This way for Writers' Houses Christmas cards ...

 

My Christmas cards are going great guns with Virginia Woolf (above) and the Brontes (the 2012 newcomers) (below) slogging it out for top position this year.

 

 

I started the series last year with John Keats (below)

 

 

and Jane Austen:

 

 

They are printed on white stock card and come with a white envelope in a cellophane bag.

Ideal for bookworms!

On sale in packets of three in my online Etsy shop:

www.etsy.com/shop/AmandaAWhite

until December 3.

Of snowmen, Brontës and tropical brass monkeys ...

A rough beginning ...

 No doodles this time ... because two sets of photographs featuring the snowmen of North and East London on the computer gave the impulse I needed to get cracking on an idea I had had for a while about "revisiting" Haworth Parsonage in winter. That and the cold weather currently assailing the allegedly semi-tropical island where I live. (I sit typing this in a thick woolly). 

A set of rather-worse-for-wear parkland snowmen popped up on one of my favourite blogs, Justine Picardie's (link down on the right somewhere) yesterday and just hours later my daughter sent some photos of a massive one with a huge spherical head and pebble teeth she had met down Clapton way.

I have always loved them. Spontaneous pieces of primitive art that spring up whenever a half-decent layer of snow is laid down. Strangely misshapen, grinning or grimacing, no two snowmen are ever the same.

Now I know the Brontës aren't exactly the sort of writers we would immediately associate with skylarking in the snow, but heck, even they were children once and must have taken time out at some point from eternally writing about Gondal in their teeny weeny interminable notebooks.

And even if they didn't - well I'm making them. 

My cut paper world, my say-so!

The Universal Snowman: A tropical version made by my daughter and nephew up on Tenerife's volcano a few years ago

Bookmarks and a stroll around town

This is what is on my table this morning:

One bookmark design finished and the next at the assemblage-and-chopping-and-changing stage. And the book I borrowed last week, Haworth Harvest by N Brysson Morrison which is an enjoyable and untaxing read, devoid of the dreaded footnote disease and full of interesting little nuggets. I just wish it didn't smell of old (this is one of my daughters' most withering descriptions). Or should that be wuthering?

I called in at our local modern art museum the day before yesterday and was pleasantly surprised to find the collection had been changed since last time when I must say the preponderence of crusty, dusty fifties and sixties abstracts in various shades of mud and deterioration had detained me less than 10 minutes.

This time around I was bowled over by two tiny Eileen Agar pastels, one of which is below:

Not a very good reproduction I'm afraid as I was taking the photo undercover. In real life the colours sang out and here they look more like they are doing more of a bit of a muffled hum. Agar spent the winter in Puerto de la Cruz for several years in the 1950s. As did another British painter I admire, Dot Procter. 

And here is another picture I was taken with, by Canary Island artist Lola Massieu:

The collection is housed in a beautiful 17th century mansion overlooking the fishing port, and was once the local customs house. It deserves to be better known and better visited. Unfortunately it suffers from another disease I am averse to (see above), namely acronym disease. The letters MACEW will mean absolutely nothing to 99% of people but that is the big sign under which the building labours (standing for Museo de Arte Contemporaneo Eduardo Westendahl). So potential visitors who don't go a bundle on figuring out word games simply pass it by. There was just one other person strolling around when I went in. 

The woman on the desk, who was very knowledgeable about the paintings and artists, seemed touchingly pleased to see us.

Haworth Parsonage pet picture

I finished this today. 

At least I think it's finished.

Not terribly happy with this photo as I am missing about an inch of empty space to the right. One day I will get around to finding out how to crop images instead of just bunging them in as they come on the camera.

Anyway, it depicts part of the Brontë menagerie: Flossy the dog, Victoria and Adelaide the geese and Little Dicky the canary. There were cats too and a falcon and other dogs but I think it had to be a case is less is more for this image. Paring back is generally the best bet.

The animals seemed to have mostly belonged to Emily and Anne. Charlotte could, apparently, take them or leave them. Patrick Brontë their father had a couple of dogs called Cato and Plato in his last years. 

I quite fancy doing a picture of those three. Possibly outside the church. In the snow. 

Mmmmm ... time to do some thinking with my biro and book.

Bronte country

My thoughts have turned from that house in the north of London for the time being to one in the north of England, now that I have decided on expanding on the Keats theme and starting a series of writers' houses as an ongoing project.

The Brontes are a recurring interest of mine though my collection of books on them (a grand total of 3) can hardly be compared to my Keatsian shelf.

I came upon a nice little cache of magazines at the fleamarket the other day to begin a collage. But first I have to find a way in, as it were. So I have been reading around the subject and turning it over and scribbling words and rough sketches and website links on scraps of paper.
I love the research and doodle bit.

My raggetty ideas book

One of the things which struck me was the contrast, in contemporary accounts, between the clean, neat and well-kept house and the indifference with which the garden was treated, to the point, according to some, of neglect. "Stunted thorns, shrubs and only the most hardy plants ..."
I brought home a bunch of roadside English-looking weeds from my walk this morning to get me into the mood and doodle in my ideas book.

Some inspirational weeds, and a ginger cat exiting stage left.

Have to see where this goes. A single sentence in one of the books might trigger me into action ...
In the meantime I am finishing that linocut today.
I hope.
Anybody spot the undeliberate mistake in my last post? Yep. I did it again. Forgot to reverse the image I mean. I was so embarrassed I went back and removed the photo!
I definitely need a break from carving bits of lino ...