Wednesday, October 26, 2016

London Loop: Hemsey Green to Coulsdon South

With shorter days approaching we've set aside walking the Thames Path and taken our boots onto the London Loop, alternatively known as the London Outer Oribital Path .




Thank goodness that yesterday I was walking from Hemsey Green to Coulsdon South with friends ... getting more than a bit lost was OK in a team! Our 'guide', downloaded from https://tfl.gov.uk/modes/walking/hamsey-green-to-croydon, got their right and left muddled in places and missed out some key landmarks that could have helped us find our way across meadow and through trees. Google Maps came to our rescue as we looked for the pub to stop for lunch, We had circumnavigated Betts Mead Recreation Ground and still not chosen the correct gap between two trees so I reached for the iPhone!!

The first great place was Riddlesdown Quarry see http://www.londongeopartnership.org.uk/gla26.html. We all found its steel fencing a very useful handrail as we climbed down and down and down its eastern edge, ending up at a Jewson's Building yard and a very busy main road.

The quarry and the road: the quiet and the busy - hallmarks of walking green spaces in suburbia.




















Further into Happy Valley, we walked soft earthy paths, the sun shone and the landscape came alive with a autumn rainbow   - a beautiful place to be and an open and free place to be grateful for.




















Finally we reached Farthing Down, where on a clear day, and this was a clear day, the City of London is easily seen.


Three trains later we were on our way home - clearly we're going to learn lots about the rail network as we walk around the capital as well as discovering more walks that qualify for the label a wonderful walk.

And I had fun I earlier this week preparing for the next day of the Inspiriation to Stitch course ...  we were asked to look for words and had been working with leaves so
courtesy of http://www.wordclouds.com  here is a haiku by Basho, translated by Hess.













Finally, the sky and the sea looked very lovely today ...  and I added another possible quilt pattern to the list after seeing the arrangements of these pilings.











#londonloop #walking #autumn 

Wednesday, October 19, 2016

From just one leaf ...

Second day on Inspiration to Stitch course .... we created a nature table, I added Plath's Blackberrying poem to the Autumn pin-board and then it was onto stencils, or in my case one stencil and an all sorts of colouring tools.


So, from just one leaf





and this wonderful bundle of prickles was my model for drawing without looking .....   turned out rather porcupine like!


The exercise of following an object with the eye while making the page felt OK ... perhaps because
I'm someone who doesn't like the D word. It felt like writing morning pages  - not lifting the pen and paying attention to the object rather than thinking 'what next".   

Now I know this is called blind contour drawing   ... more details here  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_contour_drawing and in many other places on the web.  




Tuesday, October 18, 2016

Lists and books and a half buried pipe

This time of the year fir cones of all sizes and shapes and all sorts of leaves make their way to the end of my drive, collecting themselves, perhaps resting, certainly making clearings elsewhere.  This 'collection' is every bit as diverse as my week has been.

Reading: here the books I'm dipping in and out of at the moment, find out more about all three at

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Slow-Stitch-Mindful-Contemplative-Textile/dp/1849942994
and
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mark-making-Textile-Art-Helen-Parrott/dp/1849940673/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1476810574&sr=1-1&keywords=mark+making+in+textile+art

If you've read about slow stitching please comment ... and mark making (I think we used to call the drawing but am really not sure)

Here's Kim's blog https://kimmoorepoet.wordpress.com and her page on Amazon https://www.amazon.co.uk/Kim-Moore/e/B00T6NDJYG

I'm so enjoying the poems in Kim's  latest poetry collection, possibly because I heard her read quite a few of them in Swindon. The ear and the eye and memory working together.





And its time for the third assignment for the online poetry course 'Secrets and Lies ... that sent me searching for an old notebook, oh, the joy of finding it! It has a list of names written when I drove south down the west coast of New Zealand's South Island -it seems these names have waited patiently  since 2010 to be of great value. 

Finally, how wonderful this October weather is ... I walked along the beach at Minster on Sunday and seeing this pipe set me thinking about things half hidden, half shown, halfway between things. 


#poetry #stitching #pipes #lists ... not sure at all I've got the hang of this hashtag business, but hey ho!






Saturday, October 15, 2016

Inspiration to Stitch ... the first day

Lovely start to the textile course I'm on this year with Terri and Hazel of http://www.institchestextilecourses.co.uk. They have a wonderful new light and airy studio full of stuff to work with.

Our first task was to destroy, yes, destroy our pristine new sketchbooks by cutting out the pages and covering up their scary whiteness.

