You could follow the arrow that says "Starling Dodd" and find "Witchmountain" there in the trees; the last house on the mountain and goodness it's really felt like it lately - the last house on the way up but the first for the wind to hammer as it crashes down the valley. The outline of these hills has always made me think of sleeping dragons and I think one woke up during those Named Storms, it wasn't happy to be disturbed. Part of the lane has washed away and various bits of the house leaked - are leaking- (because as I mentioned last time, this is a Jumblie's Sieve kind of a place) but it's quiet now, the heating boiler is fixed and I'm trying to be less like Bill Nighy's Mr Woodhouse in Emma, constantly anxious about draughts.The picture above was taken from the top of Catbells last weekend. We set out in brightness and blue sky, with packed lunch and flasks of hot Ribena, only to be ambushed by vicious hail storms which I'm hoping will have the same effect as an expensive microdermabrasion treatment. The snowdrops are still hanging in there, leggy and battered but it's nearly daffodil time and hopefully a there's a gentle Spring on the way for all those places so badly affected by the floods.Now that I've talked about the weather I have to try and order my thoughts; what to say? What to leave out? What to paint a brighter shade so that I sound like a misery? I think a lot about writing (when I'm not writing) and art (when I'm not ... doing it) and what I think, often, is that anyone who tries to make a living by their imagination and creativity, or even just lets their words or images out into the wild with no thought of financial gain, is pretty damn brave, or crazy, because there are Other People out there and they have Opinions. I remember thinking this when I went to a book event in London a while ago, the brave and fearless authors who'd spent months alone with their writing, had to come out before a crowd to pitch their books to us (the booksellers) and then there would be critics, then sales figures and then the pot holed path towards a new book. It's the same for all artists who make a thing in private and then offer it up like a slippery newborn for inspection. You don't get to just go home, switch off and watch Eastenders after a day at work, it's always there, it is you.If that all sounds a bit too heavy and serious it's only because I'm in a thinking mood after I was interviewed this week by a lovely woman from a local magazine. Little old me in my studio (for studio read kitchen table). I've never been interviewed in person about my work before, so of course I felt like an utter fraud, a slightly batty hermit; naturally the cat popped in and out with a dead vole and true to form I rambled, over shared (possibly) and only remembered what I should have said after she'd gone. I'll let you know if it makes the editorial cut, I hope so despite my shyness.So what should I have said? What is the right way to behave? Up sell, up speak and always look in control?  You see I still feel as though some honesty is vital. What use is it to anyone if the picture of "life up a mountain making art" is airbrushed in such a way that other people misunderstand and possibly fall down the same pot holes, I have a duty to put metaphorical cones out!What's real today...*It took me 3 hours to light the fire so I've done no creative work , have a coal dust moustache and if there's a power cut we're stuffed because I used all the candles (ran out of fire lighters)*I'm realising that because my prints take ages to make I sell them too cheaply.*Sometimes I just want to read a book and eat crumpets instead.*Self promotion is so hard and feels like being everything you were brought up not to be.Anyway, that's the end of the soul searching section, except to say that while I was talking to Ellie I realised that I became most passionate whilst talking about other people's work and businesses, it definitely feels more comfortable. We also talked about the solitude needed, in my case at least, to come up with ideas and inspiration, but that doesn't mean isolation. The support of (and for) others is vital. This week although I've seen no one I've felt absolutely lifted and supported by my slowly growing network of creative friends who all face similar days when the fire (literal or creative) won't light and their muse has gone missing. You're all amazing.Hey look! I did a mug shot! This is so rare and I'm squirming a bit but here I am, only a slightly airbrushed startled rabbit. The finished "big" versions of The Ugly Duckling and The Secret Garden which I'd done for Elspeth Tavacci arrived the other week. Elspeth is working on making a version of The Secret Garden which will work as one of her, Purple Pomegranate, card books but these are the Story House versions, designed for teaching English as a foreign language. The books have all sorts of activities in the back such as word searches and creative writing prompts  as well as vocabulary notes throughout which I hadn't expected , it really is nice to see the finished thing all printed and real.This was one of my favourite pages ...Anyway, I have just 5 copies but I could spare one, so I thought maybe I could do a giveaway like I used to in the Olden Blog Days? Is that still a thing? To enter just visit my website  and let me know in the comments below which is your favourite card so I can include it with the book (if you sign up to the newsletter too that 's an extra entry - and if you buy a card you are a hero). I'll pick a winner at random at the end of March so that the winner can read the book before the new film comes out on April 10th!This is my current favourite and I'm thinking of getting myself a pea green boat if it doesn't stop raining soon. Good luck xReading : "Here in the Real World" by Sara Pennypacker.  I love a good children's book and this one - admittedly chosen at first for its cover by Jon Klassen - is turning out to be about all the things I love, gardens, friendship, nature and finding a space to become yourself.Listening to " The Toyshop" by Robert Dinsdale and the theme song to The Detectorists by Johnny Flynn [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VDunLPWD2Xw&w=560&h=315]

