Mothers Day and mine and Theo's Birthdays

Nice day today, Mother's Day, my son gave me a lovely card and some yummy chocolate, Daughter in Africa at the moment. I went out into the snow this morning, rather pathetic snow but I needed to get milk and I wanted to go before it got any worse, as it turned out it stopped not long after I got back to my stepfather's house.
We've just had lunch, very un-traditional pasta, and rice pudding for dessert which I overcooked, not used to an electric oven!
I've had a nice 10 days here with Jack, a lovely time at my grandson Theo's 5th birthday party, some lovely presents for my own birthday which is the day after Theo's.

Theo, face painted as a skull, receiving a balloon alien at his party

Apologies for dodgy framing of picture, my camera had a broken LCD screen at the time so I had to point it and hope. Very pleased to say I have replaced it myself, chuffed to bits about that!

I took myself off to the British Museum on my birthday, to see the Ice Age Art exhibition. Definitely worth a visit, some absolutely amazing stuff, carved with bone tools by supposedly primitive people, alongside some contemporary artwork, reflecting the links to, and influences on, modern art of this work

These are some small sketches I made of 3 of the pieces, not brilliant but I wasn't allowed to take pictures, took 2 before they saw me but shhhhh! One didn't come out anyway.
Many thanks to the Foundling Museum for giving me a map when I took a wrong turn getting from Euston to B.M.
I'm mulling over how I can use the inspiration of the exhibition in my own work. I have some nice flat pieces of bone saved from dinners, I may have a go at carving some. See what happens.


Anyway, we had a nice family lunch yesterday, everyone who could be there was there and it was lovely.

Pretty snowdrops just to finish off.

Back to Devon tomorrow, please no snow!

blog trawling

Been having a bit of a trawl around the blogs using that 'next blog' button. There's an amazing variety out there from really bland to really exciting and interesting. Lots of quilters, that skill eludes me totally, even looking at a book makes me glaze over. I'm not a planned crafter, my work evolves as it goes, I start with a central stone or piece of glass and just start beading, the most I do as a plan is get all the appropriate colours and add the next row as seems appropriate. I suppose that means my work reflects my mood quite well. A classic example is this piece:

http://www.misi.co.uk/store_info.php?user_id=1183

I actually had a drawing for this, but it was for a necklace! it took so long to do to this stage, plus it wouldn't curve as I wanted it to, so it became a bracelet and I made the silver shell button to finish it off. People seem to like it though so there you go!