Animals at the Ashmolean

Last Wednesday saw me in Oxford to pick up a frame for a painting. After our last visit to the Ashmolean and with my new determination to do more observational sketching, I decided to spend a few hours pottering there. I always like to begin with this staircase, as it takes me back to my art student days and the first time I breathlessly and reverently climbed them to visit the Renaissance rooms. I can still remember the emotional choke in my throat (dramatic child that I was) as I paid my respects to the Masters and began my own long artistic journey.

I like the continuity of returning with another sketchbook, over twenty years on, still tramping that same road, which has twisted in ways I could not have dreamt of then. And now I find the new extension has caught my heart too. It also leaves me breathless, though for a different reason.

I actually feel a little sick if I get too near the glass partitions and look down - or up. But I love the way you can watch the other galleries and their occupants on all levels, like a giant cultural ant's nest coiling round the central space which seems to me like an invisible pillar rising through the centre of the museum.


Needless to say, I took many photos of this and that, flashless photography (for personal use) being allowed. Just look at this little collection of lovelies - three needlework 'favours' or love tokens from the 1600s, each just few inches tall -

- and a sweet gold wirework frog purse from the same era, used for carrying herbs or perfumed sachets. I wonder if I could reconstruct a similar design?

But with all this visual wealth around me, I had to narrow my choice of subject down if I were not to become overwhelmed. So I naturally picked animals. Like this adorable little hare tureen, which could sit in one's hand.

And this exquisite porcelain cat, which I think is some kind of pill box -

- scaring the nearby tapestry parrot.

I found myself more drawn to the Oriental galleries, perhaps because my own style is similarly curvaceous.

A wonderful piece of Satsuma ware, a mouse sitting on a turnip. Size is roughly that of large cooking apple.

Ivory monkey with dragonfly, just a few inches long. The tiny dragonfly is about the size of my little fingernail.

I fell in love with this deceptively simple hare-shaped lacquered incense box the last time we were here. It measures about two and a half inches across and to me is absolute design perfection. I think if I could have just one thing from the thousands of things in the Ashmolean, it would be this.

As with the landscape notes I made last weekend, the object of my sketching was not to produce a page of pretties nor even to make notes for future work. Neither was the challenge to exactly copy the object itself.

What I wanted to do was explore the design style of each piece and the way each individual artist had interpreted and tweaked the animal form, especially if it was also a functional item. Trying to get inside their creative minds as I worked; and at the end of the exercise, the final scribbles were really just a crude record. The real result was what had been imprinted in my visual memory and loosening up my hand skills. I'm already looking forward to my next visit.

Cold winter sketching

Saturday was cold but gorgeous and I played truant from what I should have been doing to take my sketchbook for an airing. It's a big A2 Moleskine which I am ashamed to say has sat on a shelf, pristine and virginal since it arrived last Christmas, over a year ago. I really need to get back into the habit of drawing from life again, even it it is just scribbles.

This is the kind of thing you don't often show people - it's simply an exercise in every sense of the word - in the same way that singers practise scales, dancers do barre movements, an artist needs to do the real eye/brain/hand thingy which hopefully one day will end up in some kind of finished form. It's not supposed to look pretty (though it's a bonus if it does).

Although there was a thin, mean wind, I forgot myself as I scribbled and scratched away. Once I started looking, I could have been out all day drawing - the line of oak trees in a hedgerow which would make a lovely little lino cut.

Everyone I met was (unusually) friendly - I think having a sketchbook is rather like having a dog - it gives you a legitimate reason to be out walking. For once I wasn't just the strange woman out alone with her camera. The horse chestnut avenue was beautifully stark, but I decided to save it for next time.

Spotted a potential picture with the farmhouse, which is unusual for me as I tend to prefer trees in the landscape. I've done this walk hundreds of times and am still finding fresh aspects of it.

This line of trees is definitely one to do another time - the clear winter sun brings out the acidic yellow lichen and the new red bark growth infuses the treetops with a warm blush.

I had one corner of my page to fill and of course, it was trees on the horizon.

Although my walk was only a couple of miles, I'd been out for two hours sketching. It doesn't look like much does it? Felt good though, flexing those out-of-practise drawing muscles.

Something to celebrate!

