want a book?

To thank you all for supporting my shop and my artistic explorations and my occasional ramblings here and there I would like to give away a book. This book...


It's similar to one that's for sale in my shop, but a little bit smaller. Its still lovely and soft and bendy with lots of room for scribbles...


If you would like to receive it then all you need to do is leave a comment below and I'll randomly pick a winner on Monday! If you're stuck for something to say then you could recommend a book for me to read; fiction, non-fiction, whatever; just something you have enjoyed recently :)


Thanks again, couldn't have done it without you :)

monday

A warm weekend in London, visiting the quilt exhibition at the V&A and an exhibition about Chinese print at the British Museum. Both worth a look, and there are so many other things to see in both places that we only touched the surface. I think I could spend a long while wandering and looking and reading and wondering, who were these people who made these things, so many things...


Good food, good walks, sunshine, trees, book binding shops, and most importantly good company. And I've slowly bit by bit started making a quilt of my own.

happy thursday

Lately I've been noticing how my body seems to get heavier and heavier as the end of the working week approaches, it gets harder and harder to drag myself along. Then suddenly the clock ticks 37 and its all gone, and everythings light as a feather as soon as I step through the door, home at last, I remember to breathe out... Does that happen to you?

With all the hours done this week, I've been rediscovering the joys of small books (8cm square to be precise)...


...looking forward to a fun packed weekend of Todmorden Agricultural Show, a trip to the dentist, Swing into Summer and some tasty food at Salvos...

...eating my first 4 home grown strawberries (not a slug-hollowed one in sight, touch wood...) and bringing in some peonies from the garden...


...and reaching the 100th sale in my shop, so stay tuned next week for a celebratory give away!!

spine book

Thank you for all your lovely comments about the book in my last post. I love the challenge of a commission, pushing myself to come up with something that I wouldn't normally think to do, and making the effort to produce the best possible thing I can. It's sometimes hard wondering what expectations might be attached to the finished item, but I just keep telling myself to make something I am happy with, something I'm proud of and hope that is enough...

Anyway, I'm hoping to make some more books in this style (but with tree cut outs I think, or perhaps thin little concertina circles??) soon, when the working of evenings finishes in a few weeks for the summer. A whole 4 hours of day light every evening, luxury!


This is a book I made for the artists book fair a few months ago, and one of them has been sitting on my coffee table for weeks now. I keep picking it up and twiddling it about, curving it round, watching it spring back. I think it's inspiring me to get folding again...


You can get one of your own here if you like that kind of thing ;)

A book...

With a secret...


Commissioned by a lovely man for his wife to collect together and keep her family recipes... I hope she likes it :)

spring

I found an abandoned birds nest in my garden, on the garden wall behind a massive overgrown bush...

5 tiny blue speckled eggs...


I discovered they are blackbird's eggs, I feel sad to think they'll never hatch. Hopefully the blackbirds have another more successful brood somewhere else...

Have you been watching Springwatch? Give me those bird nest webcams over big brother any day...

I've been...

Laying in the sunshine, under the trees, pretending I'm on holiday.


Walking in the rain.

Scrambling up Gordale Scar (and sliding back down again). Admiring the fields and walls and trees and stone from way above. Greens and yellows and greys. Wanting to make a patchwork quilt...


Folding concertina books


Waiting for summer...