The Tiger Who Came To Tea

Posted on July 26, 2011 by Hannah

Today Little Owl and I visited the Museum of Childhood in Bethnal Green to see their Judith Kerr retrospective exhibition. For those of you who don’t know, Judith Kerr wrote and illustrated children’s classics such as The Tiger who Came To Tea and the Mog books. She also wrote a wonderful book called When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit telling the story of her childhood flight from Nazi Germany in the 1930s. I loved seeing the original illustrations close up. It’s always interesting for me to see the process behind an image too. I liked seeing her sketchbooks and roughs. The exhibiton was beautifully put together. Little Owl especially loved the child-sized kitchen in which she could pretend to make a cup of tea for a giant tiger sat at the kitchen table. She also loved Mog’s giant cat bed in which she could have fitted ten times over! I thought the Museum of Childhood was a great place. Although many of the exhibits couldn’t be touched because they were too fragile there was lots that could be. Little Owl liked putting on a Punch & Judy show in the proper puppet show stand but couldn’t quite get the hang of keeping her head out of sight. She also liked the big police car she could sit in and the sand pit. How wonderful that it isn’t just a museum about childhood in the past but a place where childhood is actually happening right there and then.

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Pia’s Competition No.9

Posted on July 25, 2011 by Hannah


I am sat on a sofa next to my fabulous friend Rafe, who is groaning at the cricket on the TV that the umpire has unquestionably made a terrible decision. Little Owl and I have traveled south to visit friends and family in London. Yesterday we headed out to Hatfield to the Folk By The Oak Festival. It was a hazy golden afternoon in the grounds of Hatfield House. We set up our picnic and enjoyed the great and the good of the folk world while supping cider. Little Owl did lots of dancing to jigs and reels. When the weather is good there is nowhere better to be than the UK.

And here is the final installment of Pia’s competition. Answers to follow soon…

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Home-grown Potatoes

Posted on July 21, 2011 by Hannah

It has been a beautiful moody Borders morning here. Little Owl and I drove over the moor for Toddler Group, rattling over the cattle grids and dodging sheep. The sun shone through gaps in the clouds, flitting over the landscape. The moor was all purples, browns and greens set against the puddled bright white of the sky.

Yesterday Little Owl and I emptied the first of our rubble sacks in which we’d been growing potatoes. I have drawn the fruit of our labours here. Unlike the potatoes in the vegetable patch the sacks have already flowered and gone over so they were ready to come out. Little Owl was completely bemused by the process as I lifted out the plants, potatoes dangling from the roots. She was even more confused by the subsequent rummaging amongst the compost in the bottom of the sacks and potatoes emerging like some sort of nature’s own lucky dip. I thought it was wonderful; a real accomplishment. On urging our doughty next door neighbour to view our bounty, she assured me that potatoes are very easy to grow. It wasn’t quite the accolade I was looking for. Anyway, we had a lovely potato salad for lunch today, made from our very own potatoes!

For those that are interested the potato variety was called Kerrs Pink. The skins are creamy and pale pink.

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Pia’s Competition No.8

Posted on July 19, 2011 by Hannah

This is the penultimate instalment of Pia’s competition as she will be returning to sunny Scotland at the beginning of August. Where is this in Edinburgh?

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Art in Healthcare

Posted on July 18, 2011 by Hannah

 

 

 

 

 

 

During my trip to Yorkshire I was able to go back and visit my old work. I had been involved in a project to bring art work into a patient area but had not seen it fully finished. The area in question had been purpose built but unfortunately little thought had been given to the fact that real live human beings would be trying to recover from some of the most serious illnesses in the hospital in that space. We worked with patients, relatives and a local artist to come up with what you see here. All artwork had to be washable for infection reasons so the artist created these amazing vinyls for the walls. It was a tough brief as he had to keep it clean and professional while also being sensitive and reassuring. I was particularly impressed with the patterns he created for the lights above each bed, which you can see in the second picture. Imagine lying on your back for maybe weeks on end staring up at that blank light. The leaf motif is a definite improvement. Unfortunately I have totally forgotten the artist’s name but I will find out and give him full credit here I promise!

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Thank goodness for Tupperware!

