One year on

Here we are, on the first anniversary of An Elegant Sufficiency and we've been without power all day due to the extreme weather we've been having. Above is a picture of the small River Frome, which normally flows steadily down the valley but which, this morning, was a raging torrent. All over the county, it seems there are trees down and reports of damaged buildings, such was the force of the gale which blew across the country this morning.

Thankfully is all seems calm now. Our power returned about an hour ago, though I just drove home through several other darkened villages so some poor souls will still be anxious about the state of the food in their freezers and so on.

Anyway, thank you to everyone who has encouraged me to keep up the blogging and especially to those of you who leave such nice comments. They are appreciated, every one!

Remembering good times

I have mixed feelings about scrapbooking - detest that "business" of putting together pages of emotional self indulgence, recording a picture-perfect image of the world and buying into an industry where it's ok to copy, to lift and to follow every step of someone else's creativity. And yet, I enjoy looking in scrapbooking shops for the very details I love to include in some of the things I make, enjoy the inspiration of some of the "mistress scrappers" like Ali Edwards and sometimes, I even make "memory books" myself.

I've found that, after a very special event, a meeting of friends or family, one thing which is really appreciated is a collection of the photographs taken and a few memories recorded. I suppose these could simply be printed out and put into a small album, with labels of when and where taken and who's in the picture. But somehow that's all too straightforward and with my usual "why make it easy when with a bit of time and effort, you could make it a little more challenging" approach, I usually make little hand made books for the key people involved.

This year, rather than make concertina-style books from scratch myself as I've done in previous years, I decided to take an idea from the aforementioned Ms Edwards, and customise a ready-made 7gypsies mini tag book (Bought from the Craft Emporium whose extremely efficient service I highly recommend) and a few sheets of Basic Grey papers (in the "Fruitcake" series) I've done six of these small books, all ever-so-slightly different, and tailored to the person they were made for and am about to drop them into the post.

I've quite enjoyed putting them together and hope they'll hit the spot. From previous experience, I think they will do exactly that.

Out in a minute...running late

So why do I choose now to play and fiddle about with my blog?

Just loaded Snap, a neat little plaything. Hover over that link and see what happens. Good, eh?

Brightening up a January day

Couldn't resist these fantastic blue anemones whilst shopping yesterday. They are huge and all the same beautiful blue, which coupled with the fresh green leaves, brightens up a dark, rainy January day very well indeed.

Incredible paper art

Just came across this YouTube video which is quite awe-inspiring. I love the way the negative shapes left behind after cutting become part of the overall product. Great work.

The work is that of Peter Callesen . Why not sit down with a cup of something and spend a happy hour looking through his amazing work? Highly original and meticulously worked, this takes the skills of papercutting into an entirely different zone.