Keeping busy

It is business as usual here in my little workshop at the back of my house in Nottingham – since last March I have been limited to walking the dog as my only outing, as my husband is fairly vulnerable to the dreaded virus. I have nevertheless managed to retain a degree of sanity by keeping up with my handmade products which I love to create, and which I sell on the Etsy platform. Making my handmade forges close relationships with some customers as I collaborate on work for commissions and have the pleasure of creating some wonderful unique gifts from customers poems.

If you don’t have that impulse, then there are always the books that I make as tributes to the things in life that have made my life meaningful – there are books celebrating the companionship of our canine companions, a book delighting in trees, the joy of parenthood, the curiosities of ancient manuscripts and a number of books which are literary tributes. I am including some pictures as tasters to provoke your interest! Why not pop along to my corner at Etsy for an in depth view!

Tribute to John Keats

https://www.etsy.com/uk/listing/666133475

https://www.etsy.com/uk/listing/662812488

Commissioned work

and then of course I don’t want anyone to forget that I print bespoke greeting cards too, and art prints. I want you to come and bookmark me so that when you need a special gift or card, I am there to fulfil your need! Why not order your Mother’s Day card right now! I print inside the card too if you would like a special message.

https://www.etsy.com/uk/listing/682515486/

https://www.etsy.com/uk/listing/949491096

https://www.etsy.com/uk/listing/682515

There are clickable links against teh images that will take you to individual listings, or if you want to head straight to the shop landing page please go here https://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/modestly?ref=simple-shop-header-name&listing_id=931938907&section_id=16665080

In the meantime I would love you to have a browse over in the shop – all that clicking helps my algorithm! And thank you for all those supporting me in my creative endeavours – it has been a blessing to have something fun to do in these days of lockdown! Stay safe – we are surely on the way to finding some sort of normality again, just a few more short weeks and Spring to look forward to again!

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Fall forward

My dog walking is a joy these Autumn days – I took some photos a couple of days ago and turned them into digital paintings – just because I can!  My artwork has had the feeling of fall for the past few weeks, but then it is probably my favourite season. I love the smells, and the colour – there is nothing to compare with a sun infused Autumn day. What I see informs what I create – here are a few Autumn creations in my sites at Society6 and Redbubble and at Etsy. I love finding the beauty in ordinary – very Zen!

Greetings card at Etsy

River Impressions Art print at all sites

Fall favour – acorn style Art Print at Society6

And a highlight for me this Autumn was being featured in a beautiful digital magazine Nurture, where I got to share how I love my creative work. You can find the link here  Volume 5 Nurture & Bloom     

Lost

I am feeling loss – and yet have only blessings in my life to feel grateful about. My transition is from feeling necessary to being somewhat spare partish. My youngest son is moving through his life – and I am so proud he is where he is, doing what he is, as I am of my eldest and my stepsons – I have nothing to be particularly grievously worried about apart  from the parlous state of the world we are leaving them to sort out. And yet I feel hollow. I need to connect to something that creates meaning for me, and all my strategies I have used to date are not quite doing it for me. I keep turning up – trying to create something I am proud of – but it’s not really working. I know I need to go out into the world, but am not quite ready to face that. I know no answers exist, I know it remains within my own hands (or head) , and yet I am only faced with a feeling of hopelessness.  Where are those bootstraps I need to pull up?  My first port of call in the past has always been to find solace in the writing of others – and that has created a safe haven for me in the past – but one of my losses is the facility to read. Somehow I am unable to find it within me. This too , I hope will pass.

It’s a river, and I am at one of those sticky creeks, I need to haul myself out of the mud and find some rapids.

Hope everyone finds some kindness to share today, this week, this life.

Ruminations with Rumi

I have come to an impasse – so I need to remember this.   I depend on being inspired by my travels in nature, and by  my delving into the wonders of what has been written before by past masters to propel me into creativity. Because I need to create to feel alive. Sometimes the rhythm is not there, or something is misaligned – with no particular explanation – no domestic discord or family crisis to knock me off balance. It’s just not there. Sometimes its a waiting game. Funny old life.

This bee is enjoying a sit down.

