Permission to write

I've been thinking about this for a long time but I've finally given myself permission to actually write! I'm having a wonderful week with my parents visiting - no mean feat while struggling with AMD (age related macular degeneration) & continuing (3m) neuralgic pain caused by shingles on the scalp & that's just my poor Mum! We're celebrating them being here, their 59th wedding anniversary last week, being unusually together for Father's Day, our 2 birthdays, the Youngest returning from tracking deer on the Isle of Rum for a month & tomorrow the Middlest will be back from his Induction into the Royal Fleet Auxiliary (RFA) - it's all initials! where he will support the Royal Navy as a marine engineer, 3rd Officer of the Watch (3OE for short!) I had a lovely chat to the Eldest & would love to have seen him & Em but I can't be greedy. I'm a proud & very lucky person, can you tell?

 I've been studying the seaweed 'shrouds' , films of thin seaweed left behind as the tide goes out. I find them fascinating but haven't yet worked out how to translate them into a mixed media textile piece.

 I'm enjoying playing with Gwen Hedley's ideas using cling film as some bits look like plastic when dried hard & some look like soggy holy 'felt' samples.

 I enjoyed a workshop with Aileen Grant where we spent a lovely afternoon mono printing using gelatine plates - I wanted to frame the actual plate below with dried on paint! Using the netting in the top left corner as very effective.

 netting, lace doily of mine & other shapes & layers

 prussian blue ink applied with a brush that I hadn't done before, cupcake papers & dried leaves.

an attempt at printing on cloth, but the colors got a little muddy

& above, my first attempt at a landscape, & below, the w/s was held near Eilean Donan castle

I've been sketching, enjoying the trying, anyway. it's an fb group, delighted to be asked & we're given a prompt every couple of weeks. I like a challenge. This week it's Flora! 

I was asked again to make another Ulna Bone protecting gauntlet, this time for over the clothes, therefore decorative & colorful. She was delighted & again, I was relived that it worked!
I must try to source some gold velcro, or something more neutral than black at least.

 I also made a 'pretty purse' for a special girl - quite like my new 'squared' corners

 some cards for a couple of local outlets & I'm delighted to have work in a lovely new place in Broadford, just down the road from me The Old Pier Gallery, a sister of Skyeworks Gallery all the way up in Portree.

& last but by no means least I won a giveaway by Linda Stokes of the Thermofax DV by Lyric Kinard. It's wonderful, so informative. Linda kindly send me a card of her work, & an actual screen made by her good self. Oh to own my own screen maker....but there are people you can go to to order their screens & ones of your own designs, too. Decisions, decisions - I see screens every where, even in a cut on my arm as a cracked bucket full of earth scraped across my forearm I thought about drawing it & printing with it, there's passion, eh?!