A WALK AND SOME PAPER BEADS

The walk

It was a short walk because the pain is quite bad today. It was lovely to see the bank of snowdrops, with so many more flowers bursting into life, in front of the shelter at Coombe Wood .

Blue sky and sunshine was a bonus after the sleet earlier 

 Low winter sun on the magnolia and the bench

on the broken sundial

and the trees beside the pond

Two fish swimming past an old flower head
(could be a Primula Bulleyana) 

Another journey

Apart from my photography most other expressions of creativity feel pretty dried up - life has knocked all the stuffing out of me physically and emotionally but, thanks to the art group I belong to, I'm often able to take some tiny steps towards greater creativity again. At our get together on Tuesday Cath (see her lovely artwork here) showed us how to make paper beads. It's a long time since I tried making these - without any great success. Cath makes gorgeous paper beads. My first attempts on Tuesday weren't very good but since then I've made some more and discovered that I like them better when they're made with my own papers (old artwork etc.) rather than magazine pages and I prefer them with a smaller hole in them.

I wrote to my art group friends the following day saying "I suppose I'd better stop making paper beads now till I find a use for the ones I've made so far..." but this morning I made some more and discovered that while I was working on them an idea came to me about what I'd like to do with them. Sometimes it helps to take some little steps before you have any idea of where you're going.

Thank you for joining me.