writing, past and present

These are probably my two favourite gifs from Christmas, not that I received a great haul of presents, but from the little pile at the base of the Christmas tree, these got the biggest smile. They are, of course, related, both being to do with scribing. 

The book, a gift from my husband, which I saw reviewed a little while ago, is about one of my favourite types of historical artefacts, manuscripts. A few years ago I was given a similar book, Meetings With Remarkable Manuscripts, by Christopher de Hamel. That was a wonderful read, bringing one into the quiet spaces of many great libraries of the world to sit, with him, and pore over their treasures. It will reward a second reading at some stage, but for now I will content myself with my newest gift. I have only just started but already I find myself enjoying her writing style and looking forward to what I shall learn within; little snippets of the past like her comment about a scribe from the 13th-century known only as "The Tremulous Hand". She talks in the introduction about how manuscripts tell us so much about the hidden past, if we just take the time to look closely. I am anticipating many more similar pleasures as I wander through the rest of the book.

The second gift, a stylus for my iPad from my daughter, has been a revelation in the way it allows for so much more sensitivity in playing about with the several drawing apps I have installed over the years. Not that I create any images of value, but it is fun to pootle about drawing this and that, exploring colour, seeing how they work. Until now I have just had my finger or the rather clumsy little "pens" with a squishy rubber tip which don't enhance one's efforts, however amateur, a great deal. With this I can see clearly what I am doing, and because it is weighted, it sits in the hand like a proper pen, being therefore a great deal more responsive to the hand's movements. I has allowed me to explore one of my favourite poems, one I read at Mum's funeral, and one that she and Ganna also loved, and often recited with each other, passing lines back and forth between them. Using Amaziograph, it is written within an image repeated in rotation around the "page", As I wrote I enjoyed the effect that the differences in line length make as they are pushed out from the centre. Layers allow one to fiddle about with the background and add graphical bits that echo the ripples on the lake shore and the fluttering of the linnet's wings.

So, two fine pleasures to enhance the new year. I hope you also have some joys to look forward to in 2022

A Lull

I'm in the real doldrums at the moment with my stitching and textiles in general. I've nearly finished the first of my stitch pieces for the Guild, but just can't settle to finishing it.

I've still got my ordered squares of linen I took to Birmingham to work on, but have done very little since except stitch them all down to the background. I have a Studio11 session tomorrow, and am feeling all squirbled because I have done no preparation and have no idea what I'm going to do at all, except take pleasure in the space to just be and perhaps ponder. I will at least put some threads together for the linen squares and take my Guild piece to finish!

In part I think it's probably down to some health issues. For several years I've had an intermittent nagging pain in my midriff. Having had some keyhole surgery go disastrously wrong a while ago now, I'd always put it down to aftereffects from this - you don't want to see the scars, I look quilted!! Then, in the week before we went off to the Lakes it got considerably worse for a number of days; so much so that we wondered if we'd go at all, but it settled down to bearable. Since we got back I've been for an ultrasound scan, always a fascinating process, such magical technology. It turns out, I have gallstones! A veritable constellation of them in fact, so my good doctor and I decided today that it's time to sort it out. Expect an announcement of surgery sometime in the future. Hopefully this keyhole will go right ....

Meanwhile I've been reading some treasures. A friend recommended both authors, first Kathleen Dean Moore

Then Kathleen Jamie.

 

Both write wonderfully about being in nature, in very differing ways and in very different places. I've been struck as much by the contrasts as I have by the pleasure of reading. The first, who is American, writes from a philosopher's point of view, and the landscapes she describes could only be those of her homeland. There is a particular quality in what she describes and perhaps also in the way she writes that belongs there; a sense of largeness, openness. I found myself wondering whether growing up in a huge continent with such immense scale somehow evokes a similar expansion of thought and aspiration.

Kathleen Jamie is a Scots poet, and my near contemporary. She has a poet's feeling for language and for the landscape and at times touches on her own past in such a way that I can almost feel myself in the same place and time, so familiar it is. She however, had the courage to follow her ideals; I was never so brave. I have nearly finished the second book, Sightlines; Findings came first, both borrowed from work, and will feel a sense of missing an almost friend when I take them back. Her writing is intimate, her focus often close and with a sense of the deeply personal about it, you feel you have been offered precious bits of her life to share.

I'd recommend them both

Oh my!

I am almost beside myself with delight

Look what arrived in the post today

as recommended by

preceded by

and hopefully to be followed, at some stage by

though I don't promise to read all of Gilgamesh!

A wonderful read

Darling daughter and I went to London on the weekend to view the poppies at the Tower, of which hopefully more anon. However, I made the mistake of taking her into Waterstones by Charing Cross, where she pounced greedily upon this

If you've not discovered Patrick Rothfuss yet, and love a good fantasy series, don't hesitate, dive in. This is a little novella which follows the first two in his Kingkiller Chronicles, and shouldn't be attempted unless you've read them first. It is enchantingly beautiful, from the title all the way to the end - and Jen's let me read it before she does; what a girl! The series itself is also marvelous, glorious writing, brilliant imagination and stirring story telling. I'd recommend him any old day. Now waiting impatiently for the third book in the series, which must be due out soon .... surely .... :-)

Beginnings

This is a start of sorts, I am embarking on a house move that is pretty significant, attached as it is to a whole load of life changes. My mother has died, my dear man is about to retire, I return to work soon after a year of staying at home to care for Mum, my daughter is easing away into adult life.

And so we are moving and taking on a new garden......

The move means downsizing, editing away the vast collection of books I have been wandering this world with, asking myself what matters; in particular since I have just lost an irreplaceable person who mattered, without whom I would never have been, without whom I have never been. It is a new experience, and we are starting a new life.

So, what is going?

off to the charity shop

And what is staying? Books and music enough to be getting on with, and still a need for plenty of shelves.

space to move!

It also means leaving the first garden where I've perhaps begun to understand what it's all about. So, the new garden, a blank slate, will be the test of, and exploration of that understanding. 

The space in which I looked after Mum until she died was also a space where I could begin to explore those things that have interested me as long as I can remember, working with needle, with sketchbook, with fabric and thread. There have been some experiments, some openings up in the weave of life for little bits of me. These I may share, not because I think they are of any worth, but because I have found others' accounts of their journeys on the web inspiring. The love of needlework was a gift from my grandmother, the love of art from my great grandmother who painted; a part of both of them still nestled in me. The love of these two women came to me via my mother, who will always be with me and who gave me my love of music. She and my grandmother were the heart of my life after my Dad died, the year I turned 8. We left everything behind and came to Hastings to start afresh in my grandmother's house; she too had been widowed that year.

This blog will, I hope, be a reflection of these varied things that make up a life.

Or perhaps it will fail after a few months.

The journey is what matters.