Are you there? Are you ok? Does it feel as though you're watching a film of your own life in fast forward?I've been looking through photos taken since February,  to decorate this blog post,  with a feeling of weird detachment and disbelief; how fast the year has unravelled and how momentous the world events, that make it almost impossible to gather enough sensible thoughts to write. I've resisted writing so far because almost as soon as I contemplate a quiet moment sharing the joy of the spring blossom or the scent of the Lilacs or a "thing I made",  I'm struck dumb by the fear and confusion and anger in The News that makes a blog like this seem trivial and ridiculous. Apart from Covid -19 there have been the Black Lives Matter protests and the toppling of Mr.C the slave trader, into the  harbour in Bristol, which has made me want to keep quiet and educate myself. I'm learning what I thought I already knew, getting confused, questioning everything, feeling very aware that despite believing myself to be "not a racist" that isn't necessarily enough. Nor is wearing a t-shirt with a slogan but this arrived today via Print Social, designed by printmaker Rachel Louise Hibbs  with 100% of the profit going to Show Racism the Red Card. So I'm looking stylish while I try to be a better human!Meanwhile here in the mountains lockdown crumbled like a sandcastle in an incoming tide and I look back at this photo of the endless blue days of spring with a strange nostalgia that belies the real fear that was keeping us all awake. Those blossoms are now hard green sloes on rampant, windblown hedgerows,  dripping with dog rose, honeysuckle and meadowsweet, promising a nice crop for gin in time for Christmas. Everything is deeply green and shady around the house, dripping rain and aphid honeydew like a rainforest. I planted loads of seeds  to feed us during the apocalypse - beans, peas, salads in pots, only to succeed in producing  a huge crop of enormous snails. I'm the queen of snail farming, I'm also vegetarian so don't suggest I eat them instead of courgette.People are back in the Lakes all of a sudden, as if its a normal summer and I'm finding it all especially unsettling as, unlike Rupert and Sara who started escaping as soon as they were allowed, I've only been out about 5 times since March (my 17 year old car finally gave up the ghost in April so I couldn't flit if I'd had anywhere to go). Now I'm having to re-engage with Outside and hopefully a smooth return to work in the bookshop.I just looked back to see when I last wrote anything and realised it was so long ago that there isn't even a mention of the pandemic! That month included two interviews for magazines and a potential feature on Countryfile which was due to be filmed in March at Rydal Mount, around the time of the Wordsworth 250th anniversary celebrations. I can't help feeling that it's entirely in keeping with my life's progress that I got what could have been my Big Break, just as the world went mad and even the news was broadcast by people in their living rooms, juggling child care, lockdown hair and dodgy internet connection. Anyway, the magazines got printed and it felt lovely and flattering and a bit unlikely.I'd have hated being on film anyway but the researcher was very nice.

Since ALL my events have now been cancelled (the last two just announced this week) it's been a scramble to try and make up for that with website sales and thinking about different ways of working. Last weekend I took part in an Online Show which replaced Crafted by Hand in Masham. It went ok and it might be the way forward, but how to do this without turning people off? Many of us will struggle financially due to the effects of this crisis and I hate doing the hard sell at the best of times.I wanted and intended to do all sorts of helpful and altruistic things with my art during lockdown but the fact is, the truth is, like a lot of  people I struggled to concentrate on anything creative, I felt guilty about living in a beautiful place with space and fresh air so I didn't even want to share photos and obviously there were personal fears and worries too. I'm taking it gently, trying to recognise that it's pretty normal that anxiety bubbles up in odd ways because none of us have ever had to deal with this kind of thing before. I'm not even sure I can remember how to drive, everything seems much too fast and noisy and crossing the street in a suddenly packed Grasmere yesterday made me want to scurry back to my nest, back to April when we drifted about from one cup of tea to the next, watching the garden begin to unfurl, writing our journals like characters in a play.Theres a new book being published next month called "Through the Locking Glass" which is about the artists and writers of Cumbria responding to lockdown. I made a cyanotype and stitch piece which was included in the book and was one of the few things I did during that time. As things began to ease I suddenly decided to have a go at something completely different ...... My daughter took me (she's my chauffeur now)  to visit a lovely friend, Janis Young, from Cumbria Printmakers who lent me an Xcut XPress . Originally designed as a hobbyist's die cutting machine it happens to work perfectly as a mini etching press. I was smitten and managed to buy myself one;  now I just need to work out how to carry on improving on the beginners luck I had when I first tried it. I'm the messiest printmaker, ink on every surface  and also my own worst critic, but sometimes I accidentally make something that I'm so pleased with it doesn't really feel as though I can have made it ( do you ever get that?)  Here is Bookshop Bear, a card design with some additional yellows splodges, from a collagraph printed on the Xcut. He wants to be part of a story but that's still in the clouds.So, there you have it, a brief round up with large gaps and omissions (the joyous birthdays, the tears and laughter, unfinished jigsaws and abandoned projects, the sleepless nights of worry, the olive branch messages sent to much missed friends that went unanswered, the realisation that Time is relentless, the survivors guilt...)I hope you are safe and warm and well and that everything will be ok.xReading: I'm in between books, dipping in and out of things, listening to Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell which is excellent and weirdly topical  and also listening to Black and British by David Olusoga which should be a set text in schools, what weren't we taught this?!

