Fogs and Fish Eggs

A FOG sneaked up on us this morning and sneaked away again just as quickly. It filtered the frosty sunlight through its damp doubtful fingers and made everything nearby look far off. We did our morning chores of sweeping and mat shaking and washing breakfast dishes to radio 4 with the door open and the fire crackling, and the fog tried to sneak in over our door sill, but we wouldn't let it.
Then I walked through the fog over the fields with a loo roll under one arm and a bag of fire ash and a bucket of veg scraps under the other and stitched my gumbooted steps between the apple trees to the place where we have dug holes for .. um .. such things.




I finished my first truck painting today whilst Tui fitted glass to a new window he is making for my desk area. It's a strange thing this painting ... a boy fishing through an ice hole for a hinged fish with an embryonic old man inside its belly ... made with rusty watercolours. I am today opening my shop again and I bring The Fish Egg as an offering for the new year. It'll be an interesting thing running a shop from here. I have stacks of lovely prints and sturdy envelopes ready to send off, so do wander over for a browse ... and if you make an order, apologies if your package arrives a little muddy around the gills :)
We have enjoyed tramping about the local lanes and hedgerows and orchards here. Kent it seems is full of apple trees. In fact just yards from our door stands a four year old Iranian Quince Tree. There's a busy mole who tunnels under our wheels at night too.. we wonder if we might wake one morning to find the whole truck submerged in a new earthy appletree-rooty mole world.

A box of beads on a foggy day

YESTERDAY'S FOGGY misty moisty morning brought an interesting box all the way from Utah.. and inside I found this - a delightful box of handmade beads, sent to me by an admirer of my paintings ~ Sharon Bourke, who makes these lampwork beads and gives them to friends and strangers and leaves them in nooks and crannies on walks to be happened upon by passersby.
A delightful treasure-trove to arrive on our doorstep on this grey day. The beads are made by heating coloured glass rods in a flame and wrapping the molten glass round a steel rod to make the hole. Centrifugal force keeps the beads spherical and mysterious chemical reactions between the different colours produce the one-off jewel-like results.
She enclosed a quote too:

"Beads are gypsies: glittering, magical, and primitive hitchhikers. You slow down to take a look, and they attach themselves to your soul."

Carolyn Manzi, Bead Power.

We have had some sunny days too though, enough for Tui to clamber up on the horsebox and begin work proper on wooding our new home. This front section was covered with metal and is now expertly bedecked with Honduran Pitch Pine. It will soon boast a lovely round window (unearthed on ebay) in the middle, but at the moment it has no glass in it!

Meanwhile I have been busy with the mystery painting.. which I am very happy with still, despite some struggles involving painting green glass ... anyhow it is almost done and those of you expecting a little surprise in the post'll be receiving something soonish. The dastardly hard drive people are making me wait even longer while they source parts from America apparently...
I am still expecting the worst.
Ho hum... time to light the fire.