Steadily working through the day, adding detail and thinking. In the picture above there is a red squirrel, a pine martin, a tawny owl, a rook, a tree-creeper and two pheasants. Oh, and a wolf.
Only two double spreads, title page and small details to do now and then this will be finished. The small paintings punctuate the pages.
Nearing the end of a book that began some years ago is almost as difficult as being at the beginning. Working hard to try and keep a rhythm working in the paintings, and at the same time Hannah is coming to the end of her time at school. We both have much to do. Unhappy with the green and the trees of the girl in the clearing I reworked the whole image and whilst not satisfied with the woodland as it is now I do prefer it.
Meanwhile, outside there are patches of rich gold, gorse and cowslips. With my studio windows open on a blue sky day I can hear the chicks that have hatched in the magpies’ nest and the jackdaws too. Walking at the airfield the skylarks made the air loud and beautiful.
One of the wonderful things about writing and illustrating books is when the rights sell and they are translated and published in other countries and languages. Astar produced this amazing dual language copy of The Ice Bear. (Also The Snow Leopard and Lord of the Forest)
Ever since I was about 11 I have done this. My aunt tried to teach me. She would never sit without her hands being busy. She made beautiful Arran sweaters with an ease that astonished. A small woman, sometimes it seemed that the jumpers were bigger than her. Loved to watch her hands move and the single strand be wound and built into an intricate garment. She tried to teach me but I could make no sense of it. As she grew older her arthritic hands and shoulders couldn’t hold the weight of the wool so for the last 20 or so years of her life her hands would be earily empty. How I wish I had claimed her old pattern books. I loved my aunt.
The one day I fell in love with a piece of Fairisle in beige and brown and then I magically just ‘knew’ how to knit. I think she was pleased. Obviously something of what she had tried to teach me had gone in and just waited for me to ‘learn’ it, as is the way with teaching and learning sometimes.
So, when I went to college I did a part of my thesis on the knitting of the Fairisles and Arran. I learned how the different patterns had a macabre reason for being, apart from the thickening extra layers of warmth given to the garments. It seemed that when the drowned bodies of sailors were washed ashore you could recognize their identity from the patterns on the sweaters. I also learned that knitting was not done as a ‘hobby’ but as a way to make new garments, and sometimes extra income.
I marvelled at pictures showing miners walking to work whilst knitting socks, wool and needles tucked under their arms. It seemed that at one time it was associated far more with both sexes. ( Good to see it making a strong come back with many male knitwear designers.) Now I learn that there were special tools to help people knit while walking. I knit in what I would call my ‘idle’ moments. In the past people couldn’t afford to have ‘idle’ moments.
So, recently I got the bug again.The desire to ‘take up the needles’ had been lurking ever since Little Beau Peep came into my mind when working on The Cat and the Fiddle. She is a petite knitting super hero with a quiver of needles, and she too knits as she walks ( it is funny how some images dwell in the mind’s eye) with her giant sheep.
(The artwork is for sale in The House of Golden Dreams, alongside prints and the book is available in libraries and all good independent bookshops.)
So, I went to Colourways in Whitland. Who would have thought that Whitland would have such a treasure as this amazing shop filled with gorgeous yarns from Rowan? There I bought some wool, a pattern book or two and set forth on a new project.
Little Beau’s knitting grew directly out of one of Rowan’s catalogues, from something I hope to knit myself one day.
Ever since I first found Rowan Wool in a shop called Shepherd’s Purse, now long gone, I have loved the texture, quality, colours and the patterns from Rowan. They took knitting out of the dark ages and into fashion, and their pattern books are just wonderful. I wish I had some of my old ones from 20 years ago. When I was at college I used to knit for The Shepherd’s Purse ( learning the true meaning of the phrase ‘pin money’). I couldn’t afford to buy the wool for myself, but loved working with it.
So now, while I think about dragons and book-worms and white bears and white ravens my hands move over a blue thread, winding and twining it with bamboo needles worn smooth by use, and a jumper grows slowly.
My needles once belonged to my friends’ grandmother and I love that connection to their family. I only knew her as a tiny, frail old lady, but once she was the most beautiful young woman, unaware of the man she would marry, children she would have, and grandchildren too. Now I am waiting for what would have been her first great grandchild to be born, any day now, and I wonder what this child’s life will hold, what adventures await. Perhaps when I have finished my sweater I will use her needles to make something for the baby. I think she would like that.
