin to play with some art ideas. Here are some swatches of some watercolour pencils we have here, as I begin to think about an abstracted landscape image.

You can see where I am trying to go...

Roughly coloured in, and now to just add water!

And of course, a visit to the cove means more beautiful stones - these are the starting point for more solace stones I hope...

Apologies for the lack clarity on a few photos - working on the laptop and still sorting things out!

Thursday Thoughts...

“The meaning of life is to find your gift. The purpose of life is to give it away.” 

 Pablo Picasso

This quote has sat in my long list of possible quotes for years and I like the way in which he succinctly explores both the meaning and the purpose of life.

I daresay that if you asked a business person or a farmer or an astronaut for their thoughts on this they may respond differently - yet as I look at it,  perhaps they all understand that their skills are gifts too?

As ever the balance between a search for yourself and what matters to you and/or is unique, and a self-indulgent focus on yourself to the exclusion of others, is at play, but I don't think we are at the extremes here.  

As well, I like the approach that says once you have found it, your purpose is to give it away.  Picasso probably did that in spades, but for the rest of us it may mean sharing it. Giving things away isn't always possible for a whole bunch of reasons, but I do like that the generosity of spirt is at the heart of his thinking here.

Stitching

 I do love a bit of hand stitching, and in particular making useful things with just hand sewing.

Not yet making my way into full on dressmaking by hand (insert startled emoji), I have been having fun sewing pencil cases and small pouches.

I mentioned my replacement jewellery purse here but when I went to use it, I found the small flat tin I usually put my small pieces in; didn't quite fit. I wasn't all that surprised as at no point in time had I thought to check if it would! Mmmm no points for planning there.

So I began again and got into quite a few bits and pieces. 

I made several lovely needle cases, using the handprinted linen remnants from Ink and Spindle.

And some lovely pencil cases

And some extra purses/pouches.

And a jewellery pouch/purse which does actually fit my little jewellery tin -yay!

Apart from my personal pouch/purse I will have the other bibs and bobs for sale at the Watten Market on 24 September.

Flowers, threads, and moons

 It has been a bit of a hither and yon week - bibs and bobs this way and that as we prepare to head off for a while.

It is Spring here and the garden is bursting (as Barry's post earlier this week shows) and the house has been filled with flowers.

Whilst we were weeding down the back I discovered three different types of magnolia which was an unexpected delight.

And given there were flowers galore and the sun was popping its head out a bit, I thought I would try to solar-dye some threads using some blooms I hadn't played with before. Our neighbour joined in and dropped in more flowers, so we have tested quite a few.

White camellias, and snapdragons to the left; lots of pink camellias in the middle, and a purplish daisy and red geranium on the right.

The boldness of this red geranium made me very happy,.

 

And the blue from the purplish daisy was also looking promising.

As ever, things fade in the rinsing. This time I rinsed in salted boiling water, which didn't seem to make any difference. This pale flecked pink that remained was still lovely.

And the blue had softened almost to sage - also quite delicate and lovely.

The pink camellias gave a really strong, warm brown which will work well with the pink I think. So lots of fun has been had; with more to come with summer flowers I hope. 

And an almost full moon as we walked late last night. The sky was dramatic and rather wonderful.

Thursday Thoughts...

"Being creative is not so much the desire to do something as the listening to that which wants to be done: the dictation of the materials." 

Anni Albers

I always think when you hear people speak about the conversation an artist or maker has with their work, that you know that they get it.

I sometimes find that materials tell me what they want to be; at other times I make because I simply need to make.  Most often tho I think it is a dance, a meeting in the middle.

I will be wondering or thinking about an issue or a topic, reading about it, writing short notes, trying to make it make sense for me. Realising (or not) that I want to say something about it, as she suggests in the first part of the quote  - the desire to do something.

This then leads to the listening part of the conversation - what is around me, what does the idea say to me, what can the things I see or do suggest? And often this arrives in flash - I can see clearly what the thing needs to be. I haven't directed that this be so - I have simply paid attention to the things I know and see, and they have subconsciously forged the idea.

At other times I struggle, investigate options - sometimes I try to drive it too much.

Of late, I have come to realise that I sometimes say to myself - push your boundaries, do something wild, do something different. And in the end I keep coming back to things that I feel best represent me and the things I want to say, and how I want to say them.

In the end,  I listen.

