What Saturday brings

One of my current projects is to get back to "proper walking" - in hiking boots and the rest of the gear. This was put on hold after a swollen foot incident, which I blamed on the boots. After a rest of a good six weeks, the foot is perfectly ok and the boots are getting a second chance, worn for short walks which will soon get longer. 

Today I set off early along the Parkland Walk, heading for that "free" coffee at Crouch End Waitrose, and determined not to stop and take photos. But then there were these -

 ... part of the clearing to keep the walkway from getting overgrown. Obviously it had been neglected for some years, long enough for saplings to expand, only slightly restricted by the bars.

Parkland Walk attracts diligent and ever-changing grafitti, no need to photograph that really - unless it's a byproduct of something else. Here you can see several of those sapling-truncations -

 ... and while the camera was to hand, I needed to capture this considered piece of art -

Off the walk and heading down the hill, how delightful to see spring flowers ready to be distributed among the tables of a pub -

Another project continues to be the house clearance. It's almost done - the last few bits of furniture have gone onto Freecycle, fingers crossed they can be collected by Monday, which is also scheduled for the final run(s) to charity shops with the remaining bags of books. But when will the house change hands? We are waiting for the buyers to get the final details of their mortgage sorted out....

Much more has come from the house to my flat than I thought possible.

Just a few more things to squeeze in, once you get past the
carpentry tools in the hall

And what to do with it all, now? Bit by bit, bag by bag, it will get sorted, but not this week or this month ... maybe this year. Meanwhile my studio has become a storeroom, which is sort of ok. I'm not bursting to get on with any creative projects that need tools&materials gathering, or space for working on them.

Rare sighting of floor in studio/storeroom!

That doesn't mean that there's nothing happening in the art department. A short course of ceramics classes has started - some cloth pots are ready to dip, and more will be made as the weeks go by, and next week the art history course (medieval) starts. I'm looking forward to sitting and absorbing information. And seeing lovely slides.

The week offered two chances to sit&absorb&look. One was a talk by Martin Gayford about his (and David Hockney's) book, A History of Pictures. Pictures of all sorts, not just paintings - photos and movies too, going way back to the cave art that, in the flickering light of torches, must have seemed to be moving. The other, Philip Hoare (author of Leviathan) and biologist Luke Rendell on the minds of whales - how we are learning about their social groups. And not to forget the discussion on Sunday about the role of national libraries in a digital age (very well attended) - Roly Keating from the BL and Aviad Stollman from the National Library of Israel.

I popped in to the Spring Knitting & Stitching Show (hello Yvonne!), on the way to the house on Friday - it was the day that, thanks to a WWII bomb being discovered near the Overground, that convenient train wasn't running. Never mind, it was good to see my "On the Edge" piece on display. I had to wait quite a while for the crowds to clear to get a good shot -

My "plain beige" piece was the one that people hardly glanced at. And why would they? The exhibition had much more to offer, a lot of interesting, colourful, thoughtful work. Well done, CQ.

Next week the CQ newsletter/magazine goes to the printer, come hell or high water, and in between trips to the house and sorties to save my soul I've done some work on it at last - a great relief to have it underway, and thanks to its contributors, it's shaping up well.

Thanks to a job finishing early, the Domestic Carpenter has been designing my bookshelves.

 We went through a morning of "what would happen if..." and "did we try putting the sofa there" and "but where will DanHayes [large framed print] go?" and came up with this, roughly -

Start small - first part to be built will be the unit on the left, and we'll see how it looks and reassess.