Exams, Pink Bees & Taxidermy Tea Party

It's been a busy week filled with Welsh exams, making felty bees, wrangling with writing an artist's statement (which isn't pretentious) and enjoying this glorious sunshine (new garden chairs purchased, BBQ had, wandering round town with delicious ice cream and glasses of prosecco in the garden, all very lovely).

Firstly the exams, it's taken me about 4 years of living in North Wales to get round to taking Welsh language lessons but now I finally have embarked on it, I'm finding it very rewarding and far more fun than I'd expected. Four hours a week over two night classes doesn't, I realise,  sound very compelling but it's turned out to be a lovely, lively and supportive group. There's no denying that it seems a tricky language and it's taken me from last September to get my head around the fact that Caernarfon is sometimes said 'Gaernarfon'  and other times 'yng Nghaerfon' depending on the initially bewildering use of mutations! Hopefully, I'll continue to improve & keep practising in local shops and in as many conversations as possible (I'm quite nosey so this is especially important, who knows what I'm missing!). There were lots of learners taking the exams last week and more on the current courses but apparently Welsh is still in a fairly fragile place (as the amazingly enthusiastic presenter Nia Parry said recently on the inspiring 'Cariad@iath' series on S4C) and needs a lot of people to use it. It's not clear why more people who move here (by 'here' I mean areas in  North/ Mid Wales where Welsh is spoken as the principal language) don't learn at least some basics (or even a lot of people born here).  I'm assuming most wouldn't move to Italy & not work at learning Italian (even if living amongst some English speakers). If you are also learning, you may enjoy comedians Elis James & Isy Suttie in amusing bite-sized videos on youtube in the Hwb series 'Y Wers Gymraeg'. Here's the first episode http://www.youtube.com/Y Wers Gymraeg

On a lighter note, I now need to immerse myself in making needle felted bees as I estimate quite a lot of bees are required for the piece I'm making (deadline at the end of the month, oh dear!). This pink one is my sole finished bee so far so I'd best speed up. It is a very special bee however, as it's made from fleece dyed by my arty friend Sarah. I'm pretty sure she used cochineal to create various batches of delicious pinky hues, this one looked like dark candy floss then felted down to an intense liquorice allsorts colour. Good enough to eat. Don't though, my cats tried and didn't enjoy it one bit.

Finally, quirky inspiration  this week comes from work spotted in The Three Harbours Festival in East Lothian. My mum and brother went and were most impressed by the work of  taxidermist Samantha Boyes. She has combined very realistic fake food with small taxidermy animals. Fake food! Taxidermy! Vintage tea cups and china! Some of my favourite things combined in a very pleasing way. I do feel an affinity with this talented lady & will hopefully see some of her work in real life one day soon!  I can't find any online info for her or for Hen's Teeth Taxidermy but if you're as interested as me you can have a look at http://www.3harbours.co.uk/samantha-boyes