Cinnamon toast and a large mug of tea by the stove are my fuel for this bit of writing. It's the last day of British Summer Time and at 4pm the fading light means I'm allowed to indulge my bear like nature doesn't it? My nest is cozy; everything outside is leaning slightly to the right, to North, shaped by the prevailing wind that funnels down this valley. Leaves race past and collect in drifts or scratch at the window like Catherine Earnshaw's ghost. I made myself go outside though, before building my den and I galloped down the valley in my clumpy boots with unbrushed hair, chased by swirling mist that poured through the gap on Robinson like milk. I should have taken a picture for you , I wish I could have painted it. Yesterday by contrast, was a day of such sparkling champagne light that it hardly seems like the same country !Rupert is on an adventure in the Himalayas so I'm having to be extra self- motivated when it comes to my own outdoor adventures. Yesterday was easy, I packed a picnic, flask of strong coffee, my wetsuit and a sketchbook and set off to Scales Hill, Crummock Water because I'm greedy and I wanted Autumn trees, smooth swimmable water and mountain views ( all without having to walk uphill with a heavy rucksack). I walked and looked and breathed and braved a tiny dip (longer getting in and out of the wetsuit than in the water). I swam in little circles, using fallen leaves floating on the glassy surface as my markers, edging away from the shallows and trying not to think of the Great Deep; I wanted to float on my back to watch the clouds but October lake water in the ears isn't nice and after the cold water hives thing at Rydal in the "summer" I'm very careful. After my swim I sat on the pebbly beach eating sandwiches, looking across at the boat house with Grasmoor looking enormous behind it and wondered if I would ever dare swim that far; then feeling that I should be less hard on myself  because I may not be a long distance swimmer or a Himalayan adventurer but after all  I have been up Grasmoor the hard way and been brave enough to get in to a bottomless lake, on my own in October.Walking back to the car through the woods I suddenly thought, look at me, in all my outdoor gear, what's happened?! Who am I? And then I saw my shadow and it was ok because as you can see, I'm actually still a bear...Things have started to feel good in the work department, dare I say that? The exhibition n Grasmere was disappointingly quiet but I sold a print and made some good contacts, while the Exhibition in Shetland at Bonhoga Gallery ( part of Shetland Arts)  has already resulted in sales and lots of lovely comments online. The gallery is really beautiful and I'd never seen my work displayed so well... in that it was given space and light and not lost amongst all the other work, I felt like a real artist ( in times like these most independent shops and galleries need to use all their available wall and display space to maximise potential sales, so space, as in all things, is a luxury). It is interesting that almost all my online sales and commissions recently have come from Scotland and the Islands in particular; perhaps my love of the idea of North, however vague, really does come out in the work somehow?The gallery staff at Bonhoga took this photograph of a hare lamp which made me very happy because I'd never actually seen one illuminated before and it does have an etherial, wintery feel to it whilst still feeling warm and cozy.I've also been having some wonderful days in the bookshop in Grasmere; filling in on odd days and trying to avoid buying ALL the books. They are long days, especially with the drive, but so unlike any other work I've done in retail. Being in Grasmere there are some parts of it that are fairly unique, such as the customers wanting to know the best route up Helvellyn on a wet, foggy day, but there is a joy in solving a mystery for the person who says " I don't know the title or the author but..." or seeing all the kids during half term so keen to read real books, even in an age of Tablets and Kindles. Still, my book addiction needs to be controlled; I felt so guilty about spending money on a beautiful new Moomin book when the car needed fixing, that I didn't unwrap it for a week. Anyway, the Library is now doing well out of me too and after agonising for ages I've chosen to listen to Phillip Pullman's "The Book of Dust" on Audible rather than buying the hardback book. It will keep me company in the quiet house.Now it is 6pm and the sky has changed through shades of bruise, made pastel by the low mist. There must have been a great sunset somewhere higher up but here it reminded me of  paint water- I had to leave you for a moment to stand on the doorstep in the eerie warm wind. Anyway, it's taken me two hours to cobble this together, not counting the bits when I got up to put a log on the stove or put some supper in the oven. It's time to draw the curtains against the night.Reading: Hag Seed- Margaret Atwood    Listening to: The Book of Dust - Phillip Pullman (unabridged version) and ( in the car) Blue Aeroplanes "Your Ages"  , I've always loved this, it's a painting in words.."in ten years everything will bleach to primer and we'll lie in the light..."