At last I can sleep properly again! The last few nights have been spent fitfully listening to the radio in the dark, while England thrash Australia in the final Test Match. Our television reception is so bad (and we don't have Sky) that we only get to see a few minutes of highlights on the BBC news, so the radio is our only way to follow the games. Last night England not only retained the Ashes for a third time, but did it away from home, against an often hostile Australian Press and home crowd and, more importantly, accomplished it with sweet skill and unity of team spirit.

Last summer, near Oxford

The film clip comes from inside the loyal England supporter's camp, the Barmy Army, with Billy Cooper, the trumpeter playing - appropriately - the Last Post - as the last wicket falls to general mayhem and riotous chanting. It's the first time in 24 years that we have won the Ashes on Australian home turf, so perhaps a little jubilation is not uncalled for.

Away match at Swinbrook

For my American friends, who have misty images of English teas, church bells ringing in the distance and gentle clapping to the soft thunk of leather on willow - that is village cricket; this is war! Well done England!

(Hello and welcome to my lovely new followers - normal craft and country blogging resumes next week).

Surviving Christmas

Thank you to everyone for the kind Andy-come-home wishes! He did return that night, to much rejoicing but had to work right up until the weekend. He had a miserly two days off at Christmas, then returned to the fray, because retail workers get little respite at this time of year. So we're glad it's all over and he won't be so tired. We are both thankful to see the back of 2010 which was quite tough in parts. Never festive at the best of times, I wasn't going to put decorations up, but weakened last thing on Christmas Eve and strung a line of cherry fairy lights up, hung with a few non-glass things. On Christmas Day we allowed ourselves to enjoy the snow and had a marvellous walk round the fields. This is the front of our cottage, a basic one-up-one-down matchbox, glittering with icicles.

Poor Andy was so tired that he forgot to buy his Christmas beer - but luckily his brother had made an inspired choice of present with a gift box of real ale. I admit to being a teeny bit jealous.

But my beer envy was short lived, because the same Andy's brother had managed to find me a whole box of vintage toymaking books and magazines! Some real gems in here and I've had a happy time browsing them.

Pumpkin had brown paper.

My cheese penny pot was a bit disappointing this year and I was going to forgo the Cerney Cheese we love. But thanks to the generosity of kind Janet, I arrived at the village deli to find a gift order of one Cerney Pyramid and a gammon ham, which I prepared with honey and mustard - this is a rare treat and we have been thanking her through mouthfuls of ham sandwiches.

Other blog friends had surprised me with gifts too - I admit to being hopeless at Christmas; if it were a school subject I would get a 'D' and 'could do better!' So I am humbled and a bit awed that anyone could find enough time to take the trouble to send me nice things like this beautiful lavender heart and needle book from Anne of 'Frayed at the Edge'.

Sooz, of 'Confessions of a Laundry Fairy' sent me this, by one of my favourite modern illustrators, Simon Bartram, who also happens to work for 'my' publishers, Templar as well, and who I briefly met a few years ago.

My dear *old* (in the nicest sense of the word) friend Tara, of 'Silver Apples' sent me one of her delightful treasuries of nice things -

And my even *older* friend (since college days, which was scarily almost two decades ago) Natasha, Queen of Cakes, sent us these little lovelies which I am not sure if we can bear to eat;

One mystery present was a copy of 'Daring Dos, by Mary Trasko, a book which has been lingering on my Amazon wishlist for a few years - full of amazing (and frankly bonkers) historical wigs, hair styles and fascinating info about how they were contructed and the history of bizarre hair fashion. I can see all kinds of new ideas sprouting from this kind of thing;

It came without a gift card, so I have no idea who was kind enough to buy this for me - but if they are reading this, then thank you ever so much, I have wanted this for a long time.

Now that my arm is just at the stiff and awkward stage, I decided to launch the New Year with a little pootle on Marjorie. It was a bit cold and we were both out of puff by the time we trundled home, but yet again I had forgotten how happy cycling makes me feel and how much I love January and the promise of an unwritten twelve months ahead.

A sad cat & a wonky bird

Pumpkin doesn't understand where Andy is. He is more dog-natured than cat- natured and he follows Andy about like a little ginger hound. He looks at me with large, questioning owl-eyes, as if I could magic our beloved from my pocket. He has taken to sitting in the bay window, watching the lane, which is something he never does. (The other cats just sleep...and sleep...and sleep).



