Bundles, Sketchbooks and Rumbles

Before Christmas Maggie Grey had an online auction of handmade books in aid of the Teenage Cancer Trust.  I put some bids in but was unsuccessful.  However, after the auction a couple of latecomers were offered for sale and I was lucky enough to get this very pretty book made by my friend Emma who lives on the Isle of Skye.  

For the moment I am just enjoying Emma's work but I do intend to add to it, maybe with some Gelli prints.  

When we saw Carolyn in Mousehole she reminded me about the Erosion Bundles that we had both done in previous years.  I still have quite a lot of the last bundle waiting to be used but I thought I would join in again and make a new bundle.  The idea is to collate various materials and add things that will create colour and wrap the whole thing up and leave it at the mercy of the elements for three months.

I've tried to keep things simple this time and have used blueberries, tea, plant material and rusty bits and bobs to generate the colour.  I've used all sorts of fabrics and wrapped everything up in a piece of Cornish flag that had been hanging on the shed for months.  I've tied the bundle to our back gate which has some lovely rust and mossy colours on it so hopefully there will be more colour.  It's going to stay there till 1 April when we'll see what we've got.  Hopefully it won't be crawling with yucky things like the last one was.

We had a bit of excitement here last week.  Last Wednesday night just before 10.30 I heard a great roaring noise that I thought was the wind getting up and next thing something clattered to the floor in my sewing room.  Turned out it was an earthtremor, 3.8 strength.  We don't get that many tremors in this area and the last time I was aware of one that strong was about 25 years ago.  There wasn't any damage anywhere but it was a bit unnerving for a while. 

Back soon!