Category Archives: Life in General

Sunday Morning Existentialism

I’ve been feeling a little bogged down over the past few days.  Lots to do, but no brain or motivation. Actually flitting about in Blogland makes it worse. Everybody elses little world seem full flowers and colour, homes straight out of ‘Country Living’.  Happy children in homemade clothes eat vegetable soup straight from the kitchen garden, while mum produces patchwork quilts and hand knitted socks and fairy cakes,  photographs it all AND writes about it.

Now I know that it’s the nature of beast.  No one is going to photograph those days when the washing mashine overflows, the teenager throws a tantrum, the house is filled with the smell of burning toast and the puppy has done a poo behind the sofa…(that last a  regular occurance in our house!) We create a fantasy version of our own lives for the consumpion of our readers,  just in the way any magazine editor portrays a ‘look’ for publication.  An acquaintance who’s ‘lovely country home’ was featured in a well know publication a few months ago said ‘It’s wonderful! They come in, and rearrange all your stuff, yes, but they CLEAN! Our house has never been so clean! And they do amazing things with the lighting!’  So even the house owners don’t live in houses like the ones in magazines!

So we make our own reality, and sometimes, when the north wind( heavily laced with farmyard manure) is howling across the vast field at the back of our house and darkness falls earlier and earlier, and your head is stuffed up with the first cold of the season and, Oh NO! there’s ANOTHER poo behind the sofa, it gets a bit hard.  Hard to remember that you ‘live  in the heart of the lovely Norfolk countryside, a stones throw from the Broads, a short drive from the beautiful windswept Norfolk coastline’.  That your little cottage in it’s pretty garden  is filled with books and crafts and colourful china which suitable displayed and lit, would portray a parallel existence.

I’m blaming the cold for all this…what I need is a rocket up my bum, back to Planet Penny!

Hastings – at sea level

It was fascinating stay in a place which seemed to operate on so many levels. We were staying in Hastings Old Town, and it didn’t take many steps to find a whole new aspect. Heading along the road away from the bars and shops there are the tall black sheds in which the fishing equipment is stored.

The beach is shingle, and as there is no harbour all the boats have to be pulled up on to the shore.

Including the lifeboat…

lifeboat station

I’ve just realised how remiss it was of me not to go to the fun fair, what a lot of pictures I missed!

Feeling a Little Blue

I’ve just awarded myself a little play with my toys after spending half an hour lurking in my studio trying to have a sort out.  Well, once upon a time it was a studio, now it is a glorified cupboard, full of wonderful things with which to be creative if only I could find them.  I have staggered in to the house with a huge bag of yarns and fleece and pretty fabrics and my task for the rest of the day is to sort and fold and pack and, whisper it, cull, until I have reduced the whole down to something manageable.  If I do this every day for the rest of the year… no, no, don’t be so dramatic, Penny…for the next week or so, I may even have reclaimed a tiny bit of work space.  The current Project G-J, still in the planning stage, is the building of a new studio. This will triple my work space with lots of storage for materials and books which will transform not only my creative life but free up all the places round the house currently housing little secret caches of fabric and wool and paper and threads and beads and paint…well, I’m sure you get the picture!

Sweet Temptation

It really shouldn’t be allowed.  I have been confronted by this sweetie jar every day for a fortnight when collecting our daily papers from the village shop.  How pretty, I kept thinking, what a lovely photo it would make, how nice to have it sitting on a shelf in the kitchen.  So now it’s mine.  It does make a lovely photo, and it does look good sitting on the shelf in the kitchen.  But it doesn’t look nearly as attractive now the top two inches have disappeared and I have a sore mouth and toothache and sadly, very little willpower!  Ho hum…

sweeties

Experimental Print Making

California Poppies

I’m leaving the garden to it’s own devices this weekend.  I’m off to Salthouse on the North Norfolk coast for a two day printmaking course with a great tutor, Laurie Rudling.  This is me stepping out of my woolly comfort zone and getting messy, hopefully with interesting  results.  With luck I should be able to share these with you, otherwise watch out for pretty pictures of the Norfolk countryside!

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