Happy New Year!

Sorry my blog has been closed for so long. I really wasn't expecting to be so anti-social for all these months.

Review of 2007

• The early part was dominated for me by Soul Collage and builders.
  I thoroughly enjoyed the collaging of cards and going to Ireland for Imelda's Soul Collage workshop. I'd spent 3 months solidly making cards before I went. That seems to have exhausted the seam for me.
• The builders were in because we'd had a very minor leak in our dining room ceiling - they managed to take months to sort this out, needing two rooms completely clear and did a lot more work than I'd imagined was necessary.... I found their presence very difficult - they were all pleasant people it was just the fact that they were in my space and we had all our furniture crammed into the rooms that weren't being worked on - that's what was hard. As Jim works from home and I don't go out to work either there was no escape!
• Whilst I was in Ireland Jim was bagging the last but three of his Munros and then when we were in Scotland in May he collected those as well. The last one was celebrated with as many of his Munro bagging companions as could make it.
• The summer was one of the wettest I've experienced (good job we'd had those builders in to fix the earlier leak) and consequently much cooler than the super-hot summer of 2006. My sister lives in Cheltenham where there was flooding - she'd had a minor flood in 2006 so she'd nagged the council into clearing their street's drains after that - rather tellingly their street was okay when many surrounding ones were not. So their house was not flooded. (One of the most cost effective remedies would be to fund drain clearing properly, that and stop building on flood plains of course. Nothing can help you if you are in standing water but many places were only flooded because of the drains not coping.) They still had to cope with no running water for weeks as the whole area's water supply was hit.
• We took up archery and throughly enjoyed it, even though our club shares its field with chickens.
• In the autumn one of my brother's had a minor heartattack - he had keyhole surgery and is making a good recovery. He's only 47. This and the earlier death of one of my ex-work colleagues brings home one's own mortality and the need to make of life what one can whilst still alive.

Jim and I have always planned to live in Cornwall sometime. We got married there seven years ago as a way of marking this. We've decided that 2008 is the year to do this. Jim's given up his job and we have some things we want to do to this house before we sell it. We've been living here since '96 and although we have done quite a lot there are a few more things to do before we call it finished.

Then we'll cross our fingers that someone wants to buy it despite the gloom in the papers about the property market, after which we'll be able to move to Cornwall and start the next phase of our lives there.

Where am I?

I've turned comments off on this blog as I'm getting quite a lot of spam. I've been able to keep on posting on flickr but haven't the time and energy to manage to be an active blogger. Sorry not to have been visiting your blogs.

My best wishes to you all!

Update: Comments are back on and I'm back!

Playing with photos in Painter

On flickr there is a group called Noise and Dust Through The Viewfinder - on it I found the overlay I've used here by Nesster

The idea is to fake what one sees through the viewfinder of a camera.

However I also played with multiple exposures of the same subject as I thought that this was the ideal place to use the HDR effect. Most people use either specialist software or photoshop to create this type of image - as I haven't got either I'm having a go imitating it in Corel Painter IX.5 and not getting close but loving the effects anyway!

HDR is intended to create an image that is more like what sees than what the camera sees but mine are coming out a good deal less real.

Here are some more:




How real is your life?

What's in my bag?

Jo has just divulged the contents of her bag and suggested other do so too... so here is mine.

A couple of months ago I moved from a relatively large bag to a really small one, however that one couldn't take the strain and I soon had to buy a new one. This is a good size, big enough for what I consider essential without being so big that I'm tempted to put in things that really would be better put in my backpack or shopping bag.

My bag contains:

paper hankies, a camera, sunglasses, mobile (which is almost never switched on - for emergencies only!), comb, keys, wallet and pen

I'm interested to know what you keep on you, what is essential to your existence - in either your jacket pockets or bags... so go on tell me what's in your bag (or those pockets)... or better yet blog it and then let me know you have!

Buying a Car...

Photograph of a Q-reg car (which means its one of a kind) altered in Painter IX.5. I like to think the Q stands for Quirky. I don't know whose car this particular one is I was just drawn to it in the street and love the radiator grill!

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We've been trying to buy a car. We haven't got one yet.

For the last ten years or more we've been very lucky and had Jim's brother's second company car for which we paid monthly, but for which we got a real bargain. Now, at long last, his wife wants the second car - I'd imagined that we'd stop having it as soon as they got married so that's about 7 years extra we've had it!

Now its bye-bye super-duper BMW (even if we always did go for the cheapest!), new every 9-12 months, taxed, insured etc without more effort on our part than simply paying the monthly charge and hello... well what?

