New yarn, new shoots

In my travels by bus last week I spotted a knitting wool shop which looked very interesting, and I was looking for some black and some red yarn for a very special humpty, so yesterday I paid the shop a visit. It is real gem: a real old-fashioned needle craft shop in the most unlikely road. I found the yarns I was looking for, plus an amazing fluorescent green - it truly is almost luminous, although this is not evident from the photo!  Then today I walked through Waterlow Park, and spotted this shrub with gorgeous red shoots of new growth next to a pink hellebore: spring is truly arrived : )

Collages and bureacracy

This month has boringly been largely consumed by bureaucracy. The good news is that come April, my accounts will be ready for Taxman!

Something more pleasurable that I have also been grappling with are "the sun and grasses and flowers" collages made from prepared water colour papers. The first one I did last year, and was not at all happy with the depth of the colours, or my skill with scissors! After I switched to using tubes of water colour paint, I decided to try again, and the other two are the result. 

cheeky girl and dragon

It's great to be regularly painting again: it feels to me like 2009 starts here! The cheeky girl is up to mischief in the snow - I wonder who will be the target for her snowballs? The dragon and dragonfly clefs are growing in my mind's eye, too :)

Snow

The views from a couple of the windows in my flat. It is very unusual to have such deep snow around here: there must be 8" or so, as you can see from by comparing the depth of snow on the wall with the gate post! In the back yard, snow has buried my Xmas tree.