It's been a while... I wrote my last entry in another country. My life has changed, I miss things (people mostly) from the old life, but the new life is good. La vie est belle. We have a wood and pasture, oh, and a house and barn too. To celebrate our first year and to imprint the place upon myself and my work, I have made a New Beginning. A Monthly Bundle. If that sounds vaguely menstrual to you, that's ok. It sounds that way to me too. The first bundle was January. A piece of silk noil given to me as a parting gift when I left England, bundled with forage from our woodland. Amazing what you can find in the depths of winter, if you bother to look. Also some thread. Left in a cauldron full of water from our stream on the top of the woodburner for a few days.
February I printed some papers, again with woodland forage, wrapped around a rusty can found in our field shelter. A huge treasure trove of rusty stuff. I suddenly stopped missing my English rust collection that I left behind.
March has just begun. I found some scraps of an old shirt plugging gaps between wall and floor in the attic that is becoming our bedroom. I soaked it for a while in the tannin and iron rich bath from last month's papers, then bundled it round some rusty chain. A neighbour gave me a huge box of Iris germanica. I planted a few in the little bed outside our front door. The remainder of the roots I chopped up and added to the pot. Which now sits on top of the woodburner and is already looking dark and mysterious. It can sit there a few days more then I will take the bundle out and keep it just moist but let the air get to it. I will unwrap it sometime before the end of March. Perhaps on 20th, Spring Equinox here in the Northern Hemisphere. But don't hold me to it. k3n x