Here's a few I finished off at home now I have a table for my (posh term here)  "wet media work'.


and we have homework so I've been collecting found papers and images around the theme of autumn. 



 I'm trying to get away from too much orange and brown .. not my favourite colours!

So at the moment my autumn is about fruit -figs, grapes, pears and about migration.
That put me in mind of Plath's poem  Blackberrying. You can read it here https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poems/detail/49004 and that led me to D H  Lawrence's  Figs see http://www.poetsgraves.co.uk/Classic%20Poems/Lawrence/figs.htm.

I spotted a few pages of words in one of the sketch books we were shown on Wednesday so really looking forward to the chance to put poetry into work for stitch designs to parallel the way I often use stitching metaphors in poems.


Talking of poetry, the first chat of the online Secrets and Lies course was good with lots of valuable feedback, the usual technical hitch and all in the comfort of my own living room. Its good to be back writing regularly for a workshop  - that and my Swindon Festival days mean I've booked a mentoring day with Jo Bell, she of 52 fame who blogs at  https://belljarblog.wordpress.com




Bye for now. I'm off to see what painting with a tea bag will do for the white page. If the result is more sludgy brown it might just go in the bin!

#sketchbook #poetry #stitching

Monday, October 10, 2016

Post Poetry Festival time

So that means not much time and new poetry books to read, draft poems to work on, ideas to sift, and images to ponder on,

like

how can I stop that photo moving as I type (it just did),

how wonderful peeling paint can be,

and the question that I asked myself all weekend   ... is there a long lost letter in that box?










As you can see in this second photo I found many examples of twinned materials around and about The Richard Jefferies Museum, the main poetry festival venue this year.
Do go see this wonderful small museum, unsurprisingly its between two roundabouts in Swindon, more details here http://richardjefferiesmuseum.blogspot.co.uk



and the water, on a sunny Sunday morning, with the birds, dog walkers, babies in prams. A blessing to be so close to fit in a walk before the third poetry workshop and my poetry reading slot.















It was a surprise to be asked to read, a nice surprise, and thanks to mobile IT I found a poem.


It was also a surprise to see the Tent fill and fill with people, well, mainly some very good poets, for the main event - a reading by two very esteemed poets Mona Arshi https://www.monaarshi.com and Todd Swift http://toddswift.blogspot.co.uk.








I chose to read a poem called One Afternoon at Teatime  which was recently published online by Pulse. It was great opportunity to publicise Pulse's work. Here's a recent poem they published http://pulsevoices.org/index.php/archive/poems/872-someone-loved-her-too#comments

 I've copied  One Afternoon at Teatime  below, but do please read it online at http://pulsevoices.org/index.php/archive/poems/801-one-afternoon-at-teatime and read the comments  ... as C. S Lewis said we read to know we are not alone.

One Afternoon at Teatime

Arthur stops close to where we sit waiting
for the person you call the activities lady
to serve us drinks and biscuits.
He moves his wheelchair with slippered feet,
so we become another group.
You introduce me, This is my sister,
I nod to Arthur and watch his mouth form words
that seem reluctant to reach me, hang
in the air unsteady, diminished.

He continues to speak, I continue to nod,
I think he's asking about my name,
you seem to understand, or do you guess?
I'm trying to work out if there's a knack
I've yet to grasp, a way to hear
the hush and lisp of his voice, because
all the time you've been here, where
you don't want to be, after all these months
Arthur is the first person you've introduced me to.

We choose our biscuits, I drink tea, you have coffee
Arthur has half milk, half coffee and continues to speak.
I think he's talking about his family, two daughters, a son,
I'm unsure so I ask is he watching the rugby?
No, his game is football and there's something
about a golden goal. I say what position did you play
and hear, clearly, outside left.
Something rights itself inside me.

Monday, October 3, 2016

Speedy blogging ...

I was going to write about slow stitching but the blog title probably gives me away ... no time to spend on that today. Instead a glimpse of the garden  ...


the flower and the frog: a little piece of joy in the morning 

the fern and the parsley: green treasures 
And, as I'm already late for Monday morning bridge with the U3A group, here's what I'm reading at the moment although I'm finding it rather heavy going.


Has anyone else read this? Its one of my 'trying to understand the Brexit vote' books, courtesy of a summer Saturday Guardian article (more on that later perhaps).

Now to find out if I can remember one or two of the wonderful things I learnt this weekend at the Improvers course at Andrew Robson's Bridge School http://www.andrewrobson.co.uk. It was a wonderful experience, great people, great ambiance and a great teacher.