Delivery Delights

I have such lovely little adventures when I deliver to customers.  Once the vehicle is loaded, it is a great feeling to be going somewhere new with my stone sculpture, to see where it will call home, and make sure it is installed and settled properly.

Yesterday I received such a warm reception and kind hospitality - after the placing and fixing was done, I was taken on a tour.  This started with saying hello to some gorgeous pigs - one of them a breed I had never seen before, a curly coated pig, black skinned with blonde hair - a Lincolnshire Curly Coat.  This one was moulting but you can see the curls on its ears!

These pigs sadly became extinct in the seventies, before the introduction of the Rare Breeds Survival Trust, but we had exported many to Hungary and Austria where they needed hardy stock.  The Hungarians used the 'Lincolnshire Curly Coat' to cross with their 'Mangalitza' (a very similar curly coated pig) and the resultant cross was nicknamed the 'Lincolista'!  We have managed to get some stock back and started breeding them again in this country.

We walked through a natural meadow, full of wild flowers and heaving with butterflies.  Most I saw were the Ringlet butterfuly who's larva feed on grass.

Growing were lots of wildflowers and orchids.

Through the fields to the river boundary, wild yellow honeysuckle clambered tree branches and hung over the water, such sounds and smells, then on to a pond which had been dug, we checked the tin sheets for adders  - none in sight, but toads burrowing backwards out of view.  Damselflies darted and danced round the bullrushes in spectacular turquoise and red coats.

On leaving this paradise I was following briefly by a turkey family, who stopped in the drive to have dust baths.

I came home brimming with feelings after my expedition.  You can see what a lovely adventure delivering can be, and understand why it takes me much longer than I thought it would!  I wonder what tomorrow will bring?

From Gallery to Hall to Castle

The Ludlow exhibition is now well underway and I'm home again, back to my normal routine.   After the preview and Meet the Artist at the Ludlow Assembly Rooms we gathered for a wonderful supper, trying lots of Ludlow's finest gourmet treats.  I slept like a log despite the fabulous Henley Hall gala event nearby - a champagne reception, dinner and auction (to raise funds for Ludlow Assembly Rooms refurbishment) in enormous marquees in the grounds, lit with flaming torches and coloured lights with music until the early hours.

Henley Hall is impressive and I wandered in the grounds before breakfast.  There are original stable blocks and beautiful old tackrooms, hay stores and sheds.

I met the horses resting there after their leg of the journey from Land's End to John O'Groats of the horse-drawn WWI ambulence, a charity run by Horses Help Heroes.  The garden is full of really old trees with huge girths and vast, luxuriant canopies - humbling.

We all then set off for a Birthday party held on the lawns of Hay Castle - I've heard of Hay on Wye, because of the famous festivals, but never been.  The Castle was duly crumbling, exuding history and atmosphere.  As we arrived a group of corvids set up from the ramparts complaining of our intrusion.  Round the far side were cobbled pathways and higgeldy buildings all filled with books and old things.  I met so many lovely people, and talked of a thousand things - about glass, farming, publishing, photography, architecture, past times, family and more, while the Revd. Mark Townsend mingled, enthralling us with magic tricks.

In the evening we watched the film Black Swan, had special chilli cauliflower cheese and I had my first ever guitar lesson - I stayed with friends who are musicians in a band, so we played and sang into the night.  A fabulous weekend and one I will remember for a long time.

Quern Stone

Last year I was asked to carve a house name plaque for a Quern Cottage.  Quern was a word I knew, but didn't actually really know what it was.  After looking it up I was fascinated by the findings.  Quern stones are stone tools for hand grinding a wide variety of materials.  They were used in pairs.  The lower, stationary, stone is called a quern, whilst the upper, mobile, stone is called a handstone.  They were first used in the neolithic period to grind cereals into flour.  Research shows however that they were used for grinding almost anything, including medicines, alloys and even snuff.

The prized stone for making a quern-stone was igneous rock, which has a rough surface, but the particles do not break off easily which would cause whatever was being ground to be gritty, although examples in sandstone and gritstone have been found.

Quern-stone -  Bracken Hall Countryside Centre and Museum, Bailden

Anyway, what brought this to mind are all the elderberry flowers, just coming out fully in the hedgerows.  When I was researching the quern stone, I found a lovely recipe using the flour ground by a quern stone to make an elderflower and honey curd tart.

I'm no cook, but this was so delicious that I made a few, they got bigger each time!  Now I'm thinking I need to get back to baking - have you ever made this?  I think it is called Sambocade.

You make a pastry case, fill it with curds (I used cream cheese and cottage cheese together), mixed with honey and your elderflowers (pick just really sweet smelling ones, and scrape off the sprig with a fork), beaten egg and bake.  Wholesomely scrummy!

A Special Preview

For all my blog friends, those new - welcome - and those of you who regularly read and comment - thankyou, you're lovely company - here is a first view of one of the new pieces I am showing at my Ludlow exhibition.   Red Fox is carved from a block of sandstone, which is rusty in colour, so very fitting.

I've got a really early start in the morning, driving to Ludlow to set up my exhibition 'My Chisel and I' which starts on Friday the 24th July - there's a Meet the Artist that evening - and then it runs to 7th August.  I've been loading up the van today, and it is a tight squeeze!  The Ludlow Assembly Rooms have a huge window at the front and I've made a poster to hang there - it isn't often you get the opportunity to put your name up in lights, and I couldn't pass it up, so bought some hardboard and paint and set to!

This is eight feet by four feet, so hopefully it will show up. I had forgotten how difficult it was to paint a straight line - don't look too closely, there are lots of wobbles.   I did a smaller board with my tools on as well. 

The gallery is on the 5th floor, so it will be quite a day setting up - luckily they've got a lift!

My Lovely Visitors and Scarecrows

Today is the last day of my Open Studio, it seems to be over so very quickly - I'm getting thoroughly used to all the attention!  Yesterday visitors braved the rain and came to see my sculpture and filled me up with lovely comments.  Thankyou to you all, and to my new customers.  I hope you realise how much your visits, conversations, words and stories encourage and inspire me and how much your support is appreciated.  Thankyou again!

I made a shelf unit for displaying some of my smaller items, and over the days as the shelves have become empty, I've filled them up with little displays of flowers and I'm wondering if I should have a sell-off today at 4 pm, like they do at Chelsea!

This little planter is beginning to look a bit lonely, so today I will pick some flowers for it too!

We are having Open Gardens in the village this weekend as well, so I've had lots of suggestions for where the best flowers are!  Hopefully I can manage to get round a few this evening and also see the display of scarecrows which have appeared everywhere.  This one is on the way to my workshop and made me laugh.  Though I do find scarecrows rather ...  scary!  Don't you?  Something a bit unnerving about them.