the painted forest

I do seem to be spawning sites and blogs at an alarming rate this week! My latest is http://www.thepaintedforest.webeden.co.uk/

After completing the bird cupboard I found myself very taken with the idea of reviving old pieces of furniture and giving them a new lease of life. It's painstaking (I can't possibly work at it fast enough to keep up with the flow of ideas running through my head!) but I have finished the first piece, which I'm calling Bird Table (above). The Painted Forest site will be the online gallery/shop for the furniture pieces and limited edition prints (although I may decide to keep the pieces for myself, not sure yet!). The website is still very much a work in progress as finding the time to get it up and running is proving tricky!

growing boy planted elsewhere

As this blog is mostly taken up with my rambling and random stuff that I'm working on, The Growing Boy book has been planted elsewhere in his own blog. I hope that now he is no longer languishing in the dark he will begin to flourish....

suite francaise

I have just finished reading Suite Française by Irène Némirovsky, published more than 60 years after her death in a Nazi concentration camp. The book itself is perceptive, sad and, at times, very funny (the author character, Gabriel Corte is hideous and hilarious!) but Appendix II is heartbreaking - letters from Irène before her arrest and then from her husband - wondering what has happened to her, trying to get her out and, in desperation, to swap places with her. Many are written, unknown to him, after she was already dead, only a few weeks after her arrest. Her husband was himself arrested a few months later and sent straight to the gas chamber, while her two small daughters managed to evade capture by hiding in various cellars aided by familyfriends. Horrible. I can't imagine what it must have been like to live through those times.

Juno

The Juno illustrations for March. One took a couple of days, one a couple of hours - and I

think the quick one is definitely my favourite! Spontaneous is sometimes better, I guess...