• Jim wants a car that he can easily put his band gear in (bass amp, bass, loads of other bits and bobs...).
• It must fit on our drive (which is not long).
• We need something reliable as neither of us knows the first thing about fiddling with cars (and that's despite the fact I grew-up on a garage... my father would be horrified at my total lack of knowledge in this area!)
• And no where near as expensive as a BMW!

The first question is should we buy new or used. In the dim and distant past I've done both before. I was happier with the new car in many ways as the second hand one had problems which it was much harder to get the dealer I bought it from to fix... though they did in the end. (Even longer ago I also had absolute wrecks and have no intention of going back to one of those if I can help it!)


As I said I'm not a car person - but I can get into researching anything (or so I like to think!) - so I have the current issue of What Car?. What caught my eye was the "Shock Report" on the cover about who gets the best deal from car dealers - men or women. Then I read the report.

How many men and how many women would you send out to find out whether its men or women who get the best deals?

And what other aspects do you think you might need to take into account? Maybe age, perceived class, accent, perceived wealth, perceived attractiveness, smell, knowledge about cars, car currently driven, postcode, previous experience in negotiation, shyness...

So how many of each sex would you send out then? 100? 50? 20? 10?

What Car? clearly think they can tell from sending out just one man and one woman! In the report they do admit that negotiating skills vary from person to person but they continue to plug their result as showing that its men that get better deals than women.

Given this abstracting from an overly small subset what use is the rest of the "information" in the magazine? Am I right to abstract from this single example of a very poorly researched article into assuming that all their car tests are equally one-sided?

Of course two cars of the same specification from the same manufacturer are a lot more likely to be similar than two randomly selected men (or women) - maybe that is where they have gone wrong.

My main conclusion is that if there are two of you - go and negotiate separately and take whichever the best deal is that you can get between you!

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So far we have test driven a nearly new Vauxhall Meriva - it has fabulous storage space - Jim especially liked the flat space available when the back seats are down. But it seemed hugely expensive compared to new ones available via brokers on the web. And the salesman wasn't budging on price for either of us!

Have you any experience of buying via a net based broker?

And any suggestions for other cars to look at?

Some art at last!

Wire and wooden beads plus the wooden table below.

Inspired by Elizabeth Berrien's Wire Sculpture Tutorial I got doodling with some wire - however I really wanted to add in springy bits and other objects so I did.

Ever since Jim and I went around the Sculpture exhibition at Trull House at the beginning of May I've been getting more and interested in doing some sculpture again. I did an OCA Sculpture course long ago and discovered then that I was most drawn to assembling things rather than carving, wet clay or moulding. I made enough at the time to also realise that sculptures are not as easy to store as pictures are - even when you are just at the maquette level - so working in a medium where you can take photos and then reuse the parts also suits me well!

I'm going to "doodle" in wire (plus other bits) for a while because its lots of fun.

Any idea what this one might be (or become)?

Crieff & Loch Earn (St Fillans)

1. Welcome to Crief Visitor Centre, 2. Pixie, 3. Black Buddha, 4. Laughing

Created with fd's Flickr Toys.

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I still have some more photos from our Scotland trip so I thought I'd better get on with them - or I might never get round to the ones from Jim's birthday trip to Bath last Thursday! And if you are wondering if I've done any other kind of art recently the answer is no.

Above are some photos from the Crieff Visitor Centre - in general I found these tourist trap places disappointing but I liked this cow and was amused too by the garden centre.


1. Divine Pizza, 2. Superstitious?, 3. Saddlers, 4. Lolly Pop Man, 5. Marmite for Tea?, 6. Sweet Making, 7. Chocolate Hedgehogs, 8. Chocolate Dinosaurs, 9. Millions

We had lunch in Crieff one day and I had the best pizza ever - it really was gorgeous - from Delivino's.

Here are some more photos from St Fillans, the village we were staying in. These mostly feature Loch Earn.



1. Boats on Loch Earn, 2. Gorse, 3. Wood, 4. Tree, 5. Mossy Stone Wall, 6. Ashes, 7. Boulder, 8. Loch Earn, 9. View from bridge, 10. Tree holding a Mirror, 11. Sunset, 12. Church of Scotland, 13. Petal Fall

Staying at St. Fillans

1. Sunlit wood, (centre) 2. Welcome to St Fillans, 3. Twisted tree, (photo by Jim) 4. Wine, 5. Oil lamp with no oil, 6. Rhubarb patch, 7. Plum Tree Cottage, 8. Celtic Design, (photo by Jim)9. Water, 10. Tissue box, 11. Strange faces appear..., (photo by Jim)12. Coffee?, 13. Sheep ornament

Created with fd's Flickr Toys.

