Bluebells and Ferns

It is that time of the year again when the bluebells start to flower.  As we travel along the country roads they appear in the hedgerows and in fields and along footpaths and of course in the woods.  I see drifts of blue between the trees and I know how wonderful this time of year is.
On  Monday as I walked through the village I kept seeing little patches of blue bells here and there.  On my way home there was a few stems in the verge at the side of the road,  as I brushed past I was able to smell that gentle perfume of bluebells.  It took me straight back to my childhood.   I knew where I was going the next day, to see and breathe in the scent of bluebells.

We wandered along the old track which was once a railway line. It is a lovely walk with the path carved through stone,  now overgrown with ferns and ivy and wild flowers.   Trees seem to line the whole way, some growing from the steep bankings high up above us.  The trees have been allowed to seed and spread and grow on both sides of the paths,  the birds sing and wild flowers grow.  
The woods on the edges of the track fill up with bluebells each year.  There are many old footpaths with stone steps and others with a stile or a gate, well worn tracks across the fields to farms or other valleys.

 A beautiful arched stone bridge crosses over this old railway line and your voice echoes as you pass under it.  Then at one place we are walking over a bridge, as we look down from the high vantage point  the cows pass under us to follow the muddy cart track to go up to the farm.
It is a place to hear the birds, see them fly from tree to tree, catch sight of a nest. You can hear the loud eerie call of the pheasants and today we saw two different birds, one startled by us and bolted into the air and the other sat still behind a hedge on the edge of the wood.  An orange tipped butterfly settled on a pink campion and many other white winged butterflies were seen flying by.

Wild flowers thrive in such places as these,  primroses allowed to seed and multiply and look as pretty as a picture growing under the wooden gate.

 I love to see it so natural and untouched with violets,  pink campion,  celandines,  delicate white wood anemones,  stitch worth and the big bright bunches of  yellow dandelions.    The fleshy green leaves of the Lords and  ladies and  huge dock leaves thrive amongst the rapidly growing grass and ferns.  Moss grows on old stone walls and ivy twines around tree trunks.

This place is a haven for ferns,  in the rich woodland soil,  tall ferns unfolding as they grow daily and seem to spread everywhere.  They hang from the slate,  thrive even in the smallest  cracks,  between gaps in the stone walls and between tree roots.  In the woods they grow tall towards the light and looked especially beautiful growing between the bluebells.  A shaft of sunlight and the fresh green ferns and the bluebells looked just perfect together. I picked a large one to bring home to draw.

 I could not smell the scent at first,  it was after we turned around at the end of the track to begin our return journey that it came as a welcoming drift on the breeze.  We had now turned into the wind and it carried the scent of  the bluebells and it seemed we were suddenly surrounded by the familiar bluebell perfume,  it was wonderful.

I photographed the drifts of bluebells in the woods,  ferns, wild flowers and trees.  I really enjoyed my walk.  I wasn't alone, we saw three ladies and a dog,  three younger ladies with small children and a dog, several couples,  a group of friends and three office girls on their lunch break.  It was a little cool and threatened rain with a few drops, we were all dressed and well prepared for our great British weather.  Everyone taking in this lovely walk was rewarded with such lovely sights of the bluebells.

  It must have been such a lovely train ride before the line was closed was closed,  the views from the carriages to open fields and farm lands,  hills and beautiful green valleys and the larger Lakeland hills.  And of course the Bluebell woods.

I picked a few smaller ferns and have been drawing and I have just started to sketch out the large one from the wood.

some studies of the small ferns.

and looking forward to completing the large green fern.

Thank you for the lovely comments.    Hope you enjoyed my walk.                   Until next time  Millyx

Sepia and Fritillary Love

Last year I spent a lot of time experimenting with sepia inks and using it to draw with an old fashion dip-in pen and nib.    I even made some oak gall ink (brown), which has been sitting in the big glass pickle jar for over a year.  I am going to filter it through a piece of fabric and try drawing with it.  On my holiday last summer I bought some beautiful handmade paper and a little jar of sepia ink.  I loved using it, so rich and creamy and lovely to work with.  I did some handwriting with it too, slowly dipping in the old fashioned way.

I thought I would let you see my sepia sketch book, the pages where I try out materials and have an idea of how things look.  A good reference too, so I do not forget.   It takes a long time to really get to know your tools, to find out and gain experience at drawing.  It saddens me when people seem to think drawing is easy,  it is like everything it takes a lot of time to achieve good skills.  I was watching the great British sewing bee,  you make something by working carefully and doing it properly, taking the time to make a good well made garment.  I was so pleased with the choice of the winner, her high standards and beautiful sewing and finished garments. She said it was her "Years of experience", a lot of people could learn from such a positive attitude.

