ABCD November 2020

Back to lockdown. Back to Zoom, which enabled us to meet last Saturday. Thank goodness for Zoom!

We started with a mini-workshop from Judith on making origami seed-packets as used (allegedly) by Linnaeus himself. I could not find instructions online for this particular folding, which Judith found on a Dutch bookbinder’s website, but plenty of other versions are available.

Here is mine, made rather clumsily in a few minutes on the mouse-shelf of my computer desk.

Judith has made a couple of day-trips to Cornwall to see this exhibition. It will be shown in Moretonhampstead, Devon, next spring. Exquisite mezzotints and silverpoint drawings. While in Cornwall Judith picked up seaweed and made some eco-prints.

Janine has been doing more cooking than booking. “It’s getting the content to work the way I see it in my head” … yes, we all know that feeling!

Caroline has been writing about her travels. “Delving into old diaries is like eavesdropping on someone else,” she said. Here is her Christmas card design. Moorhens again!

Clare has made another sketckbook journal recording two separate weeks in Wales. Clare swims every morning in her local brook; in Wales she swam in the sea, a lake, a river and a beaver pond. She says it helps arthritic aches and pains, and claims that getting in is easier than getting out.

Here are some of Thalia’s mokuhanga prints of undergrowth and bees.

And her blizzard book of hieroglyphs.

Judy has been on a calligraphy course, Vivacious Versals. Here is some of her work. I think many of us would agree with the sentiment in the first example! At the end of November, both Judy and I will be taking a week-long course with Laurie Doctor.

Pauline, along with the rest of us, has enjoyed the hugely inspiring BBC4 series The Secret History of Writing. Now available on Youtube for those who, like me, don’t have a TV and can’t legally access the BBC i-player. Here are some of Pauline’s recent mokuhanga prints, and a block. “I just love cutting circular shapes in wood,” she said, “It’s the sensation of cutting that I love, probably more than the end result.”

Carol has been doing work inspired by the elephant hawk moths in her garden: pages of prints, and a pop-up.

Jane is still making frequent visits to Chalice Hill, finding autumn colours, parasol mushrooms and a circle of giant puffballs.

Bron has been carving woodblocks at her computer desk on Robin’s mokuhanga course, there being no wifi in the studio. The unavailability of trees, and the impossibility of assembling a volunteer workforce in a lockdown, have for the moment halted the Dove tree-planting effort.

Kate was celebrating a grand-daughter’s birthday, but she sent some images of work in progress.

I, Ama, have been taking a month-long bird-themed writing workshop with Anne-Marie Fyfe. I thoroughly recommend her as a tutor. I now have a 36-page book almost ready to print. The other thing I’ve made is this, a container for sorrow. These downy feathers are all that remain of my dear little hen. Her disability, it seems, was terminal. I miss her horribly.

At our next meeting, on Saturday 5th December, Carol will show us how to make five-pointed stars from squares of paper. Come wearing a hat and have some decorations in the background!

November Dove-droppings

moody lighting
who’s missing?
wake up!

it’s in my head
but it’s harder
to remember who I was

blindly sleepwalking
into the next episode
on the thousandth of March

what’s behind you
men in camouflage
with giant appendages

Siberian labyrinths
between tea and porridge
chilled in every respect

diving into mokuhanga
I freeze when the telephone rings
and fling on some warm things

it doesn’t have to be bullet-proof
nothing’s the same
he’s gone

a humiliating experience
see my legs on Countryfile
we have to stay ridiculous