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Knotty Brambles
I’ve spent time this weekend clearing brambles. The area where they grow, down the side of my workshop, used to be a hedgerow, there are ash tree stumps and it is a place I tend to leave to grow naturally wild. The geese have made nests and laid eggs there in the thick […]
Birdsong and Breakfast
The very first things for me in the New Year are birdsong and breakfast with my geese. Happy New Year to all – hope your 2014 started as happily as mine!
MBE for Ryedale Wildlife Rehabilitation
I was so pleased to see on the front of our local paper today that Jean Thorpe, who founded Ryedale Wildlife Rehabilition, is receiving the MBE for services to wildlife rescue in Yorkshire. For over thirty years Jean has been dedicated to the rescue and returning to the wild, of injured and sick animals […]
Otters
I’m still reading Otter Country by Miriam Darlington – and loving it! Early in the book she writes that after reading Henry Williamson’s Tarka the Otter she was so enthralled and spell-bound by otters, that ‘for months afterwards I felt like I was an otter’. It was so exciting to read this, as it […]
Stone Carving Courses 2014
My first Stone Carving Course for next year is already fully booked, and as I’m receiving more enquiries, I’ve added further dates for Spring 2014. Thankyou everyone for your enthusiasm! So, if you’ve always wanted to try your hand and put chisel to stone, there are places available on my next two day stone […]
Emotional Stone
This is a drawing from around 1615 showing a stick wielding Inka encouraging the workers to pull harder on their ropes to move the great boulder of stone. I was reminded of it when thinking about Erratic Stones. The stone is called a Sayk’uska, which means weary or tired in Quechua, and refers to […]
Erratic Stones
And stones moved silently across the world hurled into an empty ship’s weightless hold folded into a glacier’s freezing mound quick-pocketed by tourists and children with an eye for things shiny and round. This is a poem by Alyson Hallett, from The Stone Library – and an extract below, where she is explaining how […]
Can I sculpt the sky?
Sometimes all the conditions contrive to make the start to the day feel incredibly good. This is one such morning – frost, mist, and cloud burst through with a gold and copper sun. It made me stand still and look – feeling awe. This is the view from my workshop, if I take a […]
Guidance for Mentoring Artists
I’ve just been on the most amazing day course – it was organised through Ryedale Artworks – my local arts group, to offer training for members who felt they might be able to offer mentoring to other members. RAW had identified areas where members were looking to learn new skills, needed help, or wished […]
Ten Thousand Poppies
My poppy this year joined these ten thousand poppies, which are in my village Church – a monument called Trench – by artist Martin Waters. A poppy trench has been installed in the nine hundred year old crypt of St Mary’s Church in Lastingham. Martin started creating the poppy installations as an act of […]