One night last month everyone in the Lake District, maybe even the entire North, looked up at the sky and reached for their phones and cameras; it was a sunset of such wide screen perfection that the drive back from wherever we'd been (no one could remember once the sky started showing off) took twice as long as usual while we stopped and started several times to admire the changing hues, the way the road turned rose jam pink, the Violet Cremes melting into Turkish Delight. It made me wish I could paint, really paint, in a way that had the same effect - wow that makes me sound  a bit like a megolamaniac but I just mean to say, to be able to create an image that really meant something and sent shivers up your spine in the same way a piece of music or an epic sunset can.Have you ever felt moved to tears by a painting or illustration? It feels strangly disloyal to pose the question, as an art lover, but while I famously weep at the end of almost every film regardless, feel physically shaken by certain music and get goosebumps wandering through glorious landscapes I rarely get this from a "picture". I feel as though I should, the way people say sitting in the Rothko Room can affect the emotions.Here's a still from something that made me shed a tear this week; LedbyDonkeys made a powerful and emotional statement, projecting still images and film onto the White Cliffs of Dover and Big Ben on the day Britain sadly left the European Union. It was moving and comforting. If you missed it you canwatch it here - a lesson in dignity and respect.Away from politics and biblical sunsets I managed to stagger to the end of January, complete the scary "financial" pages in my planner with £100 profit (does that mean get a pony yet?) and ride the waves of turbulence caused by the annual round of exhibition rejections. January is peak exhibition application season which is particularly tough as it's meant to be too early in the year to be feeling despair! On Penny Hunt's recommendation, to give myself a kick up the bum, I've started listening to the Art Juice podcast with Alice Sheridan and Louise Fletcher which is like having a couple of friends sitting at the table while I'm working, discussing some of the questions most people who make stuff have asked themselves... Is making art a selfish thing to do? Why do women in particular often feel guilty about making time for themselves to be creative? What if you don't have space for a studio and how do you define success?One thing I've been thinking about this past month is, does it matter if I enjoy working in several quite separate styles? You might have noticed a lack of cyanotype images on my social media posts recently and I think if I'm honest that might be why the likes of Printfest reject me every year. I probably don't come across as a master printmaker or a "fine artist" (there's already a super fine one of those in the family) because my website isn't minimal and arty; it needs to showcase the smaller things that I sell, such as cards and printed ceramics, because otherwise I can't afford to keep doing this. I realised the other day when I was delivering work to the gift shop of a lovely gallery, that what I really wanted was to be one of the people with "proper art" in the exhibition upstairs- that or the writer/illustrator of a totally gorgeous, critically acclaimed picture book that warmed the hearts of children, adults and small bears everywhere (yup, megolamaniac masquerading as a mouse!). It's a nuicence not knowing what you want to be when you grow up, when you're nearly 53, but the whole point of being self employed is meant to be the freedom, so for now I shall refuse to be piqeonholed.I'm loving pen and ink at the moment, obsessing about treehouses as reading rooms and desperately trying to work out if I can weave a story out of the random sketches, mismatched characters and doodles I seem to make at this time of year (oh how I miss those snowed in days on the moor top). I've started using Pinterest again to gather some thoughts but only in short, carefully measured doses as I'm already old enough that I jump at my refection, I don't want to emerge from a labyrinthine browsing session like Rip Van Winkle. Here's my new Treehouse Board, take care, leave a thread to guide you home...Hopefully some of these ink and watercolour drawings might lead to some cyanotype pieces as well,  in time for the events I'm doing later in the Spring, starting with a visit to the Hearth Art Centre in Northumberland in April for their next Art Fair.Well, it's late now; time to head to bed, where lately the noise of the wild wind wrestling with the giant sycamores has made it feel like being out at sea in a small boat. The curtains swaying in the breeze and the mysterious windy patch on the stairs all add to the impression that our house is more Jumblie's Sieve than Pea Green Boat...Until next time xReading: "Spinning Silver" by Naomi Novic and listening to "Things in Jars" by Jess Kidd.

