A New Year and a New Project!

It may be having all this time off, but I've been really very creative lately.  I started making a patchwork star the other day as it is almost Epiphany.  I had no real notion of what I would be doing with it...

I then started painting a very small acrylic picture of Charleston House in East Sussex.  I always sketch in first so I have an idea of what I'm doing.  It was based on a photo I took during the Autumn when we popped in on our way home from Rye.  It isn't perfect but I was happy with it as I haven't painted for a little while and the size of the canvas was rather small!

 

I was still keen to do something creative, and thought about Mr C saying to me about making a patchwork quilt.  So I got out a huge pile of materials, made a lot of mess then had an idea about using bits and pieces of unused material to make a patch with applique in the middle.

 

 

Above is the background, which I've used a zigzag stitch on the sewing machine.  I will then hand sew some embroidered flowers from badly stained old linen onto the top of that.  I can't embroider myself, but I like the idea of reusing something that was made years ago.

 

 

This will then make the second patch.  I expect the quilt will take about 25 years to complete, but I like the idea of doing a patch at a time and seeing where it takes me.  Wish me luck!

 

I can't quite believe it is January already and we only have three more days of the Christmas season.  Work is looming again on Monday, but I'm trying not to think about it too much.

 

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbour. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”
Mark Twain.

New Year Walk in the New Forest

After several weeks of rain and miserable weather, suddenly on New Year's Day, the weather was bright and beautiful.  We decided that after the Christmas celebrations and all of the food and staying indoors, we needed a walk.  Edith Sitwell wrote 'Winter is the time for comfort, for good food and warmth, for the touch of a friendly hand and for a talk beside the fire: it is the time for home.'  Whilst I agree wholeheartedly, there is nothing like a winter walk to blow away the cob webs.

The New Forest looked at its most stunning, I never tire of the soft glowing winter light this time of year.  Ever since our walk the weather has reverted to dull, cloudy and mild, so by posting these pictures, I am reminding myself of that lovely day!

Sparkling clear light and very long shadows

The gorse bushes in flower

Silver birch trees

The whole area was dotted with newly made ponds of water caused by the incessant rain.  It was rather marshy in places.  We discovered some lovely funghi, some growing from the dead gorse

Yellow Brain Fungus

And some growing from felled logs

Now that the decorations are down and the feasting has ended, I am hoping for some nicer winter weather so we can go on more walks and spend some time clearing our ever messy swamp of a garden.

Happy New Year!

Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown...

New Year's Eve usually finds me in a reflective mood.  I am not fond of the celebrations usually associated with New Year - the parties with virtual strangers and false bonhomie and all that build up of expectation and making of unrealistic resolutions. 

You are more likely to find me sitting in our cosy living room, looking at the candles in the fireplace and thinking about the year past.  We've also started to think about our plans for the year ahead - what we shall plant and make, places we want to visit, plus what we shall do next to Hazel Cottage.

King George VI used a poem often called 'The Gate of the Year' by Minnie Louise Haskins in his 1939 Christmas radio broadcast.  The first few lines are:

'And I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year: “Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown.”  And he replied:
“Go out into the darkness and put your hand into the Hand of God. That shall be to you better than light and safer than a known way.”

 I've always loved the poem as it acknowledges that the year ahead is unknown and that we may need guidance in what is to come.  I know that the religious theme is not everyone's taste, but the imagery of the light is rather comforting and it also insists that we must be fearless in going out into the darkness and uncertainty of the new year. 

In all my reflections I have to say that 2011 has been a very happy and creative year here at Hazel Cottage, so I will end with a poem about the joyous bells that ring in the new year.  Happy New Year!

Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.
~Alfred, Lord Tennyson, 1850