of rain, and memories of mum

raindrops on rosesrain
glorious rain

a lovely grey, soft day and enough precipitation to make the garden happy, the goats most emphatically not, and to require his Beariness to undergo the indignity of an unscheduled bath [ odeur de wet dog with definite undertones of next door's billygoat ]

significant amounts of goat paddock

oozed down the hill

but that's perfectly normal around here

Not a day for gardening, so I spent the day ... when not otherwise occupied with canine-ablution duty or cleaning up after an epileptic cat ... knitting lace and working on another collage/mixed media/call-it-what-you will that I started yesterday

I've used a postcard picture of my late mum aged about 2 ... and before anyone starts howling about me having the temerity to destroy a vital bit of family history, I do have another original of the same picture.
... was going to write 'original copy' but that's a bit of an oxymoron. Anyway, there were obviously several printed as postcards for various family members, and I have ended up with these two.
I used a 12" primed canvas again and started with a dark green base, added the same gold as the last piece, and several layers of printed paper serviette tissue and more gold, green and burnt umber.
Then the front page of some old sheet music ... 'When Thy Blue Eyes' ... more paint and tissue, and finally, after some tense moments spent carefully wetting the back of the photo and gently scraping away most of the back layer whilst holding my breath and with my tongue 'just so' ...


and don't you just love that huge bow on the top of her head ?


I may need to add a little burnt umber around the edges because it looks almost too new for a pic taken in 1922, but the postcard printing on the back was certainly that old so I guess the photographer must have used top quality emulsion or somesuch.