Goodness, I nearly sent this post off to you with no words. I pressed the publish button instead of preview because I've been on so many adventures since I last wrote that I was struggling to put them in order. Perhaps the pictures don't need words... maybe you can imagine how it feels to be on top of a mountain watching a snow shower sneak around the corner like a curtain being drawn across a sunlit window? It was my birthday last week and the weather was so hot we began to think about shorts and ice creams and passed people heading back from Buttermere wearing swimming costumes, but by Sunday it was back to winter again. Twenty minutes after the first photograph was taken I was standing on top of the world (Dale Head) at this cloud factory having walked through a shower of the most perfect star shaped snow flakes ( like the bits in Lucky Charms breakfast cereal).So I sit here writing with a head full of images and ideas and wishing I could be settle to something meaningful instead of making smiley sheep from the wool I find on fence posts!. Yesterday I visited the Castlegate Gallery in Cockermouth and found out more about an artist called Percy Kelly whose paintings of little white houses and Cumbrian scenes really inspired me. Kelly used to write letters full of illustrations and a book about him called " The Man Who Couldn't Stop Drawing" is next on my wish list. In another strange twist of fate I opened the book right on a page showing a painting of Newlands Valley looking up towards this house... there was a quote which was something about the colours in the landscape and how exhausting it is for an artist to be constantly looking and looking; I wish I could remember exactly what he said.I will never be a painter but I do look and notice and want so badly to be able to express it all somehow. I've spent plenty of time wondering exactly what colour those purple-grey- brown mountain tops are, so it was rather wonderful when my dad ( a real painter ) wondered the same thing as we walked up the valley in blazing sunshine, last week. Apparently Pip Seymour the paint maker would know.And so, with many adventures untold and being a whole year older ( nearly eligible for a whole new category of vitamin supplements ) I will leave you with this small white cottage ... a digitally manipulated drawing that I made last week. I'm going to try and do some more drawing and get some stuff together for this years Art in the Shed in Osmotherley on the second Bank Holiday in May. As usual Jane Thorniley-Walker is hosting this charity exhibition (and excuse to eat a lot of cake) in aid of Street Child Africa.Which do you prefer?

The house is silent again now that the Easter break is over. Everyone has returned to work or university and I'm alone again; watching as a great bank of Groaky mist creeps up the side of Causey Pike and some wind battered daffodils bob about outside the window like a Lake District cliche. Soon the trees and hedges will be thick with leaves and the view will be hidden until Autumn.These pictures were taken over the Easter weekend when we were bathed in sunlight and blue skies and the fells looked like the frayed old brown velvet on the pocket edges of my great grandma's coat. Sara and I looked down from Scope End and enjoyed a hot Brandy and Ribena with chocolate eggs which made the rest of the walk a bit wobbly.So much has happened in the tiny way it does when you're not really making plans ... red squirrels spotted in Dodd Wood, soft Magnolia buds on the bridge at Grange and the Snake's Head Fritillary I forgot I'd rescued from "home" is flowering in an old tin box by the door.Trying to build a new life from scratch, I'm hoping to become a volunteer at the Calvert Trust's Stables, helping with Riding for the Disabled sessions and I'm really enjoying my days in the Northern Lights Gallery, getting inspired by some of the artists (Patricia Haskey is my favourite at the moment).Looking at work that sells ( big painterly landscapes here)  and needing to find a direction of some sort ...... "For oft, when on my couch I lie, In vacant or in pensive mood...." ( do I just draw for fun or am I still trying to make things that will sell?) I'm sketching and looking and thinking hard about my postponed place at Harrogate BCTF next year. Thank goodness I didn't go ahead this year as it is this very week and my head is still a fuzzy jumble; kept awake by imagined confrontations with ukip supporters on quad bikes and sudden fury over lost family heirloom irises and worry that the swallows may return and be locked out...Anyway, there's no point in looking back when Spring is here and everything is new. The bantams have settled in quite happily and lay more eggs than I can use; at Easter we hard-boiled and decorated them for passing walkers, along with little wraps of salt. The only trouble is we have a furry visitor who is causing havoc.... Mr Stoat.While is is wonderful to see this little person scampering about fearlessly ( nothing much survived the gamekeepers traps at Snilesworth) it is not so good for the poor hens. So far he is only stealing eggs but I fear it could be worse. Here he is, standing 3 feet from the window staring  at me bold as brass...well he was here first.So, it's time to feed the monster stove and maybe draw a little something. I've just ordered some new greetings cards for my Etsy shop, here is a sneak preview; what do you think? Bye for now and good luck to all those taking part in the BCTF. xReading: The Keswick Reminder        Listening To : "Everybody's Free to Wear Sunscreen" Baz Luhrmann & Quindon Tarver 

This week I've been doing a lot of wandering and thinking and wishing I was a landscape painter. Yesterday, I realised that I've probably never spent such long periods of time alone and I have to be very careful not to get too used to it. I could easily become a bearded hermit, muttering at passing hikers ( and sheep), especially now that my dear friends are so far away (we had pledged to keep each other's old lady whiskers and grey roots in check as we dash towards decrepitude). It is a strange contradiction that finds me sometimes pining for the days of dancing in a crowd of smokey, loved up strangers; with thumping bass and ecstatic breaks still ringing in my ears as the sun comes up.... whilst at the same time finding peace and contentment by total immersion in an empty landscape with only birdsong to dance to.I met this friendly soul yesterday as I paused for breath, she seemed to think I needed to work on my fitness but was happy to chat for a while and pose at a jaunty angle to the rock face. In the evenings I've been doing a bit more needle felting and by accident this bear emerged, looking so terribly sad and serious that I had to give him a beaded necklace to cheer him up. I'm hoping to visit an exhibition of Herdwick Sheep photography before it ends next month and also The Wool Clip for more woolly inspiration.Meanwhile, as well as sitting about like a contemplative hermit I've also been having wildly exhausting weekends when Rupert comes home. Last weekend we went to Seascale where an old school friend I hadn't seen for nearly 30 years had told me about a Beach Clean event she was organising. I'd never been to the Cumbrian coast except when cycling for Greenpeace as a protest against the nuclear power station at Sellafield in the 80s! It was actually really beautiful.... except for the rubbish. Why do we do this to our precious planet? These pictures show the more savoury debris but stuff like this, known as "ghost gear" can cause all sorts of problems for wildlife, while what we thought were lolly sticks turned out to be ear-bud sticks (eugh) that silly people had flushed instead of binning ( I won't go on but you can imagine) .I took some pictures and collected a few pieces to help Sara with her final project at university. Her illustration work is based on the pollution of the oceans and plastics in particular, how it affects marine life and even enters the food chain.I'm really looking forward to seeing her exhibition in London's Truman Brewery later this year , but first the group need to raise some money to pay for it so here is a link if you have some spare pennies:-   Degree Show FundraisingOh there is so much to tell you ; there's a woodpecker outside on the sycamore stump, the hens are laying like mad, I saw a red squirrel yesterday ( bright red in a field of purple crocuses), all my post including my bank card has gone to an empty holiday cottage miles away... and so much more good and bad. But for once it isn't raining so I promised I would walk and try to draw (my lovely friend Jane sent a miniature sketching kit including woolly mittens so I just need to make a flask of something). So I will leave you with this picture from Saturday (after the beach) which is Great Gable from Yewbarrow (Yewbarrow is one of those walks that makes your arms ache too as both ends are protected by steep rocky crags that needed scaling and scared the s*** out of me!)