gingerbread houses and neviepie

Every year for quite a few now my daughter makes gingerbread houses as part of her business.

Natasha Collins..Neviepiecakes...designer.

I can't bear to eat these amazing pieces of art and so they sit atop my glass cupboard for me to see and love.

Yes they are gingerbread...but the amount of work and art involved makes them so much more than something to eat.

You might be able to see this year's model in Fortnum and Mason in London.....if you are quick!

This Dutch inspired one is my favourite at the moment.

A Poem for Thursday....

I was asked by @neviepiecakes aka Natasha Collins...lovely daughter..if I would post some pics for seven days from the different series that I've taken on camera. Thankyou Natasha.
This photo is one of three from a travel series. It now belongs to a great friend. I'm sure that there are references in this pic from wonderful international photographers...and so I give them thanks for their blogs and hope that I may have learnt from them and their skills.

I often think poetry when I take pics...and this little poem is very apt for the feelings often there when on a long journey...and you are really nowhere!

To Travel

To travel is to be nowhere.

You’re not here

And you’re not there.

So,

If you get the wrong train to somewhere,

Or you get off at

The wrong station for somewhere,

Does that mean

That you have completely disappeared?

And when the train gets to somewhere

Will they find that you are nowhere.

And how will you get back from there?

I'll post the other two in the series for you. 

 The start of the journey

All change at Euston

What a Week!!

 This has been a full on week of happenings here at the Potters House Penketh.

A birthday brunch.....for the potter...

Mothering Sunday...at The Cake International Show.....this cake won a commendation...she based it on a workshop video of the daughter's ...Neviepiecakes...lovely!

Hospital...the potter is through the ordeal and can hardly believe that it's over!!....Hooray.

And though we are only at Friday....Red Nose Day here in the U.K....

...and those penguins know what the deal is...as an Irish Bard once said...
"Give us your ....... money"!

Good end to the week I say.

 My daughter ...the lovely owner of Amelie's House and Nevie pie cakes...studied for her degree at what was then Newcastle Polytech...now The University of Northumbria.
She made some long term friends there and of them all stayed closer in the end to Gretel Parker and her then boyfriend  Andy ... than any of the others.

At the end of degree show, we went to see the exhibitions...and of course loved Natasha's, and also Gretel's. However the work that touched my heart most was that of Andy's. I saw in his art a sensitivity and tenderness, with also a look at the way old discarded stuff can be redeemed. As with Schwitters, he used ephemera to produce something new.
I asked if it would be possible to buy one of his pieces of art and so ....was the proud owner of this .

 Now when I was little I regularly had serious viral flu... to the extent that I would hallucinate thinking that I was a cabbage or onion and the layers were being stripped away...
...yes I know ...my family will say, "But that is just your mad imagination!"...
...whatever...
At the end of these scary sessions mum would bring me down stairs and wrap me up in blankets by the fire...
...and I always asked for the story of ...Jairus's daughter...who made it through the night!!
...this collage is based on that story of a father who kept asking for help.

Very sadly Andy has not managed to make it through, and so I'm putting up this post to honour him and to encourage everyone to... 1. look at Gretel's blog post ...2. back those who struggle at producing honest art often at the lose of income... and 3.consider contributing to this site to help Gretel financially to get through the next months  if not years.

Thankyou all you lovely blogger friends for the support that you have given Alan and myself in particular since November....what a great community! 

Cakes at The Potters House.

This is just a taster of the workshop that was held here on Saturday by our daughter.
No doubt Neviepiecakes will have a super post on all of this soon.
But in the mean time I just want to show some of the things that happened...and admit that I felt quite emotional as she taught these thirteen women to paint on cakes.

Natasha on the left discussing painting technique.

We used to say to our two children as they were growing up..."don't go into teaching!"
It was a reaction to the tiredness that we felt and the sense of suffocation in the teaching world in the 80s...at least that's how we felt and why we got out, to set up The Potters House here in Penketh.
But both have in their own way gone into ..if not teaching...then passing on information of their skills, to others.

 As usual all three of the studios were used.

Your's truly provided food and sustenance. Lots of drinks to keep the inspiration flowing...

and a spot of lunch to rest the weary brains!

And the potter didn't waste any opportunities to talk clay......

Happy days!!

Inspired by Hockney.

I'm putting up some more pics today from Ashridge Woods in Hertfordshire.

 I went there with my daughter on Thursday to have a walk through the trees,  then  lunch  by a warming fire in a local pub.

The exhibition at the Royal Academy, of Hockney's take on the Yorkshire countryside, opens your eyes to the beauty of  "very littleness"...if there is such an expression!

It's in this way that I feel so much of our landscape is viewed......

...in the soft neutral colours and tones of the palettes as used  by our wonderful British watercolourists...
... such as Constable and Ruskin.
I love going to the Abbott Hall Galleries in Kendal just to gaze in awe at the watercolour room tucked away at the back of the building.

But if I'm honest to my own colour leanings.....I crave colour and expressionistic saturation!
I'm a lover of van Gogh and Matisse and also the northern group of expressionists,  the Blaue Reiter...with Nolde and Kandinsky etc.
In many ways I think this is what Hockney has brought into the art of English landscape, from his living and painting in California .
So the photo above had some colour washed out on the saturation app. on Picnic...and the one underneath, had the colours saturated in the opposite direction.

(The photographer in the pic. by the way... is she of Neviepie Cakes fame!)

I'm sure people have their own opinions about whether or not an artist should take colour "liberties" when painting the landscape.

Maybe you might like to post a comment on your preference.

I'm just posting up some of the other creatures who really don't mind either way!!

 

Just as long as he can rediscover the secret hiding places of the autumn nuts hidden for a hungry day!

Entering a Jewel.

I'm a Pinterester!

Yes I know ...it's just too much...well blame the sweet daughter...she of the Neviepie Cakes  fame..

..she says, "mum you would love it"...underlining the love!

I say, "why would I bother?"...and she says, " have a go".

I'm hooked.

It's a bit like reading twenty on trend magazines at once!
Coast...Elle Deco...World of Interiors...Habitania...Wallpaper...
You know what I mean.

This however is not a new phenomenon in my life...ah no...I own up ...
When I was a teenager, I had a friend whose mother... being enlightened in the 50s...bought state of the art magazines...and there, I was regularly to be found on the excuse that I was visiting my school friend, but really hooked on the pictures and articles in these wonderful papers!

So the photo at the top?...well of course it's that school friend!

You don't think that you can waste a friend like that do you?
To walk into her home is like walking inside a jewel
.

So the results of my pics from her home...still reading mags...no money ...just ingenuity...that's the two of us!
...Below...

Living room.

                                                                        

 

Bedroom.

Bathroom.

Kitchen.

So there you are....

...she is a prolific art knitter...

...has painted many of the pictures

and her daughter......Richenda McGregor...

is the potter responsible for most of the art ceramics.

Oh... and yours truly has one or two litle pieces of art in there as well.