St Bees Head, Cumbria

Having looked at the wether forecast we took the day off - and how right we were to do that!  It's amazing how much further on in terms of spring flowers St Bees is than at home. The rookeries weren't yet full - hopefully it's just a matter of it being fairly early in the year rather than anything more sinister. Great to see the Black Guillemots - no puffins though. 

Plenty of razorbills on the sea. 

Kittiwakes and a few Guillemots. 

At rather a distance but the top two are Black Guillemots. 

Snoozing Fulmar.

Razorbills..and below. 

The cliffs...

Fleswick Bay. 

Workshops week

Part of my way of thinking is to try to free up weeks, by concentrating 'work' into a single week...so this week it was wet felting and drypoint courses as well as an evening talk. Great work produced by all and it was particularly helpful that the sun shone to dry the felt! Much of the felt will be sewn into to finish it and drypoint etchings may be coloured too. 

The ideal drying rack! 

Some fabulous drypoint etching...

Off to new homes...

It's always nice when you a painting goes to a new home! These three flew off the shelf last week and that means I can paint more! At this time of year though, being outside has to be priority...Spring has spung in and goes so quickly and there's so much to see! 

Summit light - Dodd Wood.

Carrock Fell. 

Blencathra. 

A couple of people have asked me to try to post what I do have available so here are a couple of paintings ...

From Brandreth over Haystacks. 

Catbells.

Evening light on Wastwater Screes.

Helvellyn and Catstycam. 

Castle Crag - the 'Jaws of Borrowdale'.

Hooded Merganser - Whinfell Tarn

On the way back from Leighton Moss we stopped off at Whinfell Tarn - hoping, but not expecting to see the Hooded Merganser - what a spectacular bird! While discussion continues in the birding world as to where it came from, it's a superb creature! 

Leighton Moss Avocets

 After visiting the main part of the Leighton Moss Reserve we nipped down to the marsh hides. We've never been before and what a spectacle! Two good hides at the back of the saltmarsh scrapes and lots of Avocets and Black-tailed Godwits. 

Leighton Moss

A day off! So down to Leighton Moss to hear the bitterns booming...and booming they were. An enjoyable day - we'll have to go back again though to see the Bearded Reedlings, which last week were displaying beautifully in the calm sunny weather - this trip it was too cold and windy ...so an excuse for a return trip! Lots of harriers, Gadwall, Reed Warbler and the usuals....

Marsh Marigolds glowing in the spring sun. 

Just nice ...

Space for Bearded Reedlings! 

Goslings. 

Plenty of noisy activity among the Black-headed Gulls. 

Gadwall.

Shoveller. 

Dab Chick. 

Thee were lots of  harrier fly pasts. 

Latrigg

 I always resent being inside on a sunny day, especially in the spring - so a quick nip up Latrigg before settling down at Crafts of the North in Keswick...I suspect it will be quiet today as everyone will be on the fells! Beautiful clarity and views! 

Looking down Derwentwater. 

Across to Catbells and beyond. 

Little Man and Skiddaw. 

The panorama...

A quick snapshot on the way back down - behind the Underscar Hotel. 

Shelley Rhodes workshop

What a great couple of days! As part of Context (Contemporary Textiles) we were lucky enough to have Shelley Rhodes run a two day 'Fragmentation and Repair' workshop. 

Unusually for me, I didn't make a record and take photos of everything I did, as I wanted to emmerse myself in the process ....I now come to write it up and can I remember everything we did? That'll be a no...

But here's what I can remember. We started off discussing the ways that you can manipulate fabric and paper and then made a series of samples where we chose contrasting values eg light and dark and joined them together in different ways. Other sample pieces were created and Shelly kindly showed us examples of her original works. 

For our final project, we painted a piece of calico with gesso and then used one of our samples as a design source, colouring the calico. I used acrylic inks and Inktense pencils. I then tore up and recombined the pieces of fabric in a different order - added hand stitiching and machine stitching. To be honest I didn't like the result - it was far to fussy and detailed, so I cut it up into inch squares. These were then dipped in paraffin wax and arranged as below - now we were getting somewhere! Each one is a small piece in it's own right and could be used for painting , collagraph or textile inspiration. The parallels with Anita Reynold's abstracting the Landscape course that I did ages ago, were clear. So the photos below are of the finished piece - unless I move things around again!