Overlapping tones of gold

There is a moment, where summer and autumn overlap extending their tones of gold into an endless afternoon

And that is where she lives...and bakes in her little canopied hill.

She whisks light into froth for her lemony cake and serves petal pancakes to the wee ones there.

There, is a moment that is precious, for there is where summertime's babes play with those who will grow in autumn's care.

It is where buttercup shines sleepily while little mushroom wakens shyly,

and where a wee green grass turns gold.

This little baker nourishes those baby marvels with tender heartedness

and sweet deliciousness

and so that moment of their dwelling is sustained on and on, long into the endless playing of a golden afternoon

and maybe even ever more

Blessed by Nettles

In her beautiful book, The Sense of Wonder, alongside the reflective photography of Nick Kelsh, Rachel Carson writes of the importance of those adults who hold space, cherish, and nurture children's relationship with nature. In stories that centre around moments spent with her young nephew, Carson wonder-fully expresses this truth, which I have also experienced in my children's lives. While children are born with a natural belonging and familiar awe for their world, the adult who notices and appreciates alongside them, who values the pictures in clouds and the faint scent of blossom, found things on walks, the minute moss forests; is confirming the connectivity that the child feels. My children's Granny, my mother, has perhaps offered the greatest cradling of such awe. They have also both been blessed with amazing experiences of 'forest school', and this nourishing, for my youngest, is an ongoing weekly celebratory adventure.

One day my hands became suffused with gratitude for these adults, who are in their spirit, mothering the child and the earth at once, as one. So, first in soft movements in the air between my palms and fingers, and then with stitches and cloth, I began to respond to a being, an earth mother who became the world itself, of fields and flowers and oceans and sky, and who, at the same time, encircled this world in her arms, with her cloak, and carried wee beings in her skirt. Her form reminded me of those spirits who spin the creation into being, and of womenkind, its our most tender nature. Her structure suggested the possibility of puppetry and story telling....

And then she called for a blessing crown

And I recalled the delicate pattern of the nettle string that both my daughters have learnt to make at their forest schools and so I asked my youngest to teach me

Here is how she showed me

Find some nice long nettles

pick one, as long as possible,  being careful not to get stung 

hold the nettle firmly at the top with your protected hand and cut off the leaves with a downward stoke of the knife, make sure that you do not peel away the skin of the stalk, as you will need that fibre 

bash the stalk to loosen the skin fibre

gently peel away a brown green length of the outside of the stalk, this is the part you will need

fold it in half and give a little twist to the middle 

twist the underneath fibre away from you

and without letting go, so that it doesn't untwist, bring it down over the front fibre,

the front and the back threads will now have swapped places, and you can twist the back one away from you again and repeat 

In this way a string starts to form 

It is important to hold the end of the string where you are twisting, to keep it tight

Soon your fingers will get used to this pattern of 'twist away, bring down' and you will have a nettle string, the thickness and length will depend on the stalk fibre with which you began 

the fibres of the string will curl apart a little as they dry, this makes the string very beautiful 

And so this earth mother was blessed by a crown, fitting in its nature

And she played 

Dancing love around the world

The gift of a name, becoming the magic fairy lady

a silk veil house hung from the bunting so that my daughter's  fairies
 could join a festival procession 

I have always created spaces and things for my children’s play, this has been an instinctive honouring of the importance of their play. When stitching and painting I too am playing, and the small beings that come about in my hands start to come alive and seem then to hold an open invitation to children to get to know them and so create their characters whilst playing.

As my children have grown, I have found time, alongside our home educating, to create small beings for others. In the playful mood of responding to inspirations I have found myself able to draw on a sense of the person who I am creating for. This open listening that my fingers and heart seem to do, hears not only the wishes of the human players, but also the essences of nature’s beings.

a garden gnome's sunflower seed babies

This autumn we decided to create a gnome and fairy glen in our wendy-house outside, for children round about to come and visit. Even as I suggested the idea to my children I was bemused about why I was doing so; to spend so much time creating something for who knows who? However they took hold wholeheartedly,  and so we began. I stitched and followed the forms of small beings, directed initially by the scenes that my children wanted to include, a gnome’s garden, a bakery, a lake and river, a snowy land; later, gradually, different inspirations also began to have their say. Often we begin without knowing why…

two acorn rascals 

conversations of growing crystals 

Five months later, in our garden, a cocooning began, rust and blue velvet curtains covered ledges of different heights, yew branches softened the floor and curved the overhead space, hung with pale gauze silks, grey lichen branches did their part, mossy logs borrowed from the forest and pots of disorganized parsley and vetch made spaces to hold the gnomes and fairies. A small land with a garden, dim lit lakes, crystal caves, a little school with transperancy windows, pathways, a mushroom house, the old broken French garden teapot café, a living weaving seed pod, grew in the space. Then for a week children and adults came, few by few, to be in that small place visiting the more than 50 visible wee beings and the countless others hidden.

wonder glen school

a summer born boy's fairy

a fairy queen dances over the gold

After this, both the inspirations and the requests kept coming. One was for three boy fairies for a momma who wanted to create her own mobile for her baby boy. However when her eldest saw the three little fairies he said, ‘but momma you should be here too.’ and so in her image and by the grace of magic a fairy queen came to be. As far as I know the mobile has not yet come about, but the fairy family is tenderly loved, and that little boy calls me ‘the magic fairy lady’ which seems to me a wonderful name to be given and to grow into.

three brothers full of magic