The art of beautiful writing.

Imagine my great surprise and delight when this beautiful hand written envelope dropped through my letterbox amidst the junk mail and household bills! Ted, my over zealous Jack Russell caught it, singling it out as the most chewable of the days offerings. Fortunately I was there in time and after bellowing, “Leave it!!!” I managed to save this most precious letter from the jaws of destruction.

The envelope was such a joy to behold I scarcely dared to open it, after finding a sharp knife I cautiously slit it open to reveal the most beautiful hand written thank you letter and this magnificent gift, my name in exquisite penmanship. Heather had previously purchased one of my miniature books, which had prompted this unexpected delight.



The penmanship is the work of Heather Victoria Held, a calligrapher from St. George Ontario with a passion for Spencerian Script. She has a lovely blog, which I have been following for some time now. She also has a website which is worth a visit especially if you are considering commissioning a piece of calligraphy as a special gift. In these days of email and often-impersonal digital media I can think of nothing more meaningful than a piece of her artistry.

In search of Squirrel Nutkin

Tony and I decided to escape for the day last week; the blue sky beckoned so we packed our walking shoes and camera and set off in search of Squirrel Nutkin.

We headed for the National Trust Reserve at Formby, on the coast just north of Liverpool. Alas, we did not see a single red squirrel probably due to the devastating effects of recent disease outbreaks. It is estimated that numbers are slightly on the increase now but they were certainly very thin on the ground the day we visited.

I have seen red squirrels in the wild in Austria and was amazed at the colour variations, some very dark sable brown, others bright orange/red. Sadly they are very rare here in the UK despite a great deal of conservation work.

The day was not wasted however as the reserve has some lovely picnic areas and walks through pine forests, sand hills and down to the sea. A huge expanse of sandy beach stretches as far as the eye can see, north towards Southport and south towards Liverpool and the walk helped to lift our spirits.



The illustration is taken from my "Illustrated Address Book".

iPhone and iPod application approved!

Our children's book application "The Bird with the Rainbow Tail" mentioned below, has now been approved by Apple and is in the store now. It will take another four weeks to get the final approval for the iPad or so it seems.Thanks so much for all your kind comments, they have been much appreciated.

The illustration above is the icon that appears on screen as a sort of thumbnail, it had to be very eye catching with strong colours so that it stands out when displayed as a very teeny weeny square. Needless to say that I have it on my iPod and have been playing it non-stop to all and sundry! I showed it to my elderly parents who were completely mystified, I had a hard time explaining how we got Tony's voice in "that little thing". I also found it hard to explain how the iTunes shop works, I am not entirely sure myself! It must be very difficult for my father (who will be 97 this week), to understand blogs and tweets and apps, his world was all about cogs and wheels and thingamajigs.

Listen to this for free!

With a great deal of nervous trepidation I would like to invite to you a preview of “The Bird with the Rainbow Tail” which I have mentioned before on my blog here.

If you follow the link you can see how the application works, it is rather difficult to explain but easy to understand when you see the demonstration. All you need to do is click the arrow and sit back and watch.You can also download the MP3 for free and hear the story from start to finish by following the link in the sidebar on the website.

My husband Tony has written the book with me and has narrated it also. James our son has recorded it and added sound and has composed the music so you see this is a true labour of love. It has taken over four months to illustrate and has been a great adventure, a voyage of discovery into uncharted waters. We have had so much fun doing the recording and testing, with many technical obstacles to overcome and new things to learn, I am almost sad not to be working on it still.

Apple is now testing the application and we have all our fingers and toes, wings and paws crossed that everything will work out as planned. If all is well it should be available in the next week or so. We really hope you will like it!

There is also a little bit about Tony and me here.

L is for Lichfield.

Over the weekend we visited Lichfield, a lovely old, character filled Cathedral city in the heart of the Staffordshire countryside. When we first married we lived fairly close and visited often. Nowadays our visits are few and far between and each time we go we keep our fingers crossed that the special places we so loved are still there.


Thankfully, Lichfield remains as charming and quirky as ever, with its Cathedral, market, historic houses and museums. Samuel Johnson was born here and Erasmus Darwin lived here too, his herb garden is not to be missed. There is also a wonderful old Tudor teahouse built in 1510 and still doing brisk business on the day of our visit.

We were very sad to see that the lovely old antiquarian bookshop was about to close its doors after 65 years, in fact the day we visited was one of its last days of trading. This shop once had an amazing stock selling not only antiquarian books but also sheet music, prints and ephemera and you could wander up rickety staircases through nine rooms filled with printed treasures. At first I did not see anything of interest in the few remaining rooms of stock until my eyes alighted on a small cardboard box on a bookshelf near the exit.



My heart skipped a beat when I saw the contents! This was more like it- tiny miniature editions, special facsimile editions, envelopes containing antique bookplates, toy books, old post cards, invitations to illustrators exhibitions and then this .. dated 1886, The Socialist Platform No 4 socialist League pamphlet, (probably unread because the pages had not been cut at the head) by William Morris with an illustration by Morris on the cover, price £1. Not a reproduction, the genuine article! Also going for a song where several copies of Kate Greenaway's Alphabet miniature facsimile books (1973) and unbound editions of "An Account of the life of Dr.Samuel Johnson from birth to eleven years".



After checking and rechecking with the owner that the prices were correct, all of them seemed too low even for a closing down sale, I finally came away with most of the contents of the box. I thought that I would keep some, give some and put a couple in my Etsy shop in order to share my good fortune with fellow book worms. I will be listing my finds in the next few days but I have no idea what I will do with the pamphlet, any ideas?



No trip to Lichfield would be complete without a visit to the Cathedral, so after a quick peep into the herb garden, we climbed the ancient stone steps up to the Chapel of St Chad, after paying our respects to the Lichfield Angel. As we sat in the little chapel the choir who were assembled for a practice started to sing, a fitting end to a heavenly day.

Post cards from St Ives.

We went in search of sunshine and blue skies and found them here in St Ives which really does have the bluest of blue skies and sea. I met my blog friend Lesley Ninnes here in the lovely Art Space Gallery and saw many examples of how this wonderful light has inspired so many artists over the years.

A trip to the St Ives Tate is a must if only to sit on the rooftop terrace to admire the views. The whole of the town is awash with galleries and museums and there is always something interesting to see, my favourite places being St Ives Ceramics, the Barbara Hepworth museum and garden and the tiny Fish Pye (spelt with an i on the sign outside?) studio which sells beautiful hand made pottery by Laura McCrossen Of course I had to take home another piece to add to my collection.

I have visited St Ives several times before but this was my first time as a grandma so had the added pleasure of time spent with our growing family. We feasted on Cornish pasties and clotted cream teas; scones, jam and cream so thick that you can spread it with a knife. I had under estimated the steepness of the hills choosing instead to remember the fabulous views afforded by the strenuous climb to the top although I was rather glad not to have been the one pushing the pram uphill!

Make hay while the sun shines.

We have waited such a long time for the sun to shine, whilst it does we intend to make the most of it, so we have decided to take a little break from blogging in order to catch some rays!