This New Year thing again

I look out of my bedroom window in my dream state at 6 am and there is my first all black cocker spaniel , Josie , sitting on the back lawn on a rug . She looks about a year old , glossy and with long healthy ears , her back to me . I can see her quite clearly but with her back turned she cannot see me . It is Summer and the sunlight is against me so I have to squint against the sun . I tell D she is there and I want to go down to see her . I set off on a long journey but on the way I am distracted by a neighbour and I never make it to her . This is ok . She seemed happy enough there and was not alone though I did not know the woman who was with her .
I wake and we have all overslept .

Felt wierd .... had I somehow escaped a near death or something ?
I pick up The Prince of Tides by Pat Conroy , presented to me by Chaela on the occasion of my recent landmark birthday . I have just started to read it but it is hard to out down . I wish I had read it before we went to the Carolinas .

My spirits were high making more paper this morning , dark reds in two shades and some pale yellow brown . Trying to work out how to thin the pulp for a lighter texture . I have an idea for some cards for two friends , one of whom left the area recently . It will include a map of the area and a heart .

My first card , made at the weekend , had arrived at its destination today , and a text arrived from J thanking me . This makes me smile . Somehow I had not thought of someone actually receiving the card .

Out of the blue the news that a colleague has died during the night , completely unexpectedly . The blood seems to drain from my fingers as I try to take in the news . A loud bang from the kitchen . Pearl has pushed the blender to the floor and there is pale coloured pulp everywhere .

I feel lucky to be alive and well and in good spirits as I make my paper and think my thoughts .

Is there something about this year ?
Are all years like this , in essence , but we forget ?

I wish I was here . Cafe Royal . Newcastle upon Tyne . Anytime soon . Tomorrow maybe ? Its possible . Not sure about the ricotta muffins though , are they strictly low carb ?

Glitched ?

It can become too easy to feel glitched , that the year is somehow fey , that bad things are on their way .

So , rather than tell you about the death of my colleague's mother this morning , I will say instead that it was easier than I thought to get myself back in gear for the DayJob . That the day passed in a flash , and that another workmate's dog survived when she thought he was dying of kidney failure .
That I'm still so pleased with my silly card making .
That I loved this clock above .
That for reasons completely unknown to me I suddenly have a rush of new people reading my blog . How amazing would it be if they left comments ?

That Alice was left home alone for a spell this afternoon and didn't have her teeth round the dates , or the cherry liquers , or my ankle boots . In fact , she lay asleep just like she does when she is not alone , flat on that back of hers with her legs pointing to the ceiling and her teeth showing .

The Christmas tree is down , dismantled , and because it was such a lovely specimen , is now planted in the garden , experimentally .

Hand Made Cards ...a half made sheep

One of my hand made papers happens ( quite by chance ) to resemble a sheep .
I decide that this will become my first handmade card . All I will have to do once the card is folded and glued and pressed and the semi-sheep added ( I make it sound so simple ) is draw on a face and legs and add my signature to the back and ....
I show it to D who has hung around the art shop whilst I perused the supplies and sniffed out glues .
Yes , he agrees , it looks like a sheep . Will you trim it so it looks more like a sheep .
No I say firmly , recalling my conversation with Liz about the greyhounds we made and how they simply present the shape , the hint , the echo of greyhounds.
"It is an impressionistic sheep . "

Oh says D
Right then .

He continues folding the laundry whilst I try to establish how the glue pot works . Finally he shows me how to break the seal .

I may add a caption , I say later
Oh he says .
Like This is a sheep .

I go back to my cards . He is making me nervous . I still have to draw the sheep's head and legs after all .

Ten minutes later , a cotton wool ball saves me the bother . There is always an answer .

Is there something doomed about this year ?

My sister reports that their friend and neighbour's greyhound , who has just given birth to a litter of puppies , has died very suddenly the night before last . When we were visiting on New Year's Eve we called to see her and revelled in the snub nosed babies and their soft coated mother and now she is no more . M is hopefully managing to feed them and it seems they are old enough to take milk from a bowl .

I could of course be detailing crises in the bigger wider world . Israel .

My cats are all unsettled .

Paper Making

Paper Making : the perfect antidote to yesterday .
New Year has properly been celebrated and I have the front sheets ( still drying on the radiators ) transported from Liz's for several birthday cards ( upcoming in January ) . The photographs show various stages of the process . The books collected by Liz over the years . The original liquidiser I forgot I had donated to Liz for the purpose which was a birthday present to me from my mother some thirty six years ago . Liz and I first made paper together after she took a course before she went to live in Fiji and before she had her children . She has recently returned from a holiday there and today I am wearing a necklace made with tiny shells brought from Fiji presented to me by Liz on the occasion of my recent landmark birthday . One of the pictures shows Liz cutting out a tiny greyhound shape for the wire mesh stencil I used to make paper sheets . Being Art , we decided it was of no consequence if at the end the shape was only vaguely greyhound like , giving the echo or sense of a skinny dog . Currently there are about seven such skinnies drying in grey , a darker grey and pink . We shall see.
having spent much of our time finding such a dog on the internet , cutting out in paper then in wire mesh , I then stated , " a cat would have been simpler and easier to recognise "
"yes" said Liz , thoughtfully ..... but we moved on .

