pathways

I’ve been decorating. With a brush and a roller and large cans of paint. And a ladder. So not much stitching has taken place and the rain has fallen and fallen and the skies have been grey. Sunday seemed to be the worst-I was at howling point about the gloom. Endless grey is one of the few things that truly gets me down.

This afternoon when I had finished painting the bathroom, I allowed myself an hour of stitching on fenland. I have been adding wheat stalks for a time now but decided more writing was needed, to tell more of the story. And because I was temporarily bored by wheat stalks.

I am adding the people to the quilt. In this landscape, there have been many changes, from when the land was part of the European mainland, hunted over by stone age men following mammoths, then isolated by the North Sea after the last glaciation. Angle, Saxon and Jute settlers arrived from Germany in that period of history called the Dark Ages and eventually from their settlements and from monasteries, culture and civilisation developed, churches and villages and towns were built, the fens were drained and farmed, Saxon gold gave way to cornfield gold. This is a landscape clearly  shaped by geology and humanity

So now I am adding the pathways for the feet of those who have gone before, beneath the corn, above the ooze. mammoth hunter, Saxon raider, eel catcher, fen drainer..

As a point of wonder-at least, I found it wonderful, I took the photographs of the details in the late afternoon. About an hour after I had done them, we had a real downpour, followed by some brilliant shafts of sunshine, and a rainbow. The sun stayed for about ten minutes-long enough to re-photograph the details I wanted to show you. The picture below was before the sun came out and is the same detail as the one above. What a difference.