 It's the perfect day for sitting under a blanket with coffee and a stash of biscuits, looking at more photogenic versions of Autumn than the one currently outside my window, all windlashed,rain sodden and dripping. As usual I uploaded the pictures days ago and then got distracted by stuff so that I've almost forgotten why I chose them. I also had to re-read my last post to remind myself of where things stood back then (September for goodness sake!).Its a shame I got distracted because I know I chose this title and some of what I wanted to write about when I was walking alone on the fells this Tuesday which happened to be #WorldMentalHealthDay. I'd been reading this story  about the yoga teacher Michael Stone and trying to sort out all the tangled assumptions and conclusions I'd come to when I first read it; an initial thought that it is often those with insurmountable problems of their own who end up in professions where they are attempting to help others, physician heal thyself. His is a sad story of a struggle with mental illness that he felt he had to keep secret and my own lazy reaction, despite my own struggles with the black dog, proves that "Culturally, we don't have enough language to talk about this. Rather than feel the shame and tragedy of it, can we find questions? ... What can we do for ourselves and others who have impulses or behaviours we cannot understand?" (statement by relatives)So, as I walked I thought about how we're all just doing our best to navigate the waters and sometimes it's really not that easy- or easy to own up to our crappy navigation skills. We're little islands full of hopes, fears, dreams, histories and insecurities and we all deal with it differently. Rumble strip? Well you know when you go a bit off course on the motorway and there's that bit that makes it feel as though the wheel's about to fall off and jolts you into consciousness? I felt a bit like that last month and the rumbling told me that I needed to stop being quite so hard on myself for not being "The Most Successful Artist Ever" or "Having the perfect job that enables me to pay back the parents and bail out the kids" and take on board a bit of the new age bullshit... trying to be outdoors (a little bit) everyday, doing yoga, eating green things and writing honestly.Meanwhile in the idyllic edited highlights of the year we went paddling over  a mirrored lake, so smooth that it was possible to feel vertigo as it appeared as though we were actually in the sky. The surface tension of the water held downy feathers, bone dry as if still falling through air and it seemed to curve up and away from us like the meniscus on an overfilled spirit measure. I did feel dizzy and being in the middle of the lake in the eerie stillness I had half a thought that Rupert might be planing to throw me in or what if the boat got a hole or what if it got foggy and we were lost, what if...? On the journey back from the pub it was almost dark and bats flittered about hunting, I hadn't thought they would fly so far out over water. It felt like the last night of summer, like a night in a story and so in the dark, on the pebbly shore I jumped out of my clothes for a dip in the black water, giggling like a maniac.Back on dry land the digital "painting" of the Jack Daw in the September blog post became a stencil for a print which will be at the Cumbria Printmakers/Cumbrian Sculptors "Poetic Vision"exhibition in Grasmere which opens on Sunday. It's going to include some poetry chosen by the Wordsworth Trust and poetry readings. I'm really honoured that Polly Atkin allowed me to use her book title "Basic Nest Architecture" for this piece and will hopefully be reading from her poem Jack Daw.After making my fingers very sore piercing and sewing the paper I have now found a proper tool for piercing holes which takes a bit of the pain away and makes the sewing part much more fun. I've got completely carried away on the more recent prints and it's part of my new plan to make less work but to spend longer on each piece.I found the perfect poem to go with this hare print, just a little too late to be included in the reading on the night but it will be credited on the print and in its title "The Leap From The Lea"  none the less, with kind permission. It is by the writer Dom Conlon, a Twitter connection and can be seen here Now you know the nights are drawing in and although it's only 4.30 pm the weather has made it feel later. It's time to make a cup of tea and bully the stove into life. It's going to be a busy weekend and I'm really looking forward to it. Hopefully this little person will visit again at some point...She is a Goldcrest, called Regulus regulus or King of Birds and I've never seen such a tiny little fairy bird in all my life. She banged her head on the window which is why she sat for long enough for me to grapple with my camera ( not long enough for me to learn how to focus obviously) but happily she was soon recovered and flew away.Reading : Autumn by Ali Smith and this blog post  by Laura from Elsie & Nell which says a lot of what also I feel about the difficulties of being a small creative business.