wax paper packages tied up with... stickers.

Now that I have reached a hiatus in my studying I am really pleased to announce that I am reopening my etsy shop. It is fully stocked with sets of note cards featuring both French and Hebridean photographs, the two different landscapes that have whispered to and soothed my soul in the last few years. 

I spend a lot of time doubting that I know what it is I'm supposed to do with my life but making things - actual things that people can hold and feel and treasure - is the touchstone that I always come back to. The world is messy and overwhelming and worrying and bringing together something, anything, into a small physical form that makes sense and brings calm and shares an idea or a thought or a feeling that can be held in someone's hands... that brings me unspeakable, if fleeting, peace. 

Note cards probably won't change the world (I mean they might, I feel like there's potential for a note card-based revolution. Ideas on a... note card) but they can probably change the course of someone's day. Frame them, gift them, write some words of love onto that deliciously lush card and pop them in a parcel to a friend who needs to know that you care. Also, they're just really pretty. You probably can't get yourself physically to a Hebridean island or to the south of France terribly easily but I hope that these sets will bring a little of those places to you. 

Details - each set contains five different photographs, taken be me, and printed onto the heaviest, most delicious matt card I've ever seen. They're packaged in wax paper envelopes and sealed with a kiss a nice shiny sticker. 

They are for sale in my etsy shop and will be dispatched on Mondays, Thursdays and Fridays, in keeping with island postal services. 

Paths and unsettled souls.

Perhaps there are betters times and places to walk off an unsettled soul than the wilds in November, but I don't know them.

I don't know of a better place to trip and stumble and swear and cry and shout profanities into the echoing expanses of moor and sea and sky.

I don't know of a better place to crouch in the heather, seeing the universe, not in a grain of sand but in a clump of moorland, colours and layers and depths and intricacies, worlds of which you know nothing because you're just too damn big.

I don't know of a better place to follow paths you and no other human made, paths that lead through and to nowhere or maybe to the exact place you need to be.

I don't know of a better place to stare into water and see nothing but the above mirrored back to you, or the first few inches of below, swimming and rippling and distorting.

I do not know of a better place to come home to. Maybe they exist, but I do not know of them. This is the place I know.

March, a shopping trip

March; a trip to mainland that looked like the islands, trees shrouded in mist, paper leaves clinging to bare branches, moss dripping in silent forests like streamers after the party. 

An ancient valley, standing stones and chambered cairns and circles carved in stones by busy hands 5000 years dead. 

Forts long gone, the footsteps of Kings, dusty light blanketing dormant fields. 

Hillsides mirrored in frozen water, colours siding into colours, the world doubled over upon itself, the sky beckoning below our feet. 

A perfect farm, a serendipitous stay, a dog to befriend and a phone call telling us yes, the boat would be ours. 

Dreams realised, a search ended, imagination sparked, a story begun. 

January.

In January I - 

looked after a dog

decided I am not for two dogs

gave the dog back 

missed the dog 

shot a roll of fim

spent two days in the dark room

had some quite vivid and unpleasant dreams about being back at art school 

fantasized about going back to art school

lost hope

found hope

lost hope

(repeated infinitely with a distinct plummet in the overall trajectory starting around the 21st) 

turned 32

put my neck out

gained a dress size

How was your month?