Merry Christmas

It's getting very busy so I probably will not be blogging until the New Year. So a Merry Christmas to everyone and a massive

to all of you that comment here, you are a great encouragement and I've made so many wonderful inspiring friends over the year. Hope you all have a happy, healthy and creative 2010.

We are spending Christmas with family and this year instead of lots of present buying are competing in Charity Shop Challenge - we've all (adults only) bought each other presents from Charity shops. It's been hard but enjoyable and I think we'll have quite a laugh at what we've all come up with - I shall post pictures in the new year. Infact I've found so many nice things I shall be keeping some for myself . . . !

Cosy

Whoohoo we've got snow, hope it stays 'til Christmas. Cosy inside, freezing outside - just how I like it.

Hatch

I'd love to see these tiny turtles hatch and rush down to the sea. Too cold for them here I think!
© nicky linzey for illustration friday

Rough

It has been confirmed . . . I am going mad! I had it in my head that the theme at Illustration Friday this week was rough, so I did my illustration, put it up and then ... realised everyone else had illustrated 'crunchy' - the correct word. I'm just going for a lie down now . . .

The sea has been really rough lately and I love it like this

© 2009 Nicky Linzey for Illustration Friday

Entangled

© 2009 nicky linzey for Illustration Friday

End of season

There was actually a fine day on Saturday so went down to my allotment to do some much needed digging. My allotment was bare but look at all the colour I found walking about.

Sunshine amongst greyness

It has been continually grey and dull here recently but there have been rays of sunshine in the form of Art Exchange envelopes coming through my letterbox. Thanks for making my day to Mandy, Flora and Buel. Not only have I received these wonderful illustrations but I now have their blogs to inspire me too. So go and have a peek, you'll be glad you did.

Music

Another doodle to the track that always inspires me by India Arie - strength, courage and wisdom. When I listen to this I feel that anything is possible - it lifts my heart. I've actually had my first music doodle published this month in Uppercase magazine - I'm so proud (as you can see!). I received my copy yesterday - what a great publication - chock a block full of creativity - check it out here.


© 2009 nicky linzey design for Illustration Friday

Roasting Chestnuts

While walking on Sunday we came across loads of gigantic chestnuts, obviously brought down by the wild weather, so we had to have a fire that night to roast them. Unfortunately the prongs on my toasting fork had broken so Gra rigged up a makeshift brazier from an empty beer can. (We certainly know how to live in our house!) They were yummy, sweet and fat, a great accompanyment to 'come dine with me'.

Unbalanced

The weather this weekend has been very unbalanced - gale force winds, torrential rain, sunshine, hail storms, thunder . . .

© 2009 nicky linzey for illustration friday

Skinny

I was stuck for an idea this week - Illustration Friday's word is 'skinny'. That is until I went to see The September Issue last night. It was fascinating, Grace Coddington stole the show in my opinion. If you love fashion go and see it!
© nicky linzey for illustration friday

Thawed out

Thanks to comments by aimee and get zapped - I've been inspired to turn my 'frozen' doodle into a pattern. It's definitely thawed out and so have I.

© 2009 nicky linzey

Weekend

I've been busy with work last week and entertaining all weekend, so have had no time for Illustration Friday or weekword. I'm missing them. On the upside I've cooked, eaten and drunk myself silly and had a great time with friends. What did you do this weekend?

Frozen

Illustration Friday theme this week is frozen, something I've been all day.

© 2009 nicky linzey for illustration friday

History

The weekword is History. I find it much easier to understand things when I have a visual record infront of me telling a story of the past, like fossils in a cliff. (I definitely struggled at school - ploughing through giant textbooks full of facts that we were supposed to remember and yet meant absolutely nothing to us.)

The word was chosen by Anairam, pop over to see her wonderful collages and links to other participants.

© 2009 nicky linzey

Flying

If I could fly anywhere today, it would be to Barcelona where I could be inspired by Gaudi, gorge myself on tapas and sip a few gasses of cold manzanilla! Oooh I'm almost there! Where would you jet off to?

© 2009 nicky linzey for Illustration Friday

Germs

Germs . . . breaking out!

© 2009 nicky linzey for Illustration Friday

Pattern

The theme for Illustration Friday is pattern and it suits me down to the ground. Visually I sort for pattern and see it in almost everything I look at - I have patterns in my head all the time, so I had a job deciding what to do this week.

