Goblin mode

Goldfinches, shrubbery, and bullet journals.

Hello.

To be honest with you, I wasn’t going to write today. It’s January, the worst of months, and I am feeling tired, tired like someone with no iron reserves who has not been taking their vitamins; but my small newsletter has been featured. It has been featured with proper newsletters, run by people that I look up to, and to be included is an honour and a confusing anomaly; I have had an influx of subscribers, so I thought I ought to come and say hello and welcome, and disappoint you, probably. I’m very tired, after all. Hello, and welcome.

Meanderings

In the morning, I go for my walk despite it being ‘a bit muddy out there’, which is British for ‘the whole track is a heaving swamp, ready to consume you at any moment’.

The chestnut trees are full of redwings today; they are always full of something, those trees, jackdaws or starlings or squirrels. I have a little look at the tree that fell down last week, slightly after I walked past thankfully. It’s quite impressive; I’ve see trees ripped up by the roots by storms, and I’ve seen branches snapped off, but I don’t think I’ve seen a whole trunk snapped.  Not with the rest still standing. I didn’t want to show private land in a photo so I’ll draw it for you, next week maybe

When I return, the chestnut trees are full of goldfinches. If there is a large group, or rather a large charm, of goldfinch all chattering together, and they sound a bit like starlings to me. My rule of thumb is if you can hear starlings but not see them, they are goldfinch, who are smaller and harder to spot; today they are close enough to see clearly. They really do deserve their collective name;  a charm of goldfinch. They are charming.

Workings

Being tired (did i mention I am tired?) I have been a little slow to resume printing this January, so there’s not much new in the shop. That’s not to say I haven’t been busy- most excitingly, I have finished my ultimate bag, the bag to rule all bags. You know, the one that’s the right size,  and has the right amount of pockets, and has an impossibly large amount of mushrooms per square inch. I’m terribly excited, because there has never been a bag that’s so me.

You can read about the making of this bag on the minerva.com, so I won’t go on about it here, I’ll just let you enjoy this outtake of me looking like a gnome. I won’t apologise for wearing so many layers I look completely round, because gnomes are allowed to be spherical in January and that’s a known fact. We also have grumpy little faces.

Sketchings

Slowly becoming more and more obsessed with owls as I am, I was going to go out and sketch the owl tree, but before I got round to it, I saw the robin sitting sad and confused on the frozen pond, and popped out with a dish of water and some fat balls to replenish the feeders. That was more than enough being in the freezing cold to convince me any attempt to draw outside would result in catastrophic finger loss.

Instead I resorted of bringing bits of shrubbery indoors. The first is a fir branch that fell in the storm. I’ve been meaning to do a detailed sketch to see how the pine needles work properly.

The second is quite different stylistically,  because it is a preliminary sketch of my olive tree for my next linocut. For the fir branch, I was trying to be accurate, or at least, as accurate as you can be in a hurry; for the olive branch I was just enjoying the feel of pencil on paper, a soothing, mediative thing. I was also reflecting on how much harder drawing from life is comparison to using photos, it really is a whole other thing- I was fairly accurate here too, not that it matters because I’m not going to show you the reference. You can probably see from the colour of the leaves my olive tree is not feeling very healthy at the moment.

Foundlings

I’ve been abnormally organised for January, and because someone asked, I thought I would mention a book I read late last year, The Bullet Journal Method by Ryder Carroll.

I tried bullet journaling five years ago; I know this because when I went to buy The Bullet Journal Method my kindle said I already had, five years ago. It also said I had read exactly three pages. I can’t really remember anything about my first attempt, other than it was a cheap notebook and I hated it- the notebook, and also the journaling. The notebook I hated because I loathe writing on cheap paper, too rough, snagging the pen and bleeding through; life’s too short for that. The process I got bored of, because looking at instagram I got the idea the whole thing was just an illustrated todo list. I don’t get on well with todo lists, and illustrating them just creates even more work. I strongly recommend reading more than three pages of the book and understanding the process properly before you start.

I’ve managed to keep it up several months and am more organised as a result. I’m not sure why it works better for me than apps; it might just tap into my need for nice stationery. I bought a nice Rhodia goalbook with my favourite super smooth clairefontaine paper this time.

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