One quilt, cut, waiting for the sewing machine. Green, black, red, cream. 

Rain on the roof

The most welcome sound of rain on the roof, on the road the swish of cars, the gurgling of drainpipes. A whole weekend to come, and whatever rain falls is good. One pile of fabric already cut into the promise of a quilt, and another quilt promised for when that first top is done. I perpetually underestimate the time it takes to make a quilt. I have a patchwork cushion to make too...Put the choral carol CD on and get to!

Andy Goldsworthy, sculptor

Andy Goldsworthy's sculpture is an extraordinary example of patterning. With natural materials - rocks, ice, poppy petals, leaves. His works are landscapes of the imagination within the natural world. They expand my understanding of what sculpture can be and can do. His work shows a man's impact on nature - nature does not create a line of poppy petals across a grass field, or an ice arch, and yet his work is immensely respectful, using as it does the materials of the landscape, from the monumental - immense branches - to the humble - dandelion flowers resting in a quiet eddy pool of a busy river. It reminds me of dry stone walls, another work of people that lives harmoniously in the natural world. I like Christo's work too, but his sculpture imposes man-made materials onto the landscape - pink surrounds to islands, shrouding curtains. Andy Goldsworthy's is about understanding the world he explores in such careful, attentive detail.

Find out more about him here:
http://www.filmforum.com/rivers.html
http://www.sculpture.org.uk/artists/AndyGoldsworthy
http://www.artcyclopedia.com/artists/goldsworthy_andy.html

Christmas preparations

For Christmas, I take the family photos from the mantelpiece and replace them with tea lights in all sorts of candle holders - stars and glass, tin and red beaded ones. The tree's not up yet, but the mantelpiece is changed over as of a couple of days ago. There is something meditative and beautiful about thirty tealights flickering in the darkness. Outside, I've turned on the timer for the fairy lights so they come on each evening - a modest nod to the season, my fairy lights, but a pleasure nevertheless.

Christmas mantelpiece. 

Patterning the world

While my preferred medium for playing with colour and design and pattern has been for a number of years, quilting, I am always finding new ways to play, seeing new patterns in my surroundings everyday. Not sure how they can always fit into a quilt, but that doesn't matter. It's the game, the journey, that matters.

A sunny sky over the almost waterless mystery of Lake George.