I’ve been blog reading today instead of creating – that and designing my new house and tidying my “studio”.
I’m taking Katherine’s “thinking is work” to heart. I’ve a number of ideas going on in my mind and I’m trying to decide how to bring them to fruition.

This bamboo grows in the lower part of the compound at work. I am a keen gardener (job of my dreams would be to be a landscape gardener in the style of Diarmuid Gavin – the Brit readers of this may know him). And bamboo is one of my favourite plants, it is incredibly sculptural and can add structure while retaining an untameable quality. It grows like a weed (preferably plant it in a container sunk into the ground to contain its roots) – and comes in many shapes, colours and sizes. There are two different ones here that I have seen – one that is yellow and has green stripes on it that look like paint dribbles . And this one which grows to about 50ft high and was so fat that I could not encircle one stem with both hands!

Another love of mine is needlework. I have been sewing as long as I have been painting. I remember making dolls clothes when I was 6 using the scraps from a dress my mother made me. I also embroider and have long wanted to learn long and short embroidery. I started this iris on a scrap piece of fabric. Now of course I wish I had done it on something better! Still its good practice. You use several colours of 6 strand embroidery silk and start with 2 strands of one colour and then when you move to the next you use one strand of your first colour and one strand of your second. And then the next shade will be two strands of your second and so it goes until you have a very subtle change of colours like shading with paint.