questing vole

Here's this year's Christmas/Solstice/ Winterval picture. I've thought of renaming Eve so that she becomes Questing Vole, but Eve is easier and quicker to signwrite.... and a good name of course.

Why shouldn't voles have their own constellations? I was chuffed this year to learn that the Welsh name for the Pleiades is Saith Seren Siriol, or the Seven Friendly Stars. Here they've become a vole... if you look for them in the night sky they'll look far smaller than this, but my artistic licence is still valid so nerts.

I'll be printing these off ASAP, and putting them up on my Etsy shop and on Gert Macky, of course....

"The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft"

The Rule of Threes kicked in yesterday. When three different people mention an unlikely subject, it probably means that Something Must Be Done. In this case, it was Christmas.

Yes, I know. Sorry, me too.

But then I thought that it'd probably be a good idea to get cards printed, ready for when people (those wise folk who don't leave this sort of thing until three days after the last posting day for Christmas, as I do) need them.

So I did this picture. Obviously all this goofing about on narrowboats has been affecting me.

I'll also be printing some cards of this painting, which I did to go with Thomas Hardy's poem The Oxen.