tania howells

playing around ...

with stamping

These are all stamps I have carved at one time or another, over the years.

 

well hello!

Hooray!  This month the 2014 nominees for the Forest of Reading were announced and to my surprise, Willow Finds a Way was nominated for a Blue Spruce award!  I had assumed it was past eligability as it came out in 2013! I really am thrilled and honoured to have been chosen! 

 

 

 

 

 

 Another map recently, Parkdale!

I was contacted by the Neighborhood Arts Network here in Toronto, who give out an award yearly to..." an arts organization that has made a significant contribution in Toronto by working collaboratively with culturally diverse communities, youth and community groups that create opportunities to access, and contribute to, arts and culture."   Its a great thing!  This year the award went to this group - Mammalian Diving Reflex .  It was fun to make this map because it, coincidentally, is also my neighborhood.  I even added my house, my favorite cafe and of course the library.

 

Im lately loving this show - Around the World in 80 Gardens.  It thrills me to listen to people chatting about plants with such enthusiasm!  It is so refreshing and so uplifting somehow.  I can't explain it any other way, I have always adored gardening and I know many others do as well, but to hear it on TV, well it makes me so happy.  Perhaps it is something in the way the host describes things!  Wonderful.  Something for ME.

 

Which makes me happy to have rediscovered Helen Lehndorf again all the way over in New Zealand.  I "met" her way back in the olden days ( 2005?) when she had a blog called Stripey Sock Studio and nowadays she writes alot about (among many other things including her fantastic writing),  gardens and plants and again, I love it!  Every now and then I get a momentary thrill thinking about the joy of discovering a new interest in life.  One you never really paid attention to before but was there in front of you all along.  How freeing to realise, suddenly, it is not the same old routine, there are plants and they look brand new for some reason. 

I've just finished reading The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton and my goodness I could not put it down!  It was a wonderful read and again, about a garden and about women's lives.  I am always hunting and digging for details about other womens lives, about how we all do it.  It is a research project as part of my very fabric, as part of not wanting to feel alone in this journey.