Nature notes and My Mindful Year: february

I am really relishing my notebooks! The whole process of walking, noticing, taking photos and recording nature in some form. I am doubling up my nature notes and my mindful year posts today not just because, ahem, I have run out of February days, (where has the month gone?), but because the word for february in Sas Petherick's My Mindful Year project has been connection, and the nature sketching and journaling has really been a part of my exploration of what connection means for me.

Connection works on so many levels doesn't it? For me, connection with people I love and/or respect, connection with my home and garden, with my work, with the natural world around me, with the God I believe in, these are fundamental to my happiness and wellbeing, but so often the connection gets a bit lost and frayed by the busyness and demands of normal life. Just as our bodies require sustenance, so does this need to connect with the things that are important to us. Deepening healthy connections requires time, energy, intention - margin outside of the to-do list in order to feed the soul a bit, keep it nourished and connected, no? I certainly find that it doesn't happen all by itself. It is not so much that we have to contrive and construct connections, but we do need to create time, space and opportunity for connection to happen naturally and flourish, I think? So for me, having set aside time to walk, notebook and camera in hand, is a way of slowing down and letting myself have the opportunity to be inspired. Last month's noticing and recording of the alder trees and their beautiful cones has resulted this month in the birth of a new little collection - it would never have happened without that time spent wandering and gathering, sketching and thinking.

I have even started walking with a jewellery buddy, Liz Willis, with the express intention of enjoying, discussing and exploring the notion of being inspired by place and found objects. We live near each other and have already had a few walks criss crossing our local landscape, open to whatever inspires us on the day, and taking some of that back to inform our designing back in our studios.

This month, it has been the curious juxtaposition of the brittle, bleached remains of last years wild plants and seedpods with the bright green new growth just beginning to shoot up, which has caught my eye. I am wanting to make a new collection of brooches and the fragments of ash tree keys, poppy seed heads, achillea and eryngium stalks and husks have given me more than enough inspiration!

I have also been thinking about how I connect with the people I care about, and how to make more time for them. Keeping in contact with my boys at uni and the ways I do that, one on one time with my two who are still at home. Time aside for just me and my mister.  The notion of connection has created so many questions in my mind, and it is March tomorrow, so I think it will take more than the short month of february to answer them all, but that is kind of the point isn't it?

Have you got any thoughts on connection, and how to help foster the right sort of connections that lead to a happier and more fulfilling way of life? I guess disconnecting from what no longer works for us, or even harms us is also key, but that would need another whole blogpost! x

Inspiration: the coast

We try and spend some time by the sea in the summer, and by September all the lovely images and textures and sounds of the coast begin to feed into my jewellery designs.

 I have never done a 'coastal' range before, but I think I have enough ideas now to formulate one for 2013. I shall be spending lots of time this autumn and winter at my jewellery bench trying to create shapes in precious metal from the wealth of memories in my mind. The haunting marshes of north norfolk, the huge expanses of sand imprinted with the eddies of the retreating tide, the tiny, sea-smoothed pebbles and spiral-shaped, roughly ribbed shells left on the tide line - all these things are filling my mind and I hope will find ways of interpreting their patterns and curves in my jewellery.

So, plenty of material to work towards a coastal - inspired range for 2013, watch this space!

First season done!

Well. Can't quite believe it but Wild Acre has finished its first season of cut flower growing. I set out from the very beginning to use only the flowers I (or friends and family) grow, so in England this really means April to October. I just can't face the worry about frosts and dwindling supplies, so until April 2011, Wild Acre will have no more blooms to play with.

It has been a steep learning curve, turning a passion into a business idea. However small the enterprise (and mine really is a tiddler!), it is has been hard work and real fun at the same time. I am also hugely fortunate that the family has a proper breadwinner, this will not be getting many meals on the table! But a start has been made, a suprising amount of people showed interest and even more importantly, I just got out there and did it people. That's the crucial thing! I'm an A* dreamer,  great at reading and researching my ideas (and diets and health regimes, but that's another story), but this time I actually managed to extract my brain from the  dream clouds and got practical. For me, this is an achievement! Yes, pisces, whatever!!

When I say, Wild Acre has shut til spring, what I really mean is I am swapping the secateurs for my jewellery tools, because until April, I am working on a small collection whilst studying the craft of silversmithing - fifth term. I have a bench at home,

and wild dreams of a website, maybe an etsy shop and certainly begging assistance from my glam jewellery dealing sister! We will see if I can make this more than pie in the sky in the coming year. I'm inviting y'all in on the journey! Wild Acre jewellery will be viewable soon, and stories of the garden will linger on as I work and plan for next year. Thank you very much for visiting and comments and advice/feedback are so welcome.