I have to agree that it takes time, lots of it and patience to gain the experience and skills.  I do not use any computer aids or alter my drawings in any way, it is entirely hand drawn by me.  I draw everything by hand from the real objects which I have usually found or collected. My work is good old fashioned hand drawing.

Last week I was asked if I had any prints, so now I do. I have put them on my little My Etsy Shop shop. I chose four of my drawings and went to the Printers, and I chose to have them printed on a lovely parchment paper.  They have such a lovely character to them, they feel waxy and I love the aged look of them.  They have made a lovely set. 

I have made you a  little video, now I have discovered how to make them on my  ipad.   On Friday I went and sat in my garden to do nothing other than enjoy my Beautiful Snakehead  Fritillary.  I am very proud of them as I have planted every tiny bulb myself, there must be a thousand.  I add a hundred each year and gradually they are starting to creep further up the grass.  They are stunning this year and I was afraid after the  heavy rain through the night that it may have damaged many of the flowers.  The patterns are so lovely and they are possibly my favourite flower, I love to draw them with their amazing chequered patterns. I sat and just looked,  took it all in because soon they will be gone.  It has taken me many years to grow them all, but just like my drawings, the time and patience is worth the finished result.  

I hope it works, you can hear the birds and the windy day.  I wanted to share my fritillary  garden with you.
Then a welcome sight as a huge Bee came to visit the flowers.  Sometimes it is covered in dozens of Buzzing Bees, it is magical. A second video, I am surprising myself with this one.

And why not see the lovely daffodils, the double headed Fritillary and the Sunshine.   Today it is wet and  grey and such a cold wind blowing,  it makes me so glad  I spent my time in the sunshine ( note. wearing warm duvet jacket) on Friday.

  I picked just four flower heads and put them into an old green bottle we found on the shore recently.  I have not managed to draw them yet but I will. 

So here is a drawing in Sepia from last year. Hope you are all enjoying some lovely Spring flowers, we have waited so long for them,  take my advice get out there and take a look, it certainly makes you feel so much better.       All photographs and videos taken on my ipad by me....enjoy.
Thank you for your comments which I do really do love reading.                  Millyx

Little visitors

Cards made with my handmade Hare rubber stamp. Eileen Postlethwaite 

I have had some visitors to see me and lots of fun with a special little girl.  Chloe is four and lives in Scotland, she likes doing things.  Lets make a collage, she said.  So we made lots of collage pictures with glue, paper, twinkling bits and pieces, some of my feathers, and we cut with my fancy shaped scissors and anything else I found for her. The next day it looked like the fairies had visited my living room as all the tiny  glittery bits twinkled across the room in the sunlight.

One of our little lanes full of snow

We also went for a really long walk to play in the snow. When you are only four and the road has been cut out through  six to seven feet high drifts, then you walk between the snow.  It was so very very exciting for her.  She found and sat in a little cave-like home in the overhanging drifts, she climbed, sat on top of snow bankings, made snowballs and had such a wonderful time. We found a little leaf in the top of the snow and because I collected it she collected others as presents for me. Every feather she sees at home is picked up for Aunty Eileen.

Sepia and pencil drawings by Eileen Postlethwaite

My next visitor was a cheeky little mouse, one evening it just appeared in front of us, in our living room!  It was so tiny and seemed quite at home as it wandered around my feet, sat on the rug and just gazed around. It was so pretty and I left what I was drawing to watch it, it was so entertaining and could have come straight out of the pages of a Beatrix potter story.

Drawings of mouse by Eileen Postlethwaite

A few days later my husband found a tiny mouse dead in the hall, in his sports bag.  I wanted to draw it, so  I made some quick sketches as it lay on a little blue and white patterned saucer.  If you follow my blog you will no doubt remember this,  " Mouse in the House" page of drawings.  Since then I made them sepia with my pen and ink on a parchment paper.

A mouse in our house, sepia drawing  by Eileen Postlethwaite

The other visitors are the birds.  Today the sun is shining  and we were awake to the birds singing at first light.  They are all busy collecting mouths full of grass and feathers and little twigs and bits from the garden.  A flurry of activity as they prepare to build their nests.  We have a cheeky blackbird who comes right up to the kitchen window as if to say,  I am here where is the bread today?
There are numerous sparrows and goldfinch,  collared doves, wood pigeons,  jackdaws, a wren,  robins and the blackbirds all visiting regularly.  By flying  in and out of the trees,  bushes and creepers and as they all sit and sing and compete with each other, it is a loud and tuneful chorus all day long.  My little four year old was fascinated to watch as they are often just outside the window in the bushes.  Quick she announced, lets do a bird count and grabbed a pencil and an Easter card and put crosses on it.  I think someone is doing a great job at her nursery and of course her mum, this little girl has such a thirst for life and interest in nature.

