The mystery of the missing toast

Posted on January 30, 2012 by Hannah

This morning Little Owl was eating jam on toast for breakfast. Suddenly she said, “Oh, toast gone!” And it had gone. Like a flash, it had completely disappeared from her plate right under our noses. This was a real mystery. It hadn’t fallen on the floor. It wasn’t in Little Owl’s lap. It wasn’t stuck to the chair or table leg. It wasn’t in any of the usual places Little Owl’s food seems to find itself. Where could it be? It was at this moment that Little Owl put her hands to her head in disbelief and we found the toast. It was stuck to the underarm of her jumper. Little Owl stared and stared at the toast as if to question what on earth it thought it was doing stuck there!

Here is an illustration I did last week for a student magazine called Nomad. I illustrated a poem called The Weeds that Strangle about time passing in a churchyard.

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Icy mornings

Posted on January 29, 2012 by Hannah

 

 

 

 

 

 

This weekend has been really cold and we have woken to thick hoar frosts covering the valley. Here are some of the wonderful ice formations we have found around about us. The days have been bright and clear so it has been a beautiful time. There have also been the stirrings of new life with the waxing of the days. The birds seem to know something we don’t and are busy singing and flitting around. Bulbs are popping up everywhere. Little Owl and Big Dreamer have enjoyed skidding down icy slopes. Unfortunately I had a powerful reminder as to why running down hill with a full bladder is no longer permitted since having Little Owl. Possibly too much information!

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Hand-in

Posted on January 28, 2012 by Hannah

The final crit for my environmental pictures was yesterday afternoon and I was pretty pleased with my feedback. I produced four but as I’d shown you the giraffe before I thought you might like to see her all finished up. Let me know what you think!

P.S. You can click on the image to see it enlarged.

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Happy Burns Night!

Posted on January 25, 2012 by Hannah

I am so full of haggis and stovies I can barely move. Here’s my recipe for the best stovies ever (quite a claim I know!):

Peel and chop up 500g potatoes. Peel 250g onions. Chop the onions into six lengthways. Put the potatoes and onions in a non-stick pan with a lid. Add one clove of garlic, 2 tablespoons of water, a 1cm slice of lard (don’t think about it), a pinch of salt, and loads of pepper. Heat this on a really high heat then turn down low with the lid on for about 20 minutes. Now turn the heat up to medium. Keep the lid on but every now and again give the stovies a stir. You want them to catch slightly on the bottom of the pan so that you get some nice crispy, caramelised edges amongst the soft crumbling spuds.

So, charge your glasses and raise a toast to your fellow man! And here is the Orangutan.

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Confession

Posted on January 24, 2012 by Hannah

Every Monday evening Big Dreamer and I go through the same routine. I throw myself on the sofa, declaring I don’t want to go to Life Drawing the following morning and he raises an eyebrow before going back to what he was doing. I know I’m behaving like a teenager who doesn’t want to do PE. The thing about Life Drawing is that it is the equivalent of the illustration gym. I know I should do it. I know it’s good for me. I can even show you how I have developed over time by doing it. I also know that once I get there I’ll enjoy it. It’s just it’s such a slog. “Three hours drawing. That’s not even an early shift,” Big Dreamer goes on to mutter.

Normally I’m really good and do go, but this morning…well, it was snowing…I had to take my parents to the airport…

Don’t tell Big Dreamer, but I skipped Life Drawing this week and drew an Orangutan instead.

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Lovely legs

Posted on January 19, 2012 by Hannah

The first project back at college involved the whole Illustration department. We were paired up and had to write a brief for each other. I was paired with a fab second year called Milly. After a chat and a look at our work we came up with the briefs. My brief from Milly was to create four images for an environmental charity featuring a natural animal or object in an urban setting. So here is one of the characters I think I’d like to use in one of the images…a lovely leggy giraffe.

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Q. What is better than muddy puddles?

Posted on January 15, 2012 by Hannah

A. Muddy icy puddles. That was the opinion of Little Owl and Big Dreamer this afternoon anyway. We headed up into the Pentland Hills on the southwest edge of Edinburgh for a bracing winter’s walk. Little Owl and Big Dreamer enjoyed charging into untouched iced-over puddles, making loud smashing sounds. Here is a shot from our walk. This is typical Scottish light in winter…just magic.

