On the move

It’s the end of September here. Well it’s September everywhere in fact 😁 but in the UK, that means glimmers of Autumn with trees beginning to turn and colder, shorter days taking me by surprise. How that happens each year is a total mystery – one day you’re in your sandals and the next, your leggings have gone full length and you realise you’ve missed the comfort of socks.  Hello, socks!

I love these glimmers and I read something about the word recently as it was the title of an artist call-out on social media, one of those rabbit holes you go down sometimes…

Glimmers can be taken to mean micro moments of joy—fleeting, everyday moments that elicit a rush of happiness, gratitude, calm, peace, safety, or goodwill. But they can also spark ease, relaxation, safety, connection or a feeling that the world is OK even for a fleeting moment.

This change of season can generate such glimmers for me, the whiff of cold morning air or the rusting of blackberry leaves as they slowly turn darker, the colour of trees on a sunny Autumn morning. We can have them in our art-making, or about anything else at all and I’ve been trying to be a little more conscious of them at such a time of personal upheaval. I wonder what yours would be if you listed a few?

So in this vein, I have been making sure to enjoy Summer, too, and not letting it go past unnoticed as we tromped our way though the mire of house buying and selling.  It’s gone on and on and on but nonetheless, despite delays and exhausting frustrations and anxieties we are finally moving in a couple of days!

All this is to say, there might be a pause whilst the aforementioned happens and we get straight again.

Unsurprisingly, I haven’t been able to settle to much but I have still managed to start a hand stitching project that I’m enjoying about rivers.   I will post about it in due course when there is a bit more to show you but it’s safely in my sewing trug as my companion for a while, my safety blanket as it were, amidst uncertainty and upheaval. 

The sets of small houses are finished and I left just a few backs to write on so that not all the scribbles were imbued with anger and negativity.  I wanted some of them to come from a happy place so now that I can look forward to getting moved, I will finish them off.  You can’t tell what the writing says but I know, and there have been a lot of swear words in my head which can finally settle down!

I shall really miss the countryside where we are currently.  But the new house is only half an hour away so we can come back.   The new area is similar in that it’s also at the side of the Peak District, just a bit further south in a town called Penistone. The house is modern and we are giving up our views but I have trees at the bottom of the garden and I can’t wait to have some bird-life back again. Living up high surrounded by fields, that’s one thing I missed.

It’s a small town with a lot of arty things going on. I’m looking forward to making new connections there and finding new walks.  There is an famous converted railway line called The Trans Pennine Trail running right across the country East/West and it passes through the town, you can walk or cycle along any of it and the area is flatter and more open than Huddersfield.  These were taken on a summer visit: 

I’ve also enjoyed teaching at Littleheath Barn and Hope and Elvis studios recently and doing a demo at my local art shop. There are some posts over on Facebook and Instagram of students’ lovely work.

So I will see you on the other side when I’ve managed to carve out some space for a bit of a studio and found everything once more!