The weather hasn't improved and at first it looked as if we wouldn't be seeing him until Christmas Eve, but he rang earlier to let me know he is going to try to make it back this afternoon, Wednesday. So all fingers and paws are crossed.

The temperatures have been so low that there is ice inside the windows - which is quite pretty here with the bottles, if a trifle frigid. And the heavy snowfall has felled our lovely polytunnel. Hopefully the poles have just tilted at the joints and no real damage will be done. My herbs and geraniums are in there - I am hoping that at least some the roots will survive.

To take my mind off things, I have been putting my clumsy sewing skills to making a little bird - at last. It took me a whole afternoon and much cursing. I made a lot of initial mistakes, as I am completely out of my comfort zone and despite all the reading I've done, all the mental planning, I am still hopeless at making patterns.

It's been a humbling experience. I had tried making a bird a couple of months ago, but was too ashamed to 'show and tell'. The curved seams were wonky, the bottom gusset was so fat it turned into a hen and my *primitive sewing* just looked plain bad. But it made a handy pin cushion.

This time I thought I'd try assembling one by hand, patchwork style and be 'proper' by making a plain cotton dummy which I would tack onto paper and stitch together.

It didn't work. It really, really didn't work. Frustrated, I got the machine out and cut into some nice print fabric. The first way of putting in a beak was a disaster and had to be unpicked.

Once I finally had a bird ready for stuffing, I tried using woodwool which I'd thought would give a firmer finish but the body was too small and it came out a bit lumpy and mishapen. Or maybe that was down to me.


The tail design needs flattening out; it's too small to cut darts (?) into, but puckers on the too-sharp inside bend.

I made these legs when I made the 'hen' and it seemed a shame to waste them. This was my biggest mistake - of course, because they are separate, they wobble and slide away from each other. Why I didn't realise this when I always put one single strong strand of wire through my needle felted geese's legs and feet is anyone's guess.



However I was determined to finish the darned thing and hopefully learn from my mistakes. The belly gusset is too wide again and I still don't like the beak. It's a poor effort, lurching drunkenly and precariously on unequal legs; one wobble and it falls down. But, dammit, I made one! Let's hope the next one will be an improvement.



So today is a mad whizz of tidying the cottage, baking a big fruitcake, counting up this year's cheese pennies and cashing in my dividend vouchers at the village Co-op, if there is anything left. Thankfully I've got a local farm chicken reserved at our great little deli, or it would be cheese and crackers for Christmas dinner. We aren't having decorations this year, the only bauble I want is Andy safely snoozing on the sofa with Pumpkin sprawled on his lap. And besides, our poor little pot tree has been encased in an ice palace -




Without my online friends and contacts, real - and virtual - the last few days would have been even more lonely; you have no idea how your kind words and support have helped. Thank you.

Deep snow & Christmas party cats

A gentle warning from Christmas past...for those who have office parties to attend.

Back in the 21st century Cotswolds, we have had large amounts of the white stuff dumped on us overnight. Poor Andy somehow managed to get the motorbike to work, forty miles away, but has rung to say he will be staying there overnight and might be lucky to get home tomorrow. The view from the bedroom, looking down our little lane.



Once I knew I'd be on my own for at least one night, I ventured out to the village shop for a few treats. Thankfully the store cupboards are full, so it was just sausage rolls and wine on the shopping list. Here I am looking back up our little lane, where the snow came well over my ankles. Our tiny hovel is near the back, the second porch up behind the parked car - just one bay window and two small windows above it.

Out on the main High Street, a farmer was taking fodder up to his stock - probably sheep, as cattle tend to be undercover in winter.

Further past the big village Green - normally we can see the fields beyond, looking towards Oxford, but not today.

Shopping accomplished, me and the cats are settled for the next 24 hours. There is food, wood, wine and magazines. Three cats have the sofa and Samson, to the left, has prime spot by the storage heater. I have the internet and we all share the woodburner. The snow continues to fall - it is now fifteen inches deep - and all we do is hope that Andy can get home safely tomorrow. Or sometime.