I’m sitting in my studio with the sun shining in and the door open as the temperature has jumped up by 10 degrees! The birds are singing and the snowdrops and daffodils dance their heads in the gentle breeze. Nature is waking up from the cold, damp winter months and is beginning to start her cycle of growth again. The trees still lay bare and old birds nests can be seen in the branches, reminding me that the birds will soon be busy preparing for their new young. It feels very much that nature is encouraging me to be outside but also create in response to this new awaking. I turn my thoughts to the daffodil, snowdrop and bluebell leaves I collected last spring that are still hanging up. Time to start working with these and so I get myself organised with days where I remember to put the leaves into ‘mellow’ before I want to work with them, the snowdrops and bluebells only need a couple of hours, but I find the daffodil leaves need about 5 hours to mellow so that they are soft to work with. I make cordage with them all, having worked with daffodil before I fall into a easy pace of making. The snowdrops leaves I only have a few and am surprised with the little pop of pink that shows through the cordage. The bluebell leaves go too wet, I try mellowing for less time but get the same result, whether I picked them to late, or how they dried or maybe bluebell leaves just don’t work, I’m not sure and will try again this year. This is what I enjoy about working with nature, you are never sure of the outcome and have to work with what happens.
Inspired by the the birds nests I make a couple of nest vessels from willow, one adding natural dyed crochet wool to it and some feathers from my hens when they molted. The other I leave the nest more open and fill in the gaps with cordage I have made from the spring bulbs, looping and random weaving between the gaps. This shows the cordage off and creates the memories of spring and new life as nature wakes and causes these bulbs to grown again. Nature speaking out of the depths of winter, calling life and creativity in the world and my studio.
