"Pass The Book" Giveaway

This is my latest drawing and is...yes, you have guessed it...The Woman Who Planted Trees VI. I bet you are wondering whether this series will number into the hundreds. No, I will probably stop at X. I am just enjoying doing them so much. I haven't had much time for drawing lately as I have been busy making cards for my previous giveaway winners. All should be back to normal next week though.

"pass the book" giveaway

Do you remember when I won the "Pass The Book" giveaway from Carolyn of Love Stitching Red blog? Carolyn's prize to me was lots of lovely handcrafted and other goodies which I was absolutely delighted to win. The book is intended to be passed on to the next lucky reader with a selection of some goodies to travel with it. It originated with Emma of Silver Pebble blog and I was the third reader. I have added my name to the inside cover. I must admit that I have kept it a bit too long but it is to be given away now. It is a lovely book and well worth reading.

My goodies giveaway will be some of my handmade cards and prints etc. Just leave a comment on this post and I will pick the winner at random next Sunday and then send "Miss Read" off to her new temporary home.

Who could resist these gorgeous Maureen Minchin ceramics? They are lovely and bright and quirky.
Maureen lives and works in the Scottish Highlands. You can see more of her work here at Imagine Gallery and here at Cambridge Gallery.

We went Geocaching again on Sunday for the first time for months. We found the first two caches easily but the next three eluded us. We must be out of practice. We incorporated the search into a lovely walk in the countryside. The weather was superb - quite hot in fact. Everyone was out enjoying the sunshine after being cooped up all winter.

Here is one of the lovely lanes we walked up

and lots of lovely green fields we wandered past

The weather has really brought the fruit trees and hawthorn into full bloom recently. They are quite superb and I cannot get enough photos of them.

and these two mischief makers were following me around on my walk this afternoon. They seemed to be unattended but they may have temporarily escaped their owner.

I love the deliciously coloured landscape etchings of Rebecca Vincent. She has a real knack for producing lovely patchwork layers of texture and colour. Rebecca is a Northumbrian artist and printmaker who together with artist colleague Carol Nunan runs the Horsley Printmakers. They produce handmade prints and undertake printmaking workshops. I wish I lived there. I would definitely take a few workshops with them. My maternal family come from Northumberland and it is a very beautiful county. You can find their website here.

Patchwork Landscape - Ploughed Field 2007

Windswept Farmhouse Card

Did anyone follow the excellent Monty Don series called Mastercrafts? Monty explored British crafts along with three people in each show who were completely new to the craft. I watched the stained glass and the weaving episodes on i Player a few weeks ago. The weaving was mind blowing. Three artistic young people were taken in hand by experienced weaver Margot Selby and taught to weave in 6 weeks. Even the setting up of the threads on the loom was incredibly complicated and that was before they started weaving fabric. One tiny thread out of place could, and did, spell disaster for the design. Two of the participants, Holly Berry and Tref Davies got the hang of it very quickly and produced some amazingly complex cloths at the end of the 6 week period, but the third girl found it very difficult to even get the loom threaded up.

Below you can see what they achieved. Holly's is on the left. I loved her design and the colours she had chosen. Tref's was also amazing and very complex. I imagined what I could produce in just six weeks and I could never have come up with anything like theirs, providing I got the loom threaded in the first place. They are obviously both natural weavers. Holly has a blog here with more pictures of her weaving. You can find Margot Selby's website here with some images of the three weavers. Margot is one of the few professional weavers in the country who are able to make a living from their craft.

Holly Berry and Tref Davies's woven fabrics.

I couldn't have an art blog without mentioning James Lynch, although a lot of people will probably know of him. He has a magical talent for portraying a glowing, light filled world that we would all like to inhabit. He is well known for his visionary paintings containing beautiful animals but recently has concentrated on the Somerset, Dorset areas. He uses a time consuming technique of egg tempera for his work and the results are exquisite. I also found out from his website here that he has produced a book of his paintings acompanied by the work of three poets. Sounds like it would be well worth getting.

Geese

Leaping Hare

Goose In A Field Of Corn

Annie Smits Sandano's website is an absolute delight to visit. Annie was born in Brazil and moves between there and New Zealand. She is a very successful artist/printmaker. She has the most wonderful sense of design and her birds are quite exquisite. I love her two mixed media figurative pieces below too. You can find her here.

Pepe Wahine Waituhi

Kura Paru Circles

Kauri Green With Tuis

Tui Tane Waituhi