It's Spring! The daffodils are blooming.

 

It's Ash Wednesday, which is a very solemn day in the church calendar.  So it seems odd that it's such a bright, sunny day.  We had the most glorious rosy pink sunrise this morning, but I couldn't capture the colour on camera.  It washed out the pink, but my trying to take the picture was accompanied by a beautiful dawn chorus of birdsong.  I'm going into Leeds today, for this month's Stitch Art meeting at the gallery.  I'll also attend Mass at the Cathedral.  Then I'll  spend the afternoon having people tell me I've a black smudge on my forehead.  Or I'll feel guilty as I've rubbed the ashes off to avoid people telling me I've a black smudge on my forehead....  Oh well, on to other matters.  I'm making progress with this page of my Ann Wood fabric book.  It's sashiko / boro insipred, and I'm liking the simplicity of it.  I think we're on day 48 now, so nearing halfway through the challenge.  

I finished reading the book about female agents/spies during the second world war - oh my!  they were brave women - and am enjoying Philippa Gregory's 'A Respectable Trade'.  It's set in Bristol, where I used to live, which means a lot of the streets and buildings referred to are familiar to me.  The story centres around Britain's role in buying and selling enslaved African people, and is a reminder of how much wealth this country - and others, of course - made from that evil trade.  Gregory really makes the central character face up the reality of slavery.

To explain the plot, Frances's husband, Josiah Cole, brings a handful of captives to their Bristol home where she's expected to teach them to speak English and to become used to a life of servitude.  It's shocking to hear how people routinely viewed slaves as 'livestock', on parr with cattle or sheep, but interesting to see characters attitudes changing as they're faced with the physical, immediate reality of the theory they spout.  

I'll finish with something less grim.  A little silliness to brighten the mood.  As part of the Abstractuary art challenge, run by Tori Chatfield, there was a prompt 'Basquiat'.  I know very little about Jean-Michel Basquiat, but was attracted by his art featuring cats.  So this is my 'Basquicat'.  Fabric scraps, felt and a fair amount of running stitch.  Hope you like it.