Judith’s Winter Diary

Judith Baines sends us the last instalment of her beautifully illustrated diaries.

Points of colour stand out sharply on a grey November day and on the third that year I saw a spray of bright gorse flowers and a tiny herb robert flower and decided to celebrate them by putting a photo of the gorse and a machine stitched slip of pink applied to blue velvet onto some sponged papers. I have been able to find the same joyful flowers on Arran this year. Snow fell in November when I wrote my Diary and I tried capturing the pine trees in the first snow, both in silk painting and on discharge fabric with acrylic paint. Discharge fabric is great! It is a black cotton which can be discharged by painting on it with Domestos or Milton. (Use an old brush that can be thrown away afterwards!) The former is most effective but has to be rinsed off as soon as the fabric reaches a state of black, browns and white that pleases you so that the fluid does not rot the material. Milton is the thing to use if children are involved.

December was cold and grey but a few red berries clung to bare twigs. I represented a section of hedge with a kind of stiffened needlelace. The last picture I took that special year was on Christmas Day in the woodland. There was a shaft of sunlight coming through the trees that seemed to me like a promise!

I have now lived on Arran seventeen years and I love it more than ever and mean to celebrate next year with another diary. If I manage it I will share it with you in 2014!