Foxy Loxy has a date with little bird -Stripygoose

I received this disttressingly relevant piece from Stripygoose some time ago.  How could she have known that on returning from Maine, the very day we got back,  I would find 5/6 chickens pulled apart by our local fox?

Anyway, Stripygooose and I were part of mailart 365 a few years ago. I didn't opt into a new round of 365.  Stripygoose did! I've checked and Stripygoose has completed 365 X 2!

Thanks so much for remembering me, Stripygoose.

Crisispanty's trashpo

Many thanks to Crisispanty for her TRASHPO mailart 365 no. 88.  What a cool airmail washi tape sticker! Love the natural palette in this and the colour words from a stamp catalog. Thank you Crisispanty.

Sarah challenges herself with scraps from the scrapheap

This is one of what Sarah calls her 'scrapheap challenges'. 
I've just looked and Sarah's last posting at Mailart 365 was 299! She is in the home stretch.
 Gorgeous patterns and a colour study that may make it into one of my paintings.   Thank you Sarah!

365 friends

The other day someone asked me why I like to run.  I said I feel like what I think a colt feels like when I am gamboling around the fields... but not every day, somedays I don't want to run and going out and not knowing why you're doing it and not liking the process is bewildering. My dog loves to run with me, so we do it together.

Mailart 365 http://mailart365.blogspot.co.uk was comparable to a year long marathon.  I made mailart every day because I said I was going to.  Somedays I loved the have to do it feel, but sometimes I had no ideas and no one I wanted to communicate with.  Luckily I was doing it with a group of other people, that helped it make more sense.  This week I got some very welcome post from old 365ers.

 JJalltheway and I swapped a bunch of postcards.  She began early, if not at the beginning of the 365 group. I began in September 2011.  JJ and I discovered that we had teenagers of a similar age, so when she writes in this postcard of being 'wrapped up in sending my baby to college,' and not sending much mailart, I can relate!  JJ's exciting news, and exciting imagery is thanks to a letterpress.  I am touched that JJ sent me this card - her first project made with it!

Spopod and I discovered in our mutual tea imagery that we both love tea. We also exchanged quite a few postcards over the 365 period,  so am very pleased to have this tribute to tea as a reminder of Spopod and to commemorate our love of leaves.  It makes me thirsty, so I'm off to brew up a pot with earl grey from our suppliers Norwich! Laura thinks we have better tea here on this side of the pond. She's probably right!

Great to hear from you both and thank you!

Stripygoose sends New Years' cheer... and a chicken story

Gratefully recieved festive fowl mailart from Stripygoose (no. 215) I have just checked and she is now on no 313! Go Stripygoose! Thank you.
http://mailart365.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/313ballet-birdie.html?utm_source=BP_recent

And that also gives me time to tell you my latest chicken story.  We have pheasants galore feeding at the grain this year.  I think the duck even fly in and out to eat our expensive mixed corn. I wouldn't care   except that it runs out so quickly and the chickens are hungry (and if we were wealthy).  As you might imagine, they don't lay when they're hungry.  I feed them table scraps.  They prefer rice, potatoes, cous cous - carbs. 
Just before we went to North Devon I collected the eggs to take with us.   They only layed 6 eggs over the course of the week and the grain had run out.  Because we were going away and because we were jaded by overeating in general, I fed them about half a tray of baklava that our son had made for a middle eastern meal we'd had. Boy did they love that.  The chickens are usually peaceful, but they were at war over the filo pastry, the nuts soaked in honey.  They made me laugh.
So when we got back and I went to check on them (they self feed and self drink, don't worry) I found that the grain was low but they had layed 8 eggs in 3 days! It turns out Baklava is a chicken farmer's tonic.