beauty and silence

The weather is almost heartbreakingly beautiful at the moment, as though we are being rewarded, or perhaps gentled along through this great pause that has been forced upon us. Yet that awareness is always balanced by the knowledge that there is heartbreak across the globe as more folk die of this contagion.

Here in the garden and in my trips to the shops for necessities I am aware all the time of the background silence. It extends the physical space that surrounds me, by giving access to distant sounds, normally drowned by the constant buzz of traffic and other human generated noise; crows in the trees across the valley, "thank you NHS clapping" in the streets surrounding us on a Thursday evening. We are five minutes away from one of the main routes along the south coast, in fact the only route West from Dover unless you choose to go up to the M25, so not some delightful rural backwater. Our home is in the outskirts of a conurbation that basically stretches across 3 small towns at the edge of the sea. Even more so, I am struck by this silence.

I noticed today that I was being tickled by the sense of some echo of this silence within myself, a deep feeling of rightness about it. Then I realised, this is what the world sounded and felt like in my childhood; there was so much less traffic that you could actually hear; rather than living in a state of constant unconscious filtering, you could truly feel the space you were surrounded by.

Even more beautiful just now is the expanse of the night, as the young moon nestled in darkness watches Venus throwing her clear light down to us.

where stuff happens

This little mouse came to me from Steph during the DBM episode. She said I needed to get in touch with my inner mouse! It has now found its true role in life, as indicator of my having decamped to "The Workshop" - the idea being that I place it on the dining table where the Good Man cannot miss it.

"The Workshop" is our garage, never used for cars, with the addition of a very fine sink, a water heater, some random furniture, a print bench, and two skylights for natural light

The rug in front of the sink was hooked by Mum back in the early 1960s to her own design which sat in front of her gas fire all of my life. It is now sadly on it's last legs, but gives me a soft spot to stand when working there and is a link to her. Our coastline hangs on the wall, four pathfinder maps laminated to a large board, so I know where I am in case I get lost - a project from many years ago. Some ancient mirrors and one of Jen's GCSE artworks, also from long ago give the end where the garage doors are some interest.

Looking the other way, there is a door to the back garden, which means I can go in and out from the back of the house. There are shelves and cupboards for storage, and I am beginning to get things organised

In the corner by the garage door is my ponder spot, two chairs of Cecil's, one an upright beautifully caned chair, the other a little low legged upholstered chair which used to sit by her bed and hold her clothes ready for the morning. Again, I have known it all my life and it is another link to deeply loved people. Here it is, still holding clothes, but this time my workshop apron and clothkits smock

On the bench in the foreground is one of my Coronavirus project pieces, the textures I was collecting from the garden to reflect activities that have been part of our isolation experience. I did further rubbings yesterday and have now added a new layer of dye.

The other place that "stuff" happens is here. In theory it is the spare bedroom. In reality it is my sewing and "whateverothercraftactivityI'mdoing" room. Yes it is a bit of a muddle, but I know where everything is (honest)! One of Nanya's oil paintings hangs above the fireplace.

I can sit and plot and design and cut out stuff, and baste things together at the table (another piece of Cecil furniture). I can clamp my little tapestry loom to it's edge (yes, I'm tapestry weaving again) to do a bit of weaving, and on the table behind me is my sewing machine to stitch things together. The room is south facing, so again plenty of natural light to see by.

I am thankful every day that I have these places to retire to and explore the various creative activities that bring me joy - I know that many have much less. I am thankful too for the network of folk who share these interest with me. In particular Christine's wonderful transferral of Studio 11 to an online space has encouraged me to really make use of my garage-workshop. It has been a long time coming, but walking in there every day, turning some music on and using the things I have gathered together over the years to explore the current Studio11 projects is a huge pleasure.

I hope you too are finding time for creativity in the these strange lockdown days

Corona creativity

Because we are unable to gather at Studio 11 for our monthly creative delights with Christine, she has, in her usual undefeatable resilience, put together an online course for those of us who want to continue exploring cloth and stitch. Her suggestion was that we work on the theme uppermost in our minds at the moment which is, of course Covid-19.

What an unprecedented experience for all of us, both close and far - something which will probably redefine "normal" for most of us once we have got beyond this stage of lockdown For us, me and my dear man, life is in many ways unchanged, we are both retired, but the loss of weekly markers, Bridge for him, various things for me, lends a sense of timelessness to days, a stasis which is quite hard to rise above.

The garden has provided a retreat and sanctuary space for both of us, and as I have sat out there I have been much more mindful of my surroundings. The extra level of hush brings birdsong to the fore; an aircraft passing above is something to remark on, rather than ignore; the textures of things around me, visual textures and sounds, are things to focus on and enjoy. So, I spent some time taking rubbings of things, first on paper with a simple wax crayon - some came I was very happy with,

So focusing on those I liked, I took some cotton out into the garden to collect again, this time with candle wax. The marks are there, but could be more definite, what you can't see here are the lovely contact marks the dye made on the back of the cloth. I will add more marks, and more colour, and see where we get. Had I thought, I could have left the first layer of wax on, taken a second layer of marks and then added colour, but I was too hasty with wanting to see what it looked like so it has all been washed away. I will do my best to overlap the rubbings so I retain some of those white marks

The other thing we did was to look at the imagery attached to the virus, drawing it in various different ways. I played with stitching and clamping, linen and ramie, to see what shibori methods could do to evoke that spiky ball - lots to think about here, and to play with some more