It has been some time since I updated my blog – and there is a reason for that. My first name is Deborah – though I am called by my second nomenclature Anne due to a tussle between my mother and father – and Deborah is supposed to have a meaning attached to it ‘as busy as a bee’. So I was told. I can make a meal out of  anything – metaphorically speaking – everything seems to take me ages these days. I don’t know whether I am noticing it more, or whether I am definitely slowing down. The upshot is it is terribly difficult to feel productive. I am learning to live inside the moment. That sounds easier than it is – our brains are hardwired to be distracted by stuff that makes us feel useful. I don’t feel useful. I feel increasingly useless. But I am trying to change perspective on that. I don’t want to live a rushed life. I want to live a meaningful life. Alot of that meaning transpires to be spent in connecting with my little rescue dog who is needing alot of attention. So be it.

Let me share this with you – it feels great to slow down a little. I hope you find some time to spend doing absolutely nothing .

A reintroduction to Modestly

 

I thought I would share some thoughts I articulated when asked a couple of years ago to contribute to an art blog – just in case you haven’t yet met me or know what I do! It seems like yesterday that I sold my first hand made book on Etsy – and every sale is just as exciting to me as that first one. It is an opportunity to put a little bit of myself into the world, albeit in a very humble sense. I hope you feel curious enough to browse my links at the end and discover the work I produce!

The quest of living our lives well is the inevitable journey each individual must take. It is the perpetual drive to retain the mystery and magic in a world that is sometimes inhumane, hostile. Sometimes life becomes almost unbearable in the moment. I have struggled to maintain my equilibrium in different phases of mine – my early twenties working in a pressurised commercial environment, my early thirties becoming a parent, my early forties learning to live with the loss of a marriage and forging a new future.
Since I was a child I have had a curiosity about how to live well. To me this is the question that philosophy tries to answer. And philosophers are interesting, but so are poets and gurus, and business leaders. Curiosity is the spring board to doing something, whatever it may be, it is about the opportunity to dig deeper, to investigate. The process of making my books chose me really. I have loved mining the minds of past thinkers – and current ones too – I think in an attempt to understand more about how to be human. That seems strange, since being human should surely be the most natural of processes. I don’t find that, I find it discombobulating, I look at behaviour to learn from it. I know now I am not alone in that feeling of alienation from my own species, and writers and artists taught me that. I learnt from my early life that being a career girl disassociated me from what is most important to me. So I stopped.

One of my greatest pleasures in life is creating. To find yourself living that flow of easy ‘being’ when the mind and the body are occupied has to be the up there with the best things. I don’t care who you are, or what you have – this is the experience that tops status, recognition, fan appeal. It is really playing – and we in the Western hemisphere have somehow forgotten that play is how we began, and how children learn best. Learn to play, and you learn how to live well. Creating anything, from a cupcake to a spreadsheet, from a poem to an engine, is about that engagement of you with something else. And alchemy happens.

Tribute to Hemingway on Etsy

Tree Time on Etsy

The Enchanted Loom concertina artist book on Etsy

Dog Days at Etsy

Since I started at Etsy, I have diversified into card design and that spurred me onto a new product range of published notebooks , which are beautifully manufactured and offer another way of enjoying my design work complemented with the wisdom of writers and artists that have inspired me .

The design work on cards suggested to me that I could diversify into other product ranges, and print on demand sites now offer my work on a multi platform , all of which can be found via my website, or here All my sites   

Hoping to share more with you!

Brief encounter

It isn’t rare to have an encounter with deer here in the Highlands of Scotland – and in our village at Kinlochleven they frequently come down to the river, or sojourn on the green for a short while. I have been taking out my new rescue Patterdale morning , noon and night – we are more often out than in, and yesterday evening we met a beautiful young stag . He had arrived on the green just as we did, bounded onto the bridge and leapt over following the line of the river.  We caught up with him – the light was still hanging around although it was past ten at night – the village was quiet. Reggie and I stood rapt as the young stag was totally still in our presence. It was as though he had invited us into his space. And then he bowed his head to eat some grass – I bowed mine back – and we mimicked one anothers gestures twice more. Reggie was as quiet as a mouse – no barking, no growling, no pulling – just a three way dialogue of enjoying the meeting. Extraodinary. And uplifting – my spirits are needing more of this.