Posted on July 17, 2011 by Hannah

We travelled home today along the A68. It follows the route of an old roman road so you can see it rising and falling over the landscape ahead of you in a dead straight line for miles. It also covers some really spectacular scenery. Little Owl is in the process of potty training (she’ll thank me for for mentioning that when she’s older!) so the journey was ponderous. We thought the safest thing was to pop her in a nappy then we wouldn’t have to worry but Little Owl was not having any of this. “Peepee Daddy!” she exclaimed and we piled out of the car by the roadside. “No, no Mummy. Cold” she told me as I pulled down her pants by the side of the road. This was probably fair enough as it was a breezy spot. “Potty?” she asked. This also seemed a valid point. No, we didn’t have a potty and seeing it from her point of view it did seem outrageous for me to be asking her to pee in the verge after all my previous emphasis on toilets. Hence, Big Dreamer’s mum’s flapjack was unceremoniously tipped into a nappy bag (clean I promise) so we could use the tupperware for a potty. Thank goodness for tupperware because that was the first of many many toilet stops for Little Owl. Each time I took on the manically excited face of the parent involved in potty training saying, “Well done darling. Clap, clap!” Meanwhile Big Dreamer silently bashed his head against the steering wheel moaning, “We have stopped every twenty minutes since the A1. She can’t need to go again!”

And here is my latest haiku…

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White-Faced Woodland

Posted on July 16, 2011 by Hannah

Little Owl and I have been having a wonderful few days back in Yorkshire. Although today is heavy rain we have had lots of sunshine for our trip up until now. On Thursday we went to the Yorkshire Show…sorry, mustn’t forget the Great Yorkshire Show!

And it was great. Little Owl particularly loved the tractors and the pigs. I hadn’t realised quite how mobile a pig’s snout is! The cheeses were also a hit. I think the ladies giving out samples were a bit taken aback by Little Owl’s appetite for strong blue cheese. Little Owl didn’t quite get the point of samples and kept going back for more. I’m pretty sure she’d got through a whole round of stilton before I managed to drag her away. Just around the corner from the pigs I bumped into the chaps in the photo…some White-faced Woodland sheep. I recognised them straight away from doing my sheep book and I loved reading all the sheep breed names that I’ve come to know so well.

On a different note, I found out the name of the plant I’d drawn from the Scilly Isles in my last post but one. It is a Hottentot Fig. Apparently it was brought over from South Africa where the fruit ripens sufficiently to be turned into jam.

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Pia’s Competition No.7

Posted on July 11, 2011 by Hannah

Here is the next instalment of Pia’s competition in honour of my swiss friend from college who is back home for the summer. Where is this in Edinburgh? Sorry, this one is very dark but hopefully you should still be able to make it out by its silhouette.

It’s been a wet one this morning. Every time Little Owl and I got suited and booted to go outside the rain started pouring down. We gave up in the end and snuggled up together to watch the Sound of Music, joining in loudly with all the songs!

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More Scilly Sketches

Posted on July 9, 2011 by Hannah

Here are some more sketches from the Scillies. The first shows one of the exotic plants that grew over the sand dunes along the edges of the beaches. It’s leaves are quite solid and rubbery. The flowers were about the size of my palm and were a pale lemon colour. The second drawing is of the sand bar on Bryher looking over to Tresco. The tide is going out and the tractor has just been used to launch a little boat. The third drawing is of my lovely sister’s luscious legs! I loved spending a decent amount of time with my sister on holiday. It’s crazy how you grow up together and then once you leave home you rarely spend longer than a week together. The third picture is looking over to St Mary’s and Samson from Rushy beach on Bryher. Samson was once inhabited and has ruined cottages on it. Michael Morpurgo uses this as the basis for his children’s story Why The Whales Came. It’s definitely a recommended read. Another recommended book from my holiday reading is Alan Bennett’s A Life Like Other People’s. It was passed onto me by Big Dreamer’s mum and I thought it was excellent. I was also one of those people with my nose in One Day on the beach!

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Announcement

Posted on July 7, 2011 by Hannah

This August I have been invited to show my sheep book at FibreFest. This is a really exciting opportunity for me and I’m busy making preparations. You can check out the festival here: www.fibrefest.co.uk. If you’re in the area on the 20th/21st August do pop in and say hello. I will be there with my good friend Steady Hands (aka Reuben Ewan). We will be demonstrating making paintbrushes from natural fibres and getting folks to use their brushes on a big canvas we have made especially for the event. In honour of FibreFest I have decided to open my own online shop. It’s easy to get to it by following the link in the bar above. There’s nothing to buy yet but there will be! As well as my book there will be lots of other sheep-related goodies created by my own fair hands. I’m planning on putting some giclee fine art prints of my Haiku series on there too so watch this space…more announcements to follow!

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