I've shut myself in the small room with the high window so as not to be distracted from writing to you; I can spend hours, lost in thought just looking out of the window at the birds or the mountains so I'm trying to be more disciplined this week.There's so much to do. I'm cozy under a blanket with a hot water bottle  because it's freezing and blowing a gale outside... and inside actually, through every gap in the ancient stonework. This building never lets you forget it was a barn!  Lately though there have been several perfect days when it hasn't rained and the snow on the mountain tops was pristine and dazzling; I love the way the snow highlights all the details of the fells and in different ways depending on the direction of the wind, it messes with perspective and distance too so that the same view is endlessly interesting. On a good day those mountains are almost as orange as my homemade marmalade with hints of dark chocolate and icing sugar...I felt a bit bad after my last writing; someone pointed out (in a very kind and honest way) that I'd made "The Last of England"  sound depressing and because I already felt a bit low it made me really sad and worried that I sound like Eeyore the entire time! It was an interesting discussion and at least two important things emerged, 1. Art in whatever form it takes, from painting to music and writing, is hugely personal and emotive which is why it's so important and vital to us as humans. The fact that a painting or a song can evoke diverse and often overwhelming, emotions (and often not those intended or felt by the artist) is pretty wonderful I think; “Music expresses that which cannot be put into words and that which cannot remain silent”                                                                         2. It's very easy to assume everyone knows what you're talking about and feels the same way. I've been writing this blog for 7 years now and I do forget that I'm not talking to an old friend over a cup of tea and a cake...some of you have been here from the start but some of you may have just stumbled through the door right now and have no idea who I am or what the backstory is, so you shuffle back out awkwardly refusing all offers of cake. I've always been aware of this but as BCTF approaches I decided I should reinstate my website at www.witchmountain.co.uk  so that prospective buyers and stockists aren't confused (or put off)  by occasional emotional outpourings about evictions, politics, creative block or the loneliness of a person in beautiful exile.I hope always to write honestly and openly though, I can't see the point if you sugar coat everything, delicious as that may be.Well today I tried to re-photograph some things for Etsy and also for the trade catalogue which I'm currently putting together. It's been so dark lately that alot of my pictures had an unhealthy sodium yellow tint. Hurray for sunlight but not so hurray for the iPhone camera and an out of date browser (that can't be updated because my computer is old which is pretty disgusting built in obsolescence if you ask me). My plans and preparations continue with some fairly expensive mistakes ( a metre of velvet that didn't print properly and which I'd not left big enough seam margins on) and the realisation that if you want to present good , well finished work there is a high rate of wastage and "failure" initially. I remember reading about ceramicist Clare Humphry ,whose work I loved in the gallery, she says the results of firing are so unpredictable that only a small proportion of bowls came out as she had wanted and was happy with and this must be the same for many makers and artists. Quality control is a good thing...its just a shame it costs so much (and another reason why the value of a handmade object is so hard to put a price on)!Anyway, it's time to tend to the stove now and possibly do a bit of jumping around to warm up and increase my woeful daily step count on my Fitbit. Sara and I both have one as we thought it would encourage us to get more active if we challenged each other... instead we are in denial, rarely reaching 10,ooo steps and still less able to resist toast and butter. I think music is the answer, I just discovered one of my favourite bands, Blue Aeroplanes, is still around after all so I'm off to play it loud and dance like nobody's watching (sorry cat) whilst waiting for  some thick, fresh bread to toast...Reading: "Murder on the Home Front" by Molly Lefebure ( who lived here ) lent to me by our rather lovely log man, Tim.Listening to: "Colour Me"  and "Tolerance" Blue Aeroplanes . "Colour me with burnt sienna, show me where my heart is..." 

The rain has just returned, hammering at the moss covered roof and leaking noisily from the broken gutter. Earlier, it was the picture perfect summers day and  I wandered up the valley, in the steamy August heat that has been so rare lately, playing at being a bear foraging for berries, growling at annoying sheep and dying my hands and knees purple with juice. Bilberry, Bleaberry... what do you call them where you are? There is something very primitive and comforting about gathering wild food and filling the store cupboards like a squirrel or a Moomin...  I'd already made 8 jars of red gooseberry jelly in the morning after discovering that I'd gone to work by mistake.The  day started like this... morning sunshine making the inside of the black painted front door hot to the touch as I dashed out to work with my carefully packed lunch, rarely brushed hair and a day of selling wonderful art to lovely people ahead of me. Only I hadn't read the calendar and had forgotten that I'm working on Sunday instead, silly me, I could have stayed in bed. I put all the lights on anyway and collected my newly framed work for C-Art which had been left in the gallery and headed back to the hills - at least I was up and about early and it was a ridiculously perfect day ... as I drove back I thought, as I often do, how it is SO pretty here it feels unreal, like a fairy tale.After the gooseberry jelly was safely in its jars I took myself to the garden of the  house next door (which I pretend is mine when they are away) with a straw hat and a pile of things to make into nests. Some tiny bronze birds had come in to the gallery last week and I just thought they needed nests. I also just wanted to make something methodical because it stops me thinking too much. So there I sat, with a buzzard crying overhead and the mountains all around me and people rushing past looking hot, with heavy rucksacks saying "ooh isn't it lovely, you are lucky" and feeling guilty for being lucky and also edgy because I've felt like this before about a place and look how that turned out.Nest building is a lot harder than it looks and the birds were probably laughing at me but tomorrow I'm going to put the bronze wren in one and that will make it worth while. So, all the time I was picking bilberries and breathing in the smell of heather and bracken and warm mud and mountain air I was thinking about how to write it down so that you could get a sense of how lovely it all was. I came back and began to cook supper, feeling content in the way that you only can in summer when its warm enough to pad around in bare feet and a scruffy sundress, with the windows open... and then...the horrible sound of banging and squawking and panic and feathers and in the chicken house the mean old stoat. My favourite little chick was killed and Mr Stoat is so fearless that I know he will be back. I'm quite tough- I had to complete the job to make sure she was dead, you do these things in the countryside, I try not to be sentimental but I'm sad and I find the smallest thing hits me hard these days. I won't trap the stoat, it was here first and probably has young to feed. Maybe I can fence him out, but anyway, thats how the day ended.  Sometimes I feel a bit like this ...Now I'm off to bed to read a little bit and try not to dwell on the possibility that I may be suffering from the Jam Makers Curse ( I remember life taking a sharp turn for the worse after a certain batch of Plum Jam back in the Joe Cornish Gallery days AND there was the Apple and Bramble Jelly that failed to save me from eviction !) I don't even eat that much jam, I prefer Marmite :)Reading :- "Haweswater" by Sarah Hall    Listening to :- "Stolen Car" Beth Orton and RAIN