Letterpress printing. Wooden letters. Shakespeare. White spirit.

I have transformed my kitchen into a print room, with the proofing press on the floor

 and a washing line strung between two shelves, in front of a rather exuberant Susie Perring print.

I am making Shakespeare prints,

with my trays of wooden letter on the floor, and on a small table behind the kitchen table.

The proofing press is a beast. I love it.

And I have learned two very important things this morning. First, that white spirit DOES remove printing ink from a stone floor. Second, that it does NOT remove it from pyjama trousers. I suppose there is a third thing. Put on printing clothes before beginning to mess around with ink and type.

Birthday cakes. Baking. Delicious!

There's one constant aspect of my life I haven't really documented. Baking. I really like making cake, although I no longer eat it.  I've been baking cakes two or three times a week for the last 7 years or so, to take to the stable yard where my horse lives. It is devoured by the girls that work at the yard, and owners and visitors alike. This week however, they have had to fend for themselves, and here's why.

It's going to be my lovely lodger's birthday, and in the office where she works, if it's your birthday, you're obliged to take cake. She asked me if I would bake for her, as most people buy cakes, and she rather fancied taking something home made. So I asked her what cake she would like, and she requested (pictured above), lemon drizzle cake, apricot and sultana cake, and pistachio cake. AND a simnel cake as well! I can only assume there are a lot of people in her office.

The pistachio cake I don't make often as it is eyewateringly expensive, but it looks so good, with the pistachios showing both green and red. They're mixed into a sugar and lemon juice syrup and poured onto the top of the cake.

The simnel cake is still cooling in its tin. Very early tomorrow morning I will put the marzipan top on it. This is a fruit cake with a layer of marzipan in the middle. You can see a little bit of it that's bubbled up to the edge, but that won't matter.

And here is the mighty tower of cake, ready to be loaded into the car and taken to what I hope is an appreciative audience tomorrow! There will be one more container with the simnel cake in it, of course.
And for the stables? Well my lodger also has a horse at the yard, so any cake left over will go there with her on Saturday morning. And if there isn't any left, I will go to my default setting of Victoria sponge, which I find the easiest and most consistent of all! 

5th member of a string quartet - out with the Mavrons.

A gala concert at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama on Saturday. Here is the outside of the theatre in the foyer, which I always think looks a little like the bridge of a spaceship.

The concert was organised by Live Music Now, a fantastic organisation who put talented young musicians together with audiences who don't usually have access to live music, and the concert was a showcase of some of these performers.

I was there with the Mavron Quartet, who were playing a piece by Peter Reynolds called footsteps quiet in the shadows. The title came from a poem of mine, and I read the poem before the quartet played, and after Peter introduced the piece.

Here we are in the very posh dressing room before the performance.

I saw this photo a moment or two after it was taken, and wasn't concerned about being so old (the quartet are very young and energetic), but wasn't too sure about my great big head. So when I found myself alone in the dressing room, I took one photo to make me look as though I am tall and my head is the right size, and another to remind myself that, if nothing else, I have character.

The Mavron quartet played brilliantly, and the whole evening was hugely enjoyable.
www.mavronquartet.co.uk
www.livemusicnow.org.uk/wales

At last some shadows. Haiku. Sunshine.

Finally the sun is shining, and grey is disappearing.

Once again there is sunshine and shadow, and there is a way forward.

Here's the haiku;

At last some shadows -
After grey skies, clarity,
Light and dark revealed.

Loving Letterpress. Wooden alphabets saved from the skip.

There is something so seductive about wooden type. This is one of two type trays I brought home from a print shop in Eccles, Manchester. You will notice at the top of the picture a rather robust table top proofing press that also found its way into the boot of the Ford Fiesta.

I went to a printing firm who are moving premises having been in the same place for a very long time, and had not thrown anything away. So all the letterpress and everything to support it was still there, having been put to one side as technology progressed, and then forgotten about.

There is so much of it that the owner is having difficulty finding ways to shift it all, and he's very concerned that much of it may have to be scrapped. However, I have been able to give him a couple of names of enthusiasts who are probably better resourced than me, and with luck the type and all the letterpress and printing treasures will find new homes. I certainly wish I was a lot wealthier!

The letters are grimy with the dust of decades, so I have been gently cleaning them, and looking forward to printing. There are four full upper case fonts, and I fully intended to have more, but the proofing press caught my eye.

Aren't these letters beautiful? I am planning a series of Shakespeare cards with collage and letterpress, and these are going to be perfect. There are so many other possibilities as well!
As always, my black and white cat is very interested in all that happens, particularly on the kitchen table.

Snowdrops. Turnastone. Horticultural Latin.

I love snowdrops the most of any flower. They really don't care what the weather is like, pushing up through snow, ice or waterlogged soil to tell us that the spring is on its way. Much tougher than their delicate appearance would suggest. Here are the snowdrops in Turnastone churchyard.

Snowdrops look particularly lovely amongst gravestones and yew trees.

I ride past this churchyard very frequently, and Thomas and I always stop to look at the lovely little flowers. Here are the Turnastone snowdrops last year, in 2013, bursting through the deep snow. As I said, they really don't care about the weather!

Their Latin name, galanthus nivalis, was given them by Linnaeus in 1753.  Galanthus means milk-white flowers, and nivalis means snowy. Isn't that delightful. It's one of the reasons I love the latin names of plants and flowers.

Floral alphabet. Dip pen and ink.

With dip pen and Windsor and Newton ink I have been drawing floral alphabet letters.

It's lovely drawing with a dip pen, impossible to go fast, and the lines are wonderfully uneven and not remotely uniform.

I am working my way through the alphabet.

I've had success selling alphabet cards, but until now have been drawing and selling originals. Not very time efficient! So an investment in laser printer has made the process much simpler. I am taking my time to create one letter I really like, and then printing it directly onto a card.

  I hand colour the tiny hearts on the letters after printing, so they could be changed to gold, pink, purple or a rainbow of colours, not just red.

I am happily heading towards Z, and putting the floral letter cards onto my Etsy shop as they are finished and printed.  http://etsy.me/1eCltUZ