I've recently been doodling to music and letting the lines flow with the rhythm and, seeing as I live with a songwriter I thought I'd better use one of his - my favourite. Coincidentally it's about changing patterns of behaviour and is called 'shut my mouth'. You can listen to it here if you like. (Hope this link works.)

© 2009 nicky linzey for illustration friday

Evening walk

Making the most of the light evenings - their numbers are limited . . .

Carpe Diem

The weekword is Carpe Diem and I must be naive but I didn't know what this meant. So after looking it up I just knew it was a good opportunity to post another picture of My Jack Russell. Sorry... you just have to indulge me! I wish I could live like he does - totally in the moment, because when I do manage it, life is absolutely wonderful.
Chosen this week by Line, go over to her blog, she has a real sense of natural beauty - her photos are stunning and you can link to all the other participants.

Absent

I've been absent without leave for a week in one of my favourite places.

Light & dark

Harvest

We harvested the butternut squash from the allotment this weekend. Much better than last year, we harvested 30 HUGE squash. They will keep us in soup supplies all Winter.

Strong

Sometimes I'm strong

and sometimes I'm not

© nicky linzey 2009 for Illustration Friday

Charm

The weekword is 'charm' chosen by Linda Sue, pop over to see her beautiful felting and all the other links to this week's word. These sweetie bracelets seem to be all the rage at the moment. If I bought one - guess which charm I would get first?

Magnify

Is it just me or are magnifying mirrors scary?

©2009 nicky linzey for Illustration Friday

Aroma

The weekword is aroma - chosen by Caroline, you can link to all the other entries there after stopping a while to look at her beautiful blog. This word was easy for me as my house has been filled with flowers this week and the fragrant aroma drifted into every room. I'm a big fan of Keri Smith and was given this brilliant book a while ago so decided to draw my flowers by looking through a square hole in a piece of card - exploration #48.

© nicky linzey 2009

Summer's end

The last of my sweet peas for this Summer. This is the first year I've successfully grown them from seed.

perfect day

Thanks to everyone for all your birthday wishes. I did have a wonderful time and the weather turned out to be the perfect English summer's day. Gra and I went to Charleston Farmhouse, the home of artists Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant. It is a magical place - I think they must have painted every available wall and furniture surface! We then had an evening of celebrations with my family in my brother's beautiful garden.

Don't forget to go over to Caroline's fascinating blog to get the new weekword.

Camping

The weekword is Camping and I hope I haven't given everyone terrible difficulties with this word. It's my birthday today and I did consider spending the night under canvas but I'm a fair weather camper and the forecast was for rain. Last week we had our first camping expedition for years and I have recent memories of the very very hard ground making it impossible to sleep, even on my sunbed mattress. If I go again I definitely need more equipment such as an airbed, oh and a toilet! Also My Jack Russell would not get in the tent and when we eventually did get him in, 3 of us in such close proximity was claustrophobic and hot. So a 6 man tent would be good too, preferably a tepee that we could stand up in, not have to crawl around on our hands & knees.

Having said all that, we did have a great time, collecting wood, lighting the camp fire, singing, laughing, eating, drinking and in the morning cooking bacon & eggs out in the open countryside was just wonderful.

Don't forget to visit all the other campers, aimee, alexandra, anairam, caroline, frayedattheedge, fruenswerk, l'atelier, linda sue, sandra, thereza, remistuff, valentina, veja cecilia and yoon see.

I will pick the next person to choose the weekword later tonight - I'm off now to do some celebrating!

I'm picking Caroline to choose the next weekword.

Hectic

What a hectic and varied week this has been: camping, birthday celebrations, festival going, golden wedding celebrations, family get togethers, walks, shopping - apart from the usual working, cooking, cleaning, washing, gardening . . . I've been asked to choose the weekword, which is CAMPING. If you would like to participate in this, let me know, and on Friday post your drawings, photos, stories, poems, paintings or whatever you choose, to your blog and I will do a link to it. Can't wait to see the results.

Detour

Driving through France one year, we decided to travel overnight and reach our destination as early as possible. At 5am our car started to lose power and barely made it up a steep hill, at the top the engine died completely so we had to decide whether to freewheel down the hill in our continued direction or to turn right. We turned right off the main road and travelled down a twisting road, having no idea what was at the bottom. Half way along this road we came across a garage, so we pulled in - it was obviously closed at that time in the morning so we walked down the hill to see what was around - a sleepy little town.