I also baked an incredible apple cake this weekend. I mean it’s so good it’s practically a dessert. I wish I could take the credit for it but that has to go to Lucas Hollweg, whose latest cookbook Good Things to Eat I got the recipe from. I had to adapt it a bit because I didn’t have all his ingredients so here’s a summary of my version:

Melt butter and sugar together in a saucepan. Stir in flour and a beaten egg. Spread half the mixture on the bottom of a greased lined cake tin. Layer slices of cooking apple on top. Sprinkle sugar, currants, lemon zest, nutmeg and cinnamon over the apple. Then layer the rest of the cake mixture on top of this. Sprinkle chopped walnuts over the top and put in the oven for about 40 minutes. Bliss!

 

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Back to college

Posted on January 14, 2012 by Hannah

Here are some things I am enjoying at the moment:

  • Carol Ann Duffy’s The Bees: Nearly every poem takes my breath away with its clarity and brilliance. I found her quite hard when we studied her at school. She was just a bit too spiky and angry about things I didn’t understand. But I’ve grown up and I suppose she’s probably changed too so that I’ve received this collection with open arms.
  • Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s Veg Everyday cookbook. Every recipe so far has been a total success. I love how vegetarian cooking makes you try different things rather than thinking, what will go with this piece of meat? Also, I secretly want to be friends with Hugh. Hugh if you’re reading this…can we be friends?!
  • Alan Titchmarsh on Classic FM on Β Saturday mornings. There’s something about his show that makes you feel included and it’s the perfect accompaniment for making a Saturday soup. It reminds me of being at uni (the first time round) and finding Saturday mornings the most desperately lonely part of the week. Everyone would be asleep or playing sport in freezing mud. All I could see around me were grey skies and grey terraced houses and I didn’t know what to do with myself. All the normal things I would have done at home (sketching by the sea, going for a bike ride, shopping with my mum, digging in the garden with my Dad, baking with my sister and eating all the mixture before it got in the oven) seemed impossible to do there. Then my Nan gave me a top tip. As a young woman she moved to London from her Yorkshire home to study to be a nurse. She told me the best thing to do when you felt lonely and far from home was to have a nice warm bath. So I used to start Saturdays with a bath (with loads of bubbles and, being a student bath, I made sure I cleaned it really well first) and it totally did the trick. Alan’s show is a bath for those without a bath.

So, it’s back to college and nursery for Little Owl and I on Monday. We’ve sharpened our pencils and cleaned out our school bags. We’ve practiced getting up early (that’s a lie!). So we’re all set.

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First Snowdrop

Posted on January 11, 2012 by Hannah

A genial old gent of a beech tree, covered in toadstools, was ripped in half by the gales last week. As Little Owl and I cross the farmyard we can see him laid out across the field. The stump has a crown of golden upwards-facing splinters. Although we have lost an old friend the gales have proved useful in one way…there is kindling aplenty. Since moving here and having a wood-burning stove I cannot pass a good piece of kindling without bringing it home. On occasion I have been known to be a little over ambitious but I just can’t bear to leave perfectly good fuel lying around! Little Owl and I came home with bundles of sticks and branches tucked under our arms today. We have also spotted the first snowdrop in the garden. Soon there will be rivulets of little white flowers streaming through the woods around our house.

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Transport

Posted on January 9, 2012 by Hannah


This morning Little Owl and I crossed the fields to deliver a letter in the village. The morning glowed in the bright slanting light. As we neared the village we caught up with one of the farmers and his dog as he checked on his sheep. They accompanied us the rest of the way. We discussed the power cuts last week and our mutual concern over our freezers, although I think the contents of his might be a bit more valuable than mine.

Recently a friend of mine went on a course about toddler learning styles and apparently Little Owl is a textbook ‘transporter’, which means she likes to move things from one place to another. I decided to go with this, so today Little Owl and I built a train. What do you think? It is a hit with me as much as Little Owl, especially as Little Owl proved adept at clearing up…using the train to transport everything!

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