The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
600 people reached the top of Mt. Everest in 2012. This blog got about 5,700 views in 2012. If every person who reached the top of Mt. Everest viewed this blog, it would have taken 10 years to get that many views.
I will use the full WordPress report to help create blogs of interest for my readers this coming 2013.
“But I am sure I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round — apart from the veneration due to its sacred name and origin, if anything belonging to it can be apart from that — as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time: the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys. And therefore, uncle, though it has never put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I believe that it has done me good, and will do me good; and I say, God bless it!’”–from Charles Dickens ‘A Christmas Carol‘
Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays & Good Cheer to all!
To set the mood, enjoy this lovely image from Ruth Sanderson’s Golden Wood Studio.
Can’t wait to be there, December 14th, to see Peter Jackson’s interpretation of my all time favorite story by J.R.R. Tolkien The Hobbit.
I dreamed of seeing a movie made of this story since I first finished reading it to my brothers and sisters.
Peter Jackson exceeded my hopes with his production of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings movies. I believe he will do the same with his latest efforts for The Hobbit.
For the featured artist Brigid Ashwood
-What art; created by you at an earlier point in your life, made you realize this was what you wanted to do?
I’m sorry I can’t answer this. I don’t recall having a moment like this.
-What influences your art; books, other artists, art works, nature?
Music and myth are the biggest influence on my work.
-Did you have mentors or other significant supporters that helped you with your art?
Yes I had a lovely mentor as a child a man named George Bockius who was instrumental in molding me as an artist. Additionally my family has always been very supportive, as well as my husband.
-Your childhood—if you had video games, computers, smartphones and iPod’s then, would that technology have helped or hindered the development of your imagination?
I don’t think it would have had any negative impact on my imagination. My own daughter is growing up with all of these technologies and I think she’s incredibly imaginative and creative. I think that access to technology at a younger age would have only helped me find the path of my career sooner and potentially helped set my imagination free sooner.
With autumn gales my race is run;
When will the hazel put forth its flowers,
Or the grape ripen under my bowers?
When will the harvest or the hunter’s moon
Turn my midnight into mid-noon?
I am all sere and yellow,
And to my core mellow.
The mast is dropping within my woods,
The winter is lurking within my moods,
And the rustling of the withered leaf
Is the constant music of my grief….
from I am the autumnal sun by Henry David Thoreau
Check out the famous poem Goblin Market By Christina Rossetti
“Morning and evening
Maids heard the goblins cry:
“Come buy our orchard fruits,
Come buy, come buy: Apples and quinces,
Lemons and oranges, Plump unpeck’d cherries,
Melons and raspberries, Bloom-down-cheek’d peaches,
Swart-headed mulberries, Wild free-born cranberries,
Crab-apples, dewberries, Pine-apples, blackberries,
Apricots, strawberries;
—All ripe together
In summer weather,—
…Sweet to tongue and sound to eye; Come buy, come buy.”
Yet one sister warns,
“We must not look at goblin men,
We must not buy their fruits:
Who knows upon what soil they fed
Their hungry thirsty roots?”
To discover the fate of maidens tempted by goblin fruits, the full poem can be found at victorianweb.
Artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti, her brother, did these wood engravings for Christina Rossetti’s Goblin Market and Other Poems in1862
D. G. Rossetti, illustration 1865
Brian Froud Fairy
Brian Froud (and Alan Lee’s) art book FAERIES tickled my imagination for years. I loved his work on the film The Dark Crystal—we even named a cat ‘Fizzgig’ after one of its furry characters. Brian Froud’s contribution to the movie Labyrinth was amazing too. I have enjoyed his other books, as well those of his wife Wendy Froud. She creates wonderful art dolls and sculpted ‘Jen’ and ‘Kira’ for The Dark Crystal. Her art dolls are seen in her books—my favorite is The Winter Child. I just discovered they have a Pinterest page as well as a website that I include under my links.