Returning to our car at 6.30am we found the garage owner had arrived and he said he would look at our car straight away and suggested we should go and have breakfast in the town. We found a cafe and although they had not had their bread delivered they went across to the bakery and bought us croissants to have with our coffee. I couldn't believe the service, how everyone was going out of their way to help us.

After breakfast we walked back to the garage and our car had been fixed - it was dirt in the petrol, they charged us the equivalent to £10 for this - unbelievable. We continued on our way arriving at our destination only a few hours late despite our DETOUR. The people we were staying with were so glad to see us arrive safely that they poured us a neat pastis each, it was so strong that I could barely feel my legs when I stood up to go to our room!

This is posted in response to the weekword over at Artsyville, home of the very talented Aimee, go have a look.

Impatience

My Jack Russell shows terrible 'impatience' when he cannot extract his biscuit from his kong. On the up side, it keeps him busy for hours!

PS Think I'd better explain that a kong is a dog toy which you can stuff with treats to keep your dog occupied.

© 2009 nicky linzey for illustration friday

Summer walk

Went on a lovely walk yesterday, then when we got home I made a 'Graham Greene ' cocktail - gin, martini and cassis with crushed ice, lovely but extremely intoxicating. I recently came across this quote from him in 'Ways of Escape'.

'Sometimes I wonder how all those who do not write, compose or paint can manage to escape the madness, the melancholia, the panic fear, that is inherent in the human situation'

I can identify with this, mind you the cocktail helps as much as the creativity!

Modify

I've had a bit of a block when it's come to the recent subjects on Illustration Friday but I was determined to participate this week whatever . . ! Cars are not that important to me as long as they get from A - B but I have to admit I would love a Fiat 500 - especially if I could modify the paintwork with one of my patterns. Out of these 3 I would have the top one, which would you choose?

Thanks to my friend Yoon See for jolting me out of my block.

© 2009 nicky linzey for illustration friday.

Cool

It's hot today and I'm sitting at my computer as usual - I'd love to be running though this fountain to cool down a bit!

Inspiration

Visited Goodwood Sculpture Park yesterday, a fascinating collection of giant sculptures set amidst beautiful green woodland. It was an inspiration. These are my favourite pieces.

Why I've gone off bacon

Learning

Faces

Unfold

I love the way the petals of peonies unfold like tissue paper.

© 2009 nicky linzey for Illustration Friday

First taste of Summer

We walked over to the harbour for the first time in ages and picked the first of the season's samphire. Took it home and steamed it, to make my version of Salad Nicoise. Yummy it was delicious.

Craving

I don't have a particularly sweet tooth but occasionally I find myself craving a piece of my Grandmother's Lardy Cake. Luckily I have her original recipe and as Gra is such a good baker he now makes it for me. It's very unhealthy but delicious and anyway who cares!
Recipe below if you want to try it.

© 2009 nicky linzey for Illustration Friday

Ingredients

450g white unbleached bread flour

1 tsp salt

100g vegetable lard

7g sachet of dried yeast

300mls/half pint warm milk

2 tsp clear honey

150g currants (soak in warm water & drain)

100g sultanas (soak in warm water & drain)

50g soft brown sugar

1 tsp mixed spice

Method

Into the bowl sift the flour, add the salt and rub in 25g of lard. Cream the honey, milk and yeast and mix vigorously with the flour to make a smooth dough (adding more milk if necessary). Shape into ball, cover the bowl with film and leave to rise in a warm place for about 30 minutes. Drain off water from the currants and sultanas, mix together and knead into dough until the fruit is evenly distributed and leave to rest for 10 minutes.On a floured top roll out into a rectangle about 150mm (6 inches) wide by 300mm (12 inches) long. Soften the lard and spread over the bottom two thirds. Mix the soft brown sugar and mixed spice and sprinkle on the larded area. Fold the top unlarded third down and the bottom third up to make 3 layers. Roll out to the original size rectangle again, roll up from the bottom like a Swiss roll. Cut in half to make 2 thinner rolls. Place each roll cut side up onto a greased baking tray and leave to rise in a warm place covered with clean tea towel for about 1 hour. Before baking, lard the ends to stop the rolls from coming apart then bake in a pre-heated oven 200°C / Gas 6. When cool, glaze.

Glaze

To make the glaze topping place 3 tablespoons of golden caster sugar in 200ml water. Boil to dissolve and thicken - when you have the consistency of a heavy syrup take off heat and drizzle over the top of each cake.