No48 gets posted at night with a disgustingly gaudy stamp
When I say posted in the dark I mean after dark for we have quite strong street lights with a fairly cool colour temperature. Most lights round here are supposed to go off after midnight to save energy and preserve the dark skies – but ours don’t because the Post Office three doors away is deemed safer from burglary if there are streetlights. Any way this was posted well before midnight, but well after the post went.
From the outset today it was clear that I was never going to catch the post. I have been on the go since about 7.15 this morning and didn’t really have a proper breakfast or lunch but only managed to select some work and deliver it to the framers ready for Dorset Art Weeks; go to the opticians for an eye test and get my favourite specs fixed and cook dinner. So I didn’t get to go to the studio until it was almost dark!
The box plate WED tells you I missed the post with No47
Following on from my last post, all was good with this in the end, but I think I am just having a poor art day. There was another piece hanging around in the studio – a reject from a previous #Letter365 attempt! – which I thought I could use to do an experiment on, rather than risk the piece I was working on (not #Letter365 related). It was looking amazingly good and I was really delighted with it then I added the final process and found that the ink I’d used was not waterproof and it went from looking interesting back to a mess like the one that got it rejected last time!
So I missed the post, but there would have been a backlog with the Easter holidays so it will even things out a bit!
I have been forced to go into extra time today. I suppose I have got a little casual and assumed that each day my #Letter365 piece would just flow, that the picture I had in my head would get transferred into physical form and be quite wonderful. Alas today’s just turned out to be a crock of proverbial! I have to say I was quite deflated to have produced something that missed the mark quite so badly and which had no discernible redeeming feature! It really was quite depressing. Made worse by a growing headache, the fact Radio 3 keeps playing warbling women and the realisation that I had run out of envelopes and had but a little time to dash in to town and get some. So I have had to take a deep breath and relax to the fact that there was no way I would get No47 would be in the post box before collection time! That’s OK as my deadline is midnight and I have turned things round in my mind and realised that I am working in an OK way on my other stuff and this was just a hiccough that caused an overreaction and loss of confidence. We will see if all is well when I return to the studio in a few minutes to look what I have done so far!
I was tempted to start trying to make the post box images a bit arty, but when it came down to it there’s only so much you can do with a post box and I was very hungry and looking forward to Cottage Pie for dinner. So this is what you get!
As it says on the envelope we have been busy with bees today. We had a look at two colonies at one of our out apiaries. One was one we had been worried about as they were badly raided by wasps last autumn, but they have bounced back well and are really strong and gentle. The other one is enormous. We left a lot of honey on it over winter as it was a big colony (it’s always been big!) but we has to give then some more room for honey already. I could barely lift the last box full of honey back on the hive as it is about my height! There is probably about 80lbs of honey on there already and the season is only just starting really. The bees are working the dandelions now, so the new comb they are building is stained a wonderful sunshine yellow.
Wet and chilly today – well not so chilly in the studio once the woodburner got going, a bit too hot really. No excuse for not getting on with some work, though I got a bit delayed trying to sort out websites. I just hate it when an update gives you more work and no confidence!
There was never any way that I was going to complete my piece today before the post. We had some shopping to do this morning and the post is around noon. Getting some nice local, organic asparagus from Bothen Hill Produce was more important than catching the post. That gave me leeway to do my piece when I chose and i decided to do a drawing first. As it turned out some friends popped round in the early evening so there was a little pressure to do #Letter365 before dinner, which is why I am so late posting it here.
Not quite warm enough to open up some bees and buggered my back yesterday so spent a fair while in the studio and quite excited with some of the things I am working on, which is just as well because Dorset Art Weeks is looming!
The forecast is not great for the weekend so I got today’s #Letter365 completed early so I can go and inspect our bees. I hope I will enjoy that as much as I did creating today’s piece.
No41 with the special stamp makes a nice composition on the envelope
I am a bit disappointed that Peter at the Post Office didn’t tell me about the commemorative stamp issue. If I had known I could have made today’s #Letter365 a first day cover and made it of slight philatelic interest! I had asked him to keep me informed, but I must take responsibility for this kind of thing if I am to make use of all these subtle nuances of posting letters.
Anyway, I bought a little stash of the stamps to keep me going for a while. I was a bit undecided when I saw the subject matter – Buckingham Palace. Not being a great fan of the Monarchy and the like I didn’t know how I felt about having to lick the backside of a royalist stamp (and you do have to lick these) but decided to run with it for the architectural and artistic interest. I even bought some of the photographic ones of how it is now, but feel slightly tainted by them!
A bright spot of sunlight highlights the Queen’s head on the stamp on No40
I nearly forgot that I hadn’t posted today’s #Letter365 to this blog. I was keen to carry on in the studio and left this for later – much later as it happened! Everyone should be happy that I have put a stamp on it!
So today it’s No40 – 40 days and 40 nights. Is it a flood? Is it time spent in the wilderness? Up the mountain with God getting tablets of stone? I’m out of step with Lent and though there is a St Swithin’s church here in Bridport his forty days start in June don’t they? I suppose it’s a bit like the wilderness as it is all unseen – only there will be a further 325 days to come!
An unfolding artwork created a piece each day for a year