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We were incredibly lucky with the holiday cottage that we stayed in for our week in Scotland. The main reason for choosing it was that it was near Jim's final munro and ran its weeks from Sunday - Sunday which meant that he could go up with all his friends on a Saturday. In fact it was such a good cottage that we might well return to it - not something we usually do. We booked this cottage via this website.

Here is an enlargement of the mosaic of the cottage that I embedded in the one above:



The weather was very mixed but I was happy to be in the cottage when it rained!

I was constantly entertained by the birds that visited to feed.



One day we visited a Glen nearby and played with pebbles.


I made the stack and Jim made the flower.

In Callender we saw Scottish Dancing and kilts for sale:



But the souvenir I bought was this - not very Scottish maybe but a crow with character!

Thankyou for bearing with me...

From top to bottom on the left: NW Bear and church, SW Bear, SE Bear, and the big picture is the NE Bear

Created with fd's Flickr Toys.

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I'm back from a holiday with Jim and I'm also ready to be back blogging!
I've been missing you all.

I do still have energy work to do but I think it is now going to be less all-consuming. I don't talk about it much here because its not easy to explain in words.

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The last week we have spent in Scotland.

On the way up we stopped for a night in the Lake District. The "bears" above are from Dacre's churchyard. There are four very old carved stones and the story told is that the main figure is that of a bear.

Going from NW, anti-clockwise, the bears are:

The first one is a sleeping bear.

It looks to me like some sort of creature clutching a post. It either has no head or is holding its head down behind the post.

It is the first of the "bears" visible as one enters the churchyard from the village which might explain why the story starts with it.

The second one is said to be a bear which has been awakened by some sort of creature jumping on its back. So far I've read or heard that this creature is a cat or monkey.

The "bear" is still holding its post. Its head is up and to me it looks as though it is protecting its post jealously.

The third bear is said to be attempting to shake off the creature from its back.

It certainly looks a bit miserable to me. But I couldn't see it shaking!

Still holding onto that post with grim determination.

Incidentally there is a great looking castle in the background of this one.

The fourth and last "bear" is said to have eaten the creature and is very happy with itself.

Or it may simply have got it off its back.

The post is still held onto safely.

Some people say this one looks more like a lion with a mane and a pointy tail. It is definitely grinning.

The "bears" might be Viking or older. I've put up more pictures of Dacre's Bears and Churchyard on flickr.

We stayed in a B&B in the Lake District with wonderful grounds. I was up to catch the dawn light:


1. Misty Dawn Chorus, 2. Dawn on one of Land Ends' ponds, 3. Sunrise, 4. Lake District Dawn

Created with fd's Flickr Toys.

I love the Lake District but this holiday's goal was to enable Jim to achieve his ambition of climbing all the mountains of 3000ft and above in Britain and Ireland before his 40th birthday (which is this Thursday, May 24th) and he'd already done the ones in the Lake District long ago. There are 313 of these mountains and its taken him nearly 20 years - on Saturday he completed the last one with various friends who have been up other Munros with him. (The Munros are the mountains in Scotland over 3000 feet). Despite foul weather they all made it to the top of Ben Chonzie (3048ft) and appeared to enjoy the day!

Jim is the one with his arms upraised in triumph!

This is Jim's photo from flickr taken with a remote control so all those who went to the top of this final Munro with him are in the picture. Later most of them joined us for a celebration meal at the Achray House Hotel which did a wonderful dinner for us.

I'm not in the picture as I have not been up any of the Munros. I prefer less steep walks. I enjoyed the holiday and took loads of photographs - some of which will appear here and even more of which will end up on flickr in the next few days.

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Oh I am glad to be back blogging. It'll take me a while to catch up with you all but I look forward to it!

Gone fishing...

"Goliath Heron" by Birds of Africa & "Fish on a Bicycle" by Daren Greenhow in a brilliant sculpture exhibition now on at Trull House near Tetbury, Gloucestershire. Open 11 am - 5 pm until Sunday 13th May 2007

We found the exhibition by following the signs from the A46 heading north from the M4. Entrance costs £3.50 each. It was well worth it - the gardens are glorious as well as the sculptures - and I'll go again if I have the chance!

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Sorry about the lack of postings recently and the lack of visits to other blogs. I'm currently doing a lot of energy work and that seems to use up the same energy I use for making art and writing either here or for comments.

I'll be back.