My first ever video. A glimpse of my printing with my handmade rubber hare stamp. Eileen Postlethwaite

I have been printing, brown hares this time, two brown hares on a cards, which I have already used and sent for birthdays.  I made some tags, cards and a teatowel by printing on linen and then sewing it.

Handprinted tea towel, completely handmade  by Eileen Postlethwaite.

hand printed handmade teatowel by Eileen Postlethwaite

I made a pincushion for the Giveaway. All the names, 31, went into a bag and my husband pulled out the name of Jennifer  Tetlow.    So Jennifer, if you can let me have your address I will post it to you.

I made some pincushions with my handmade  Hare rubber stamp .  Eileen Postlethwaite

Thank you for all the lovely comments and I will make some more pincushions to go on my Etsy store if anyone would like to have one.

Using my handmade rubber stamp. Eileen Postlethwaite.

The other news is that it seems Spring might finally be here,  it feels so good to have the sun streaming through the windows each morning,  to see the beautiful sunsets here.  This one was on Tuesday evening.

Tomorrow I am going on a tai chi workshop, so hope to have an enjoyable day.  I have lots of ideas and want to carve some more rubber stamps,  it is lovely to be able to sew and make things from my art and drawings.  Thank you for visiting,  hope you like seeing a glimpse of what I have been up to and please leave a comment as it is a pleasure to read them.  See you soon.                 Millyx

Drawing, printing and sewing

 Happy Easter.    Last weekend we had snow and blizzards which started Thursday night and on the Friday morning we woke up to deep snow.  We had to travel to York, a four hour journey, as we were going to a wedding.  All went well and we reached our destination and had a lovely weekend.  On Monday we visited York Minster and had a wander through the city with a  bitterly cold wind blowing. I chatted to a man from Alabama inside the Minster, who was really impressed with the architecture but not the weather.
On our journey home we saw lots of snow which had been blown and made deep drifts. Thankfully we arrived home safely as most roads were clear of snow until we reached home.  It seems we had the worst of it with blocked roads,  people trapped in cars and many sheep missing, so sad as it is lambing time and the lambs were just appearing in the fields.

As it is Easter I decided to make a few cards by making my own stamp.  I had just bought two huge erasers while I was away.  So on Thursday  I made a drawing of a hare to fit into the size of the eraser.  I carved it with my little lino cutter and different shaped blades.
 First I printed it onto paper on Thursday evening.

Yes it looks fine, so I began my printing.   I love printing and playing and experimenting.

 They are looking really nice in a row.  I used the ink pads on paper but my mind is full of ideas and I want to see if it will work on fabric.

I found some blue fabric paint and printed it on linen and then left them to dry overnight.  Today I ironed the fabric paint to fix the colour and decided to make a little zip bag.  I bought the blue zip at the charity shop yesterday,  hence the choice of blue to use the zip. I have been sewing all afternoon and made my little bag with two hares printed on it and lined with the beautiful Sanderson willow fabric.  I couldn't stop there,  I also made a little pincushion.

I stuffed it with sheep wool that I have been collecting from the fields on my walks.  It was all washed and the tiny bits of grass and leaves removed and just waiting for me to use.  I really love the thought that I have made it all, my drawing made into a stamp, handprinted onto the linen and sewed into a pincushion and stuffed with sheep wool I collected and washed.  I will enjoy using it when I am sewing.

The pink eraser and  a few simple tools and look what it can become.

 Hope you enjoyed seeing what I have been up to today.  I will make another pincushion and have a little Giveaway...leave a comment and I will pick the winner next week....the winner can choose a brown or a blue hare pincushion as their prize.

Tomorrow we will change the clocks forward and so looking forward to an extra hour of daylight in the evenings, this was the view  around 6pm.
 Hope you all enjoy your  Easter Weekend.                                                                 Millyx

Signs of Spring

I call this my gallery,  lots of different artwork leans against the window and stays there until I sort it out and file it. I painted some different objects on the brown card with my new gouache paints and the magpie moth on the little gift bag.  I have a  little painting of  this moth which I did possibly ten years ago,  it was used by me to made  lots of little cards with moving wings.  Here are nine of them together.  And the drawing at the top is from my walk on the shore, which was about two weeks ago on a lovely sunny day.

It was a fine day and although the sun was shining it was still bitterly cold.  We ventured across the shore to a favourite little island.  It takes about one hour to reach it, crossing gullies and pools of water and jumping over the many ditches across our path on the way.  I noticed all the oak leaves in the bottom of the pools, all in different shades of brown to black, blackened by the salty sea water.   I found several feathers and pieces of broken seaweed and some mermaids purses.