The place I want to get back to

is where

in the pinewoods

in the moments between

the darkness

and first light

two deer

came walking down the hill

and when they saw me

they said to each other, okay,

this one is okay,

let’s see who she is

and why she is sitting

on the ground like that,

so quiet, as if

asleep, or in a dream,

but, anyway, harmless;

and so they came

on their slender legs

and gazed upon me

not unlike the way

I go out to the dunes and look

and look and look

into the faces of the flowers;

and then one of them leaned forward

and nuzzled my hand, and what can my life

bring to me that could exceed

that brief moment?

For twenty years

I have gone every day to the same woods,

not waiting, exactly, just lingering.

Such gifts, bestowed,

can’t be repeated.

If you want to talk about this

come to visit. I live in the house

near the corner, which I have named

Gratitude.

(c) Mary Oliver

 

Liquidity

This weeks photo challenge  To celebrate liquid in images   

Finished!

Every now and again I manage to complete one of my ongoing projects!  This one has been on the back burner for some time – I already have a title that includes three of this poet’s work , but I wanted to investigate the poet a little further.

I was an early fan of his poetry – the musicality within it is magical – and I really do know how much my life has been influenced by listening to the power of the written word by a genius.  I count my poet influencers amongst my friends – they have informed my thinking and feeling for the majority of my life.  I truly believe they are life savers.

What I really find out when I dig deeper about any of my literary heroes, is how human they are – how full of paradox and confusion – and that endears me more. They above all others have shown me how truly miraculous it is to be human and alive and suffering as well as exalting. I lead a secular existence – and I am no apologist about that – but the spiritual exists within and poets help me to embrace that side of my nature.

 

A deep gratitude to artists everywhere, for the attempt to connect.  And to Mr W. B Yeats – the everlasting love of the listener and the reader.

 

‘Like along-legged fly upon the stream

His mind moves upon the silence’

 

If you are interested in seeing more of my finished tribute, it is going to be available here    Tribute hand made book at Etsy

 

Before the fall

 

This is a wonderful spot for a picnic – there we were on the slope overlooking this little river at Glen Etive last Sunday, watching a fantastic stag watching us as he dominated his landscape.  My husband is a real photographer – whereas I am a beginner – and as is his wont, he finished his sandwich and jumped up with tripod and camera to capture a one in a thousand shot . He didn’t manage it. I heard him before I saw him, in one glorious arc lose his footing and fall face forwards down the slope . My consciousness sort of disappeared I think. I moved, found myself next to him without knowing how, looking at a very deep gash gushing blood from just above his right eye. I didn’t know where else to check. He was horribly shocked from having to drink in his own blood as it flooded into his mouth. Horror scene.

Cut to the following day – put together like Jack that tumbled down the hill by a gorgeous young doctor at Fort William ,  he was wearing his stitches like a veteran.

What surprised me most was how physical shock attacks – I was functioning enough to cope on the hill – made a compress, found a sleeping stranger down the road to check him over- drove an hour and a half to the hospital – but the following day I was  a wreck. Cognitively even more impaired than I normally am in a morning it  was back to hospital to check out his dizziness. All o.k. on that front , but suddenly my back seizes up in chronic pain. Bizarre.

A week later and we are all good. And I am even more aware of how lucky I am to have him here with me. But when we go picnicking up waterfalls again, and we will, I think we will equip ourselves with a phone to message and possibly a flare. Often there is no signal up those hills and if he hadn’t been able to walk back down, we would have been in a much worse predicament. We are sensible , we have all the walking gear – but that doesn’t exclude accidents that can turn into nightmares. As the Scouts say ‘ Be Prepared.’

Some of the shots that my husband has taken in the past – and some of my own – are available in the sites that can be accessed on the pages in my blog if anybody cares to take a look! I love his photography and they can make great subjects for my work at Society 6 and Redbubble which goes onto lots of products. Here’s one I made earlier!