We walk through the threshold between childhood and adulthood and the doors of magic and enchantment swing shut behind us. We must learn to survive in the ‘real world’, a world that teaches us that reality is composed entirely of objects that can be quantified and managed. Where time becomes money and value is measured by a price tag.

Yet adults need stories of enchantment and magic as much as children do. We need stories of that which lies beyond our comprehension, stories that do not fit neatly within the physical, the logical or the deconstructable. Stories that connect us back to a broader way of attending to the world, where a thing is more than the sum of its parts. Where poetry and music carry meanings that lie beyond explanation. Where children lead us by the hand through their imaginings and remind us of something we have forgotten how to reach…

Once upon a time, there was a little girl born of dragons1. She arrived in our world curled within an invisible egg and taught to roar by her human grandmother. She had travelled through a portal of flesh and blood into the human world, carried here by a human mama who loved her before she had ever seen her face. She was chosen to live in a human body and experience a human life. To swim in the ocean and eat every flavour of ice cream, to learn what it is to hold hands and get butterflies in her tummy and love as a human.

But the little girl grew homesick. She missed her dragon mama and her family. She was scared that she would forget what they looked like, the sound of their roars, the shape of their wings, their magic and everything that connected her to them.

The Universe, however, is ever wise. It had been no accident that the portal opened into this particular human family. It knew there was only one human mama perfectly suited to raise a dragon-child far from home. One who understood enchantment and belief and magic in a way that many human adults have forgotten.

So when the dragon-child confided her fears, her mama set about weaving a thread between the worlds. A dragon-child far from home needed a way to send love across the stars and receive it in return. The Universe, being ever wise, had already begun gathering the people and stories needed to make such a thing possible.

Many miles away, across land and sea, there lived a woman born of fae. Though her home was on a small island in the human world, her mind and heart dwelled between the worlds. So strongly did she feel the pull of Fae, that when she made things, they became bridges between realms.

She had first glimpsed into the dragon world when she was only four years old. In a dream that seemed not a dream, curled between her parents in their bed with the velvet dark pressed in close, she opened her eyes and saw dragons.

They were all around her, stretching away into the darkness beyond. Great wings folded against great bodies. Black scales caught what little light there was. Yellow eyes gleamed.

No words were spoken. No great adventure unfolded. There was only the certainty of their presence and the feeling that she was safe among them. It was as if the worlds had briefly converged and not only was she curled in bed between the warm comfort of her parents, but also within the great cavernous dwelling where the dragons sleep.

When morning came, the dragons were gone. Yet the memory remained, an ember carried through the years that is still smouldering.

She understood longing and loss, for she had felt them herself.

As a child, she had loved her teddies with a fierce devotion that blazed within her, bright and unquenchable. They were not toys to her. They were companions and confidants and friends.

One day, she noticed that older children no longer played with their teddies and adults did not sleep with them held tight in their arms. Many no longer kept them at all. The realisation struck her with such force that she wept.

She gathered her teddies and made them a promise. She would never stop loving them. She would never leave them behind. She would never forget them.

But the human world has a habit of teaching its children to leave daydreams behind. Imaginary companions fade away. Toys are packed into boxes and stories of dragons and faeries are dismissed as childish things. As the years passed, the fae-born girl learned that enchantment belonged to childhood and practicality to adulthood. She learned to value facts over fairy tales and certainty over mystery. Enchantment and magic faded to myth.

Yet somewhere beneath the practicalities and responsibilities of adulthood, the ember continued to smoulder.

The fae-girl gave birth to her own children, a girl and a boy. Something in the poetry of their smiles and the music of their laughter, in the solemn certainty of their belief, swirled in the air around a door that had swung shut long ago. An enchanted breeze drifted through a gap and breathed upon the ember, and it glowed brighter once more.

With their tiny hands, they held her heart and led her back through the door to the worlds she had almost forgotten. Beyond magical wardrobes and down rabbit holes. To lands where the mountains whispered, dragons guarded their hoards, and faeries lived as long as someone believed in them.

The years passed. Her children grew older. But the door remained ajar.

The ember glowed ever brighter and the pull of the fae world grew ever stronger. It found its way into her stories and her drawings and the things she made with her hands.

And so it was that when the fae-woman wandered through the woods, because her heart and mind dwelled between the worlds, she saw more than trees and woodland paths. She heard the soft tread of elves among the roots and glimpsed sprites darting through shafts of sunlight. She returned home with pockets full of treasures. A sliver of silver birch bark became a faerie door with a tiny window, a lichen-covered twig became a lintel and a tussock of moss a front step. With the ember, the fae-woman drew windows and ivy, gilded stars and a crescent moon onto a small wooden mushroom, and piece by piece, a faerie cottage emerged beneath her hands.

Because the ever-wise Universe had already begun to gather the people and stories needed to weave a thread between worlds, the little faerie cottage soon found its way across the sea to the dragon-child’s home.

There it waited beneath the light of the moon. And whenever the moon was full and silver light pooled around the little faerie door, a portal between the dragon world and the human world would open. If the dