deery me!!

Today, instead of going to college as I usually would, I went back to Attingham Park. It was very cold and foggy when I woke up this morning and I couldn't wait to get down there with my camera.

With the light soft as it is with the fog, it has given everything a rather mysterious look.

As I said in my last blog post, the whole reason for going this time, was to find deer.

I went hopeful, but unsure we would find any deer (I have been twice now and not found any). 

We decided to do the WWII walk this time and were strolling along chatting, kind of isolated by the fog, when lo and behold......

 We came across deer!!! And lots of them!!!

My friend Lucy was the first to notice them there in their herd. Even when pointed out to me, I couldn't see them straight away. If it wasn't for Lucy I may have just walked straight past :-)

I think that the fog helped cloak us slightly from the deer and although alert to any noises, they seemed quite happy for us to snap away. 

You can see from the photos, just how foggy it was this morning. What you can't see from the photo's is quite how excited I am, I could hardly contain myself!!!

Now all I need to do, once I have thawed out a bit more, is use all of this research to make my textile piece.

Take care 

Janine x

P.s, Sorry for the really bad pun at the beginning, but I had to name the post with deer in it somewhere and it was the best I could come up with.

Ideers

I have been contemplating a few ideas, in my head for my project at college.

My project is 'Exploration'. I have decided to explore the National Trust. Obviously the first thing that comes 

to mind, would be nature, but I didn't want to be that predictable. 

I do still have one more visit to go and I will be trying to capture pictures of deer (they are somewhat elusive). 

source found here

I wanted to come up with something that had a little more thought into it and as my local National Trust area has a mansion, I thought about looking into the history. 

You could go as far back as medieval times, as the site has been used for all sorts of things. I decided to go back as far as when the site changed to Attingham park. A family named the Berwick's (formerly known as Hill), owned it.

I came across a family crest of Noel Hill and fell in love with it. 

I love the swirly writing the use of deer and a flying horse and I am now trying to come up with a pattern using elements of this crest. 

Here are my ideas so far.

Hopefully next time I might have a pattern to show you.

Take care 

Janine x

Attingham Park Inspiration

Yesterday the boy and I went to Attingham park. It was lovely to spend time with my boy while my daughter  was at nursery. We spent a lovely morning walking through the grounds, finding sticks and other things of interest.

One of the reasons I wanted to go, was to collect inspiration for my college project of 'Exploration'.

For this project, I decided to use Attingham Park and The National Trust, being a member already and having Attingham Park just down the road, makes it easily accessible.

I took my new camera that I had for Christmas and snapped as many pictures as I could.

Here are just a few examples.

A couple of the mansion its self. 

We even found, a mole on a tree. It's what we can see anyway. Can you see the mole?

Mostly I took pictures of patterns and textures, ready to develop into my own patterns for screen printing. 

My favourite are the patterns that can be seen in the water.

I will post the developed patterns in my next post.

Have a good day

Janine x