  When we arrived at the little island I found some pale blue shells, bleached with the sun and weather,  in the summer they are a deeper blue.  Sometimes this place is littered with them and little crabs and other smaller pink shells which look so pretty against the soft bleached sand.  I walked around, looking, taking it all in and felt how beautiful this place is.   So still and quiet, miles of empty sandy beaches across the estuary and a vast sky and the backdrop of the hills surrounding the flatness of the estuary.  I never want to leave,  it always makes me feel so calm and peaceful, so grateful to be here and surrounded with nature.  It saddens me to find evidence of the wild fowlers shooting the ducks. On the way back I like poking around amongst the tideline to see what has washed up on our shores. The wire fences are decorated with tangled  seaweeds, shredded plastic, long strings and grasses, twisted  and woven and hanging from the squared wire pattern of the fence.
Just as we were nearly home, we were lucky enough to witness three Red Kites circling above us. They are in the area but we usually only see an odd one, so this was a great sighting.

  At home I sorted through my finds and chose the dark oak leaf, a black mermaids purse and a sycamore seed and the small leaf  peeled from the sand.  They reflect the time of year, aged and textured and their dark weathered colours.  I used acrylic inks and a fine brush.  It felt like it was finished when I added the red berry.

In contrast it seems Spring is now making a big effort in my garden.  I was doing a little gardening yesterday as the sun shone and I was delighted to see the bulbs appearing and some flowering.  My beautiful Snakehead Fritillary are flowering, seems very early to see this first clump with buds,( see my blog header). I can see more drawings of them, they must be my favourite flower.

Daffodils and snowdrops and cowslips in the grass, at the bottom of my garden.

Crocus and the green leaves of the bluebells showing.

And at this time of the year the village churchyard is so lovely, a carpet of blue crocus and snowdrops, the first daffodils all signal Spring is nearly here,  although we still have snow on the hill tops.
Hope it feels like it is on the way for you too. Thank you for the lovely comments.        Millyx
(All my ipad photographs except the churchyard with my camera.)                                          

Ferns and Moth

I have been buying some new materials and paper.  I ordered some beautiful handmade paper from Spain, Aquari paper.  It arrived within a few days of being posted and I have been trying it with some of my new designers gouache paint and a new brush.  It is always good to experiment and  use a different medium.  The handmade paper is quite thick and textured.  First I tried it with my acrylic ink  and  painted a single green fern, then added a Magpie moth.  The paper is lovely and I love the deckled edges.

 Then I did the five different ferns with the green gouache paint and added the moth at the bottom.
I only  bought five tubes of colour, as  I  thought that was enough to play with.   They are some of my favourite  colours, yellow ochre, sepia, primary red,  sky blue, and  sap green.  White is always useful, and especially when you are painting a Magpie Moth, so a tube of zinc white.  I know they will mix many other colours and tones.  My little ferns were an ideal subject  to  use the new sap green.  I enjoyed drawing the patterns of the leaves and mixing different shades of greens.

 The paper is very different as it is thicker.  I love the deckled edges and the handmade look.  As I had been drawing my Magpie Moth recently I thought it was perfect with the ferns.  On the first image you can also see  I rescued a nice off cut of wood, destined to light the fire, and instead  painted a moth on the smooth wood. That is three moths, each one looks slightly different as I hand draw each one in turn.  It is interesting to play around and see how other papers and materials work,  I am always learning something. The acrylic inks were used on the wood.

A little sewing for my Valentine Gift. 

Hand embroidered and handsewn  Linen teatowel by Eileen Postlethwaite  

I also made a little sewing project instead of a card for February the 14th.   The initials of our names also make the word, BE,  now embroidered on  linen,  carefully stitched with a border of four rows of red running stitch.  It took me longer threading the needle each time than actually sewing the rows.  I am afraid my days of counted cross stitch are long gone!  Anyway I used the self threading,( hurray for modern sewing machines), and made the linen into a towel.  I think it looks very old and resembles a French antique one.  I love it and we will use it.  Sewn with love,  better than a card!
The sun has been kind to us and we have enjoyed some beautiful days, still very cold but amazing crisp clear skies and a fantastic bright full moon this week.   We went for a lovely long walk across the shore and I will post my drawing of the objects I found and some of the views in my next post.  At the moment trapped in the camera with a flat battery.  So I am quite pleased to say all of the photographs here were taken with my ipad, even the sunset views out of the window. I surprised myself !

This was the view from my window last night.  The sun was just setting and the mist was creeping in across the estuary.  We had a beautiful sunny day and then moments after I captured this lovely sunset, all was dark.

 Another beautiful day here which started with a hard frost.  The geese are flying over the estuary, it all looks so lovely, I feel so lucky to live here.  Hope you enjoyed seeing the view.
Hope you are all keeping warm.
                                                                                                     See you soon.        Millyx