The Best Easter Egg

I haven’t posted in a while because I’ve been feeling ill; tired and fuzzy headed and I still feel a bit like that now, but this has cheered me up:

I’ll explain in a moment.

Over the last few weeks I feel like I’ve lost my artistic mojo a bit. Because I’ve been feeling ill I haven’t achieved as much as I’d hoped to in the art side of things and there’s also the fact that it’s been freezing cold, the days have been gloomy and things keep going wrong. Have you ever had a run of things going wrong? Things not working, breaking or situations you hadn’t expected? You know what I mean.

It means that my ideas have been set back, but they’ve been started, so that’s a positive!

As you may know by now, I love snow: it brightens up the grey winter days, but at the moment, I’m ready for spring to come bursting into life. Winter is, for me, like being wrapped up in a cosy cocoon; the warmth inside and wearing layers of clothes. Then when spring arrives it’s like cracking open the cocoon and stepping out to new life.

I love opening the windows for the first time of the year and letting the air flow through, like the spring breezes are blowing away the stuffiness and lethargy of the winter months.

Have you heard the song Rabbit Heart (Raise it Up) by Florence & the Machine? In it is the line:

“And in the spring, I shed my skin

And it blows away with the changing wind”

That’s how I think of spring and how I hope to feel in the coming month or so. I’ve actually, for once, had enough of winter and I’m hoping the spring will blow away the fuzziness in my head, because although I’ve been set back in my textile art, I have made progress with research on something I want to do, a goal of mine for this year. I hope my head will be clear enough to see it through. I’m not going to tell you about it yet, but you may find out in a while.

The signs of spring are already around as you can see in my photos. Primroses are flowering, deciduous trees are starting to come into leaf and I found something wonderful the other day:

I found it under a tree at the bottom of the garden; a tree which I know woodpigeons nest in because I see them flying in and out of it all the time, so it’s a woodpigeon eggshell. I also know because I found the top a shell of the same type and size a year or two ago and tweeted a photo of it to Chris Packham asking what it was. He actually replied (I nearly fainted) saying it was a woodpigeon shell. This time it’s the whole shell so it’s like finding a little treasure and is the best kind of Easter egg to have.

I hope this means there’s a new little life up there in the nest and the little chick survived the recent cold weather tucked up under his/her mother’s feathers. As I write I can hear a woodpigeon cooing outside. He and his partner and all the little birds – robin, blackbird, sparrows, etc. – are being very vocal now.

I haven’t been completely out of my creative mojo the last couple of weeks. I’ve done a few things for Easter; some decorations to brighten things up. Here are my Easter eggs filled with fluffy chicks.

I painted the eggs, then stuck on the flowers and the shiny bunny.

I’ve also made pom-pom bunnies.

There may be more before the weekend is over…

So, with the hope that I’ll be back next week with more to show you, have a Happy Easter, don’t eat too much chocolate (I may ignore my own advice there) and enjoy the holiday.