Already mid-February, and after a slow start, when January seemed interminable, the year suddenly seems to be accelerating, with new hope springing up along with green shoots.
I’ve had the house to myself for the last few weeks, and I’d made a list of all things that I wanted to do while I was home alone. It was a long and rather ambitious document. ‘Paint bathroom ceiling.’ ‘Start researching book…’ well, those never happened, but I have managed to galvanise myself into partial action.
I signed up for Peterborough Artists Open Studios, and, having done that, I knew that I needed to get my act together and a) do some painting and b) arrange some other merchandise for my open days. It takes time to organise the printing of tea towels and cards, and I didn’t want to miss out. Over Christmas I’d started getting ideas together for a couple of new tea towel designs.
I fell in love with the amazingly vivid vegetables and fruits at a French market in the Languedoc last summer. I’d done some sketches with my Japanese watercolours at the time, and used those for reference. I was also inspired by an old celery dish which I found at a car boot sale for £1. It has since been broken, but not before I’d captured the beautiful handprinted design.
I’d also been experimenting with painting some of the jugs in my collection, you may have seen them on a previous blog post. The original painting of these is currently hanging in Peterborough Cathedral as part of an annual community art exhibition (on until February 27 and well worth a visit if you are local).
Once I was happy with my designs, I took them to a local printer to be scanned. This is worth paying for as it ensures that I will get a nice crisp image with the best possible colours for my textiles. I sent the scans to the tea towel manufacturer in Manchester. They did a great job, printing them digitally and making the tea towels in record time. I’m very pleased with the results. It’s quite a thrill to see a painting gaining a new life on fabric. My tea towels are now for sale, at £12 each. In fact, I have already sold out of the Farmers’ Market design, although I will be placing a new order soon. Please email if you are interested to fionacumberpatch0@gmail.com I do have a small quantity of the jugs design available.
These are the jugs …
And here is my popular Farmers’ Market tea towel…
It’s all very well painting flowers and veggies, but what about growing the real thing? Although I’ve been wanting to get out into the garden, it has rained and rained and rained. So I’ve been inside a lot more than I like to be. It has had some benefits, and I was pleased with this little jug, an oil on cardboard. It is a little wonky and not centred properly, but it’s a good way to plan out a larger painting, and see how the colours work. I will be trying this one again.
My painting table overlooks my small garden, and yes, I have been casting despondent looks in the direction of my soggy raised beds and flooded flower pots. Looking at the bare bones of the 12x5m area, It occurred to me that I have far too many small pots, and that what I really needed was another larger raised bed, where my plants will have more room to spread and thrive. When I saw some galvanised metal oval ones on sale in B&Q for £26, I pounced and purchased two. They are not huge, but at 120 cm long and about 60cm wide, they’re the perfect fit for my garden.
Thwarted by the rain, I built the first one in the kitchen….
I’m not a natural at DIY, even basic tasks bamboozle me, but with the help of YouTube, I did manage to put this together, using about 1000 nuts and bolts!
And eventually there came a dry day to place it in position in front of my shed.
It will be filled with layers of cardboard, some logs and other organic materials before I shovel in homemade compost, and finally a few bags of peat-free compost. I’ve big plans for this new bed. I’m envisaging an exuberant wigwam of sweet peas, followed by dahlias, and a ruff of late flowering crocosmia. I have some sweet pea seedlings already sprouting in my greenhouse, and I’m stockpiling dahlias from the supermarket bargain shelves. Look at these beauties from Lidl!
The death of an aunt, and a request from her family that I should write her eulogy has made me think a lot about time passing, making plans happen, and doing the things we really want to do. I don’t think it matters whether that’s something really ambitious (the book that I don’t seem to be writing) or a little project such as making a raised bed full of hot pink and purple dahlias (that one I think I might be able to manage). It’s enough to achieve something small and purposeful, keeping it realistic.
I will finish with this picture of some gorgeous snowdrops carpeting a local churchyard. A few days ago, I went for a lunchtime run (not a regular occurrence, I just saw the blue sky and felt like I needed to be outside and appreciating it, even though I had work to be getting on with). Anyway, as I was jogging along, I came across this amazing sight, which actually stopped me in my tracks. It was another self-reminder of how important it is to seize even the briefest of moments.
