¬Alphabet Offerings to the God of Ideas¬

My studio is a crazy mess, there are papers everywhere and a general dismal disarray. I should shame myself and post a picture but I can't air that dirty laundry. My mum might see it. But I made these letter templates yesterday and swept a pile of trimmings on the floor so I could take a nice clean image. I'm not entirely sure what they are for but I keep cutting words out of random papers and thought I should make life easier by making an alphabet template. These are the capitals and I need a lower case set now. It's finicky and awkward but therapeutic. A meditation. A displacement activity. An avoidance of something. But it's making me feel excited about some new work. When you are stuck and not getting anywhere, just do something. This is my something.

˚˚Yelling about Yellow˚˚

Learning to love yellow

I haven't given the colour yellow a fair hearing for quite sometime now.

It's never seemed quite right as a 'creative' or an 'observer' to say I didn't like it, but yellow irritated me.

For years I dug up the stubborn daffodils that dared to survive despite my efforts at extermination. I found their shrill optimism hard to stomach and all that wavy frothy frilling was just well...naff.  Yellow didn't sit and blend in with my melancholic nature.

But yesterday I found yellow again.

Looking about for some tiles for my new shower (o dream of bathroom to follow) I fixed eyes on a shade of yellow and we clicked...

"hellllllloo yellow", I said 

"hey you", it soothed back

sigh

so now whilst attempting to plan my new bathing experience I keep cooing over yellow.

Taking up my time and slipped moments lost in yellow daydreams. 'Pineapple crush glass' tiles with a 'meadow' mosaic. I realise you don't see it quite like I do but in the tile showroom something in my middle melted.

Maybe its the antidote for all the whiteness and snowiness and coldness and this long long winter

but that yellow infatuation keeps on growing

I'm seeing it everywhere now...

the pale creamyness of the butter block laying in a white dish; 

the bedspread from Turkey with its tufts of acidic nuclear yellow laid out like well ordered fields of wasteland scrub; 

the bunches of daffodills left on my doorstep by Mandy to cheer up a creaky navy blue mood, now stuffed into a cracked gravy jug becoming the foreground of my garden/washing up view,

their greenish points spilling into yellow applause 

and a mustardish creeping bloom of lichen on a frozen roadside sign

Green and I, we go way back. It's always been me and green but from a flowing line of historic green can come yellow, so naturally and so subtly. Like we were old friends all along and I had been too wrapped up in that all shouting, singing, dancing one man band of green to notice.

I wonder how long this love could last?

Hi Ho Hi Ho

It's off to work I go

Procrastination must end...

Walking today...

when the swans flew over my head like prehistoric creaking flying machines, blotting out the January sun. I collected kindling in an derelict wood where the floor mulched and squelched with years of toppled trees and unchecked growth while black funghi on ancient bark sprouted with dark mossy hills of inky poison.

I have words and words colliding within me... stacked up and up, with no air traffic control to guide them safely and gently down.

At last. It's ready.

My website. It's cooked and ready to be served.

http:www.louloulovesbooks.com

Christmas was... 

being with my family, cooking, eating, film watching, rum n cokes, sitting by the fire, 

hanging stars from the ceiling, vases of pussy willow and red berries,

washing up a lot, laughing even more,

reading new books

and the girls singing Christmas carols all the way down the street.

Siobhan said it was the best Christmas ever, even better than when she got a Polly Pocket.

Home made Christmas wrap. 

Still in love with my stamps as you can see. 

Making Christmas cards for my friends and family..

Rice papered sugar and spice and all things nice and my crisp new rubber stamps from India.

Made by a guy who sits on the street taking orders, they were ready the next day and perfect.

They worked out to about £1 each and I was definitely overcharged in his eyes!

This was my room  for five weeks recently whilst I studied yoga at the AYRI (ashtanga yoga research institute) in Mysore which is Karnakata, Southern India.

Waking early and pulling on my yoga clothes, wrapping a dress over the top and making a cocoon of myself in a shawl; I would tiptoe through the dark house and head out underneath the coconut palms to my yoga practise and dogs would bark at this strange shadowy figure brandishing a yoga mat.

India smells like petrol and woodsmoke, drains and jasmine.

India sounds like a one man band on a motorway.

It feels like living at a free festival. Wild dogs, wild kids, singing colours and moments of absolute peace.

It feels like home.

A couple of pages from my India sketchbook...

I was learning to make rangoli designs.

In Southern India, the ladies of the house are up at sunrise and washing down their doorsteps (or patches of mud) and with a handful of flour and a deft flick of the wrists they draw these beautiful designs. The reason for using flour is so that the ants will stay outside eating that rather than entering the home. The design is also a blessing of the house. Each design is different and drawn in one sweeping movement. 

A lifetime of learning at mama's knee.