I drew Claire the other day. Not a brilliant drawing, I could never do justice to her beauty but I am so glad that I did the drawing. It has more faults about it than I would like, but it also has something that I do like. My beautiful, tired friend.
Looking forward to drawing the baby too.
Soon these green dragons will go, to live in a wood near the sea, where dappled emerald leaf light falls and birdsong fills the air.
There they will grow and wrap around and guard a special space, a place for dreaming, sleeping and resting from the worries of the world. A magic space, where dragons, with secrets, guard doorways to peace.
All day painting dragons. Outside, hard rain, until evening. But early morning I heard the first cuckoo call of the year. There are swallows, and now cuckoos, so surely soon there will be summer.
For a while today I had company in my studio. Still much in need of a clean up ( the studio, not the cat) I lost myself in preparing prints to send to my framer and then began to work on something very unusual.
Although for the most part I am concentrating on East of the Sun there are times when it is important to break away. Wolves have been prowling the rooms in my mind for some time now. Big wolves. Wolves made from ink.
I love the fineness of the glass pen, the line, the balance, the weight, the way the ink runs down the ridges. Primitive. Elegant.
“ I have watched you as you travelled and I have seen you grow from a girl into a beautiful woman, strong and brave. And I know that you have felt me watching you. I was the wolf and the lynx and the bear, I saw you through the eyes of the red fox, the eyes of the vulture. I kissed your cheek and stroked your skin and drew you ever closer. Everything you have ever done, every step you have taken has been to bring you here to me now.
And now I ask you. Put down your task and stay with me. Don’t speak. Only listen. Wait. Watch.”
He took his hand away from her and stepped back. She felt unnerved, unsure. The look he gave her was a look of hunger.
She turned away, but the movement of his hand drew her eyes back. As he moved his hand over the fabric of her red dress it took on the feel of heavy silk. With a wave patterns began to grow in the red. Frost stitched white flowers with delicate intricacy into the silk. Around her neck he placed a ring of hailstone, cold pearls built around hearts of fine pollen. As it touched her turquoise necklace she felt the warmth drain away from the bone white bear. In the castle East of the Sun and West of the Moon the prince turned in a troubled dream, cold to his bones, and he shivered.
The North Wind smiled.
He raised a collar of ice high around the back of her neck, finest lace, and on her head a crown of snowflakes threaded through with filaments of moongold. So light.
“Stay with me, stay with me. Forget your man who sits and waits in his tower in the castle. He has nothing for you. Stay with me and be my Snow Queen. See. Look. How beautiful you are.”
He held up a sheet of the purest ice as a mirror for her to see.
Into the ice she looked. The last time she had looked into a mirror was when she had visited her family, that Christmas so very long ago. Then she was a girl, so young. Now she stood before the North Wind, dressed like a queen and she could see that she was indeed a woman. It was as if a stranger looked back at her. Skin paled with cold, spare of flesh but strong, hair wound and bound in ribbons of ice, pearls sparkling around her neck and a crown of snowflakes, lips a cold blue. She was the Snow Queen.
He gave her time enough to wonder and look then pulled her close to him.
“Now, see what I can give you.”
He took her in his arms and they flew, high into the air where their flight made a halo round the sun. Over the clouds until the world was small beneath them and they could hear the music of the stars, then down towards the cold sea. She watched as the Northern Lights danced a crown across the ice for her. Ice sheets changed from purple to gold to turquoise and peacock blue then back again to gold and she had never seen such purity of colour.
The wind calmed and slowed and came to rest. He set her down on a raised hill of ice.
“ Why do you love him? He who sits and waits?”
She thought. Her mind was dazzled by beauty, of herself, of the world around her.
“I love his gentleness. I love his kindness.”
“That was not him, “ said the wind. “That was the bear. For one night only you saw him. One night and now you spend your life trying to find him. One night. It is not the man you love. It is the bear.”
She thought again, of his dark eyes, of his gentleness, of his rich, yellow-white, deep thick fur.
“Stay with me. Stay with me and I will make you Queen of the White Bears.”
He swept his arm around and there before her on the ice she could see one thousand great white bears, beautiful, wild and fierce.
She drew in breath and the cold touched deep in her soul. Fingers reached for her heart. Over her hands ice lace cuffs fell and ice gold spun patterns across her skin.
The North Wind looked at her and smiled, then over the bears he carried her, himself shaped like a giant bear, and all the wild bears below bowed down before her on the ice, and the Northern Lights coloured the sky with glory, for her.