As we work , or play , Liz 's boys are in and out and I am envious of how home based they are . N is much less at home . Much less in evidence and apparently much less still interested in doing family things . J greets me when I arrive and helps me make coffee as Liz is involved in a phone call with a German friend . It transpires that prompting has forerun this greeting and coffee making but nonetheless I am impressed with his social skills and warmth . I would expect no less though from the child of this family , whose parents are so welcoming and enthusiastic for life and friendships .
Liz is delighted to have the opportunity to share her many creative talents and the afternoon passes with much reminiscing about past events , friends , situations and such like .

For anyone interested in papermaking the process is not complicated .
We use offcuts from a local picture framing shop , who gave Liz the border card / paper / mount . This is soaked overnight in water , then liquidised. Once pulped it is divided into smaller amounts , and coloured either by the addition of a paper napkin , or some herbs such as parsley to add texture and colour . The colours and textures can be liquidised in uniformly , or added in flecks to add more interest .
The pulp is then placed into a flat tray and scooped out on a flat piece of wire mesh or mesh cut into a shape eg the tiny greyhound . Liz made winter trees .
This is then laid onto newspaper and the water squeezed out using a sponge , then the mesh peeled off . The paper sheet then dries on a radiator or flat on a table . In my case they are all transported home in sheets of newspaper .
I can't wait to see the final result . ....Coloured threads are also great for making letters to spell names !

So , after all this , today is after all the new New Year , and a great one too .

Have a great one all of you !

Today is the new New Year ....

Kitty Means Business

Today is the new New Year Ok ?

Yesterday was a bit of a disaster day on most fronts so I hatched a cunning plan at midnight to start again today . I have a tiny fear that starting the new year on a bad note might , just might be a bad omen . Mind you speaking to , or emailing or texting a few friends I see that others seem to have fared no better . Maybe we all need to start again .

It started with a very unsettled night . The cats were fine . They sleep anywhere and don't seem to mind who is in the house or what family occasions are happening . Kitty , to be fair has been taking issue with D , coming down to the kitchen for sparring matches and head butting sessions ( her head and his legs ) , pushing him and nipping and generally making herself unpleasant but then she is a tortie so thats kind of expected .

But Alice ( rescue greyhound ) has been something else these last days . Picking up on Tenstion Undercurrents or what ? She has paced and roamed , refused to settle and refused to anything .

So at 3 am , 4 am , and goodness knows what else am she was up and off the bed , back on , trailing about the upper floor , into the bathroom , troughing cat food , needing to void cat food ( trip to back yard , too scared to go out to void in dark , back to bed , out to front where there is light .... none of this facilitated by me I should add . I had had a Vodka . Say no more . )

And then finally , Jennie had to shower at six and leave soon after for her shift as a midwife some miles away . Alice sits bolt upright in our room . The bed lurches ( water beds are delightfully warm in winter , but when the greyhound moves , we are all at sea. And after a vodka ..) She sniffs the air. She looks at D . She looks at me . All present and correct . So who is in the shower ? I find this intensely annoying for some reason . Alice , for God's sake I mutter in my head . We have a room full of teenagers next door at any one time . It could be one of them in the shower ? Give it a rest why don' t you ? Alice can hear nothing from my lips but she is hurt none the less , and draws her head towards her chest to fix me with that face , that infinitely sad , anxious face . In seconds the nose is pointed again at the ceiling , and she is trailing foxes or whatever is haunting her .

J leaves and I fall asleep again .

At eight the phone rings .

Unknown to me J has fallen on the stairs and sprained her ankle badly and is now in Accident and Emergency at the hospital where she works , unable to work and unable to drive home . This notwithstanding the fact that the previous evening she fell on ice on her own steps and her other ankle had swollen outrageously . Now she has a matching pair .

D leaves to help her home . Alice finally falls asleep , comatose by this time . D brings me coffee before he leaves and I read for a while . Bliss . For me .

D returns at lunch time and we drive into Northumberland to Belsay Hall , imagining walking through the gardens in the sunshine . Alas they are closed . Of course . New Year's Day .

We pull onto the approach road and stop the car to let Alice have a run on the deserted road ...... back into the car five minutes later .

Dead .

The car is dead .

An hour later we are following the AA van in pursuit of a new battery .

Today is the new New Year .

I am going Paper Making with Liz.

Wish me luck .