Happy 2020!  Here is the view from half way down the fell I struggled up on New Years Eve, fuelled by my gingerbread polar bears and coffee from a surprise coffee van - I'm getting slower but its always worth it for views like this.Well, It seems as though the only way to break the silence on this blog and make a fresh start as I enter my 12th year of occasional writing, is to admit that I was defeated when I started writing this post back in November. I ground to a halt, bogged down in a quagmire of half thought thoughts.This is what I wrote ... "...I'm writing this by the stove with a hot water bottle up my jumper and a pile of buttered toast with blueberry jam next to me (well, in me now if I'm honest). It's dark outside, frosty cold and moonlit and I can hear an owl calling - a good night for hunting.What happens if I don't write regularly is that things get jumbled up and all the internal monologs that made sense when I was walking up the valley or wide awake in the middle of the night are forgotten. You'll have to take my word for it that they were fascinating and really worth writing down and not at all like this paragraph of waffle. I do regret not making at least one post a month though, because more and more this blog has become my personal record of the past 11 years. At a recent art fair a customer commented (flatteringly) that one of my bear drawings looked similar to another very well known artist's bears and it was a relief to be able to trawl back through old blog posts to confirm, to myself, that it had been drawn before I'd seen her work, although inspired by some of the same sources.At another event a woman picked up a print which I told her was from a piece I'd done at college "Oh it's lovely, don't you wish you could do something that good now? " (people say the funniest and rudest things without meaning to) It's good to be able to look back and see that, with a few exceptions, the things I make now are 100% better than those I was making in November 2009, even if the person making them is a bit more rounded and worn around the edges.What's brought on all this looking back ? Well on Twitter last week I saw a post pointing out that there were only a few weeks left of this decade! That fact is fairly obvious and shouldn't make any difference to anything but it came as a bit of a shock to someone who can still remember the last days of the 70's quite clearly and somehow can't quite believe how quickly the past ten years, in particular, have been and gone. The question posed by the tweet I saw was, what have you achieved/learned in this decade and what are your hopes for the next? In some ways both these questions terrify me as I am prone to focusing on my fears and failures as well as feeling that, like John Cleese in Clockwise "I can take the despair. It's the hope I can't stand." Besides, many achievements also contain the bitter taste of Something Overcome and those things are hard to look back on, even when heavily sugared by success. But in a decade of big changes for me there are definitely some small achievements to celebrate and as for hopes... "And there I was, stuck, on what should have been the easiest question, what are your hopes and dreams? Well what are they? What are yours as you stride into the year?So, much of what silences me and makes me sometimes fear writing from the heart in this, "public" space is the pressure to be positive and upbeat at all times, or risk damaging my business, and the very British habit of reserve which means even my most candid posts are heavily censored to avoid being too much of a bleeding heart. What I spent hours mulling over, forgetting to write, turned out not to be my hopes ( I hope for a garden and a pony of course, doesn't everyone?) but my fears - for the planet, for the world my children will inherit, for our country under this government  and of course my own selfish fears (how many greetings cards = 1 weeks rent and should I be making more "stuff" in this world of stuff?).Anyway it's the New Year now, we're all full of optimism and shiny new intentions aren't we? I've  invested in a fancy new planner from the Makers Yearbook to organise and motivate myself, it's bound to lead to wild success and world domination - gardens and ponies for everyone! I have to set daily/monthly tasks and one of today's is "Finish that bloody blog post" (s'cuse me swearing).I've also been drawing something everyday (so far, don't hold me to it, it's only January 9th). Here is last night's effort, part of an unwritten story.My trip to Moniack Mhor continues to inspire me, I just need to knuckle down and put it all into practice even if no one reads the results except you and me. James Mayhew  and Sarah McIntyre are doing another picture books week at the centre and I can't recommend it highly enough. I'd love to go back but this year I must be sensible, and besides, the car has refused to contemplate the trip.It's nearly time to feed the stove, make a mug of tea and see what inky character emerges in this evening's session. But first, here is the cover of the poetry book I did for Gary Liggett in the Autumn. It's a signed limited edition book, handmade in Cumbria. I really enjoyed working with different media for this one (Lino cut and watercolour) and as usual it was a learning process. I'm so glad that he liked it, along with the three illustrations inside; you can see them all here along with some other illustration work.In other exciting news, I was invited to take part in The Great Print Exhibition at Rheged, in their new gallery space. Sara and I went to the opening night ( we nearly turned back because the poor old car went over a bump and its lights went dim) and I was so excited to see my work along side so many amazing printmakers from all over the country; there was even a red dot on one of mine! Being in an exhibition like that and better still, selling something, is a real confidence boost because I think when it comes down to it, the biggest creative battle I have is the dreaded Imposter Syndrome.If I don't write again very soon shout me and I'll get my act together. Also this post is dedicated to Kat Lakie, a friend of this blog, and everyone else in Australia, I'm thinking of you and hoping for cooling rain xReading : "Help the Witch" Tom Cox and "The Lost Future of Pepperharrow" Natasha Pulley (out in March )