Postcards Home

 I stitched away merrily with this book - stitching the pages as planned, and then letting the rest of the book work itself out. When I make I seem to be a strange mix of planning and prepping; and then reacting and responding.

With this book, there was a fairly even mix of both; and along the way I did less recording than I usually do.

I had stitched three pages; and so I went on to stitch the next three.

Sadly, the first thread I selected was too heavy and too thick. Despite my best efforts it was going to tear the fragile paper and would not sit happily on the surface. So it was replaced.

As mentioned, I didn't record all that well - and here is the first of the pages stitched; and stitched onto its perspex backing, and attached to another. Quite late in the game really. I had originally planned to stitch the page in between two pieces of perspex like a sort of sandwich; but after I had done this for a couple, I realised I much preferred the texture of the paper being available, rather than contained. So I unstitched the perspex..

Comfrey

Rosemary

Agapanthus

Then it was on to thinking about the covers. I took this little stitched line for a walk with running stitch and thought it worked OK on the soft paper.

And then pierced the title on the page, realising I would need to do a back stitch in order for the lettering to be more fully read.

Called Postcards Home, the book uses three threads I naturally solar-dyed in Maleny; and three threads I dyed at the cottage in Scotland, bringing them together in a way...

I trimmed all the threads except for those that hold the perspex pages together. 

The covers are two sheets of Perspex with a sheet of paper held within them.

The sequence is: Agapanthus, Rosemary, Comfrey - Stinging Nettle, Thistle, Devil's Bit Scabiosus.

Email subscriptions...

 Dear all

If in the past you have received an email in your box letting you know that I have written a new post, you may have missed my blog updates for a week or two.

I previously had subscribers sign up using Feedburner, which for reasons best known to them, Google deleted a few weeks ago. I was initially sceptical of the emails I received saying 'have we got a deal for you'; but soon discovered that in fact, one company actually could replace this service and could help me do it.

So I have hopefully imported all the folk who previously subscribed and we should be able to resume regular transmission.

You should now receive regular emails from follow.it with Paperponderings in the subject title. Maybe check your junk folder if you don't - I blog regularly on Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday (Australian Eastern Standard Time) so you should receive an email sometime after that.

Apologies if you don't. If you are reading this and the transfer didn't work for you, and you would like to re-subscribe then you can find the new subscribe gadget in the right hand sidebar of the blog... or feel free to leave a comment and I will try to sort things out.

Phew.

It has been quite the saga and now I have to go and try to do the same for Barry over at Rustnstuff!

I appreciate each and every person who reads my blog, who comments and who emails me separately and am ever so grateful that you are out there (fingers crossed most of you still are...)

Thanks and go well

Fiona 

The next steps

 Having worked out my piercing and my stitching I have now done three pages. The plan is for three more, and then some covers.

I am still not sure of the final format of this wee book, but hopefully all will reveal itself as I take the next steps. The covers remain a bit of a mystery as well.

My next page was stitched from Thistle thread, once again from Scotland.

My new technique for piercing the holes along the vertical made for slightly better alignment.

The Thistle thread.

Next up was Stinging Nettle thread.

 

And here they are as a trio, soft and muted.

Thursday Thoughts...

"It is our stories that will recreate us, when we are torn, hurt, even destroyed. It is the storyteller, the dream-maker, the myth-maker, that is our phoenix, that represents us at our best, and at our most creative". 

Doris Lessing

In thinking about 'the unprecedented times we live in" I wonder how true these words will hold?

I oftentimes think that the stories we tell ourselves and others, are how we make sense of the world. During the pandemic it seems to me that as we look back we can begin to understand some things; and yet it is not necessarily easy to draw the links to things we are experiencing at this point in the pandemic.

Has there been some sort of unconscious collective agreement that - if we don't write about it, make shows and films about it; if we don't mention its name then perhaps we can all pretend it is over, or it never really happened, or it wasn't really that bad?

I don't really know

I am intrigued by how few movies, novels and theatre productions there are set in the times of the pandemic. I have read one novel by Jodi Picoult which was kind of fascinating; and yet others that purport to be about the issue stray quickly from any direct link to our lived experience.  Are we too frightened to be reminded? 

I think if the storytellers (with books and films and plays) could start telling stories about it, we could all perhaps process things differently. We could as Doris Lessing suggest recreate ourselves. 

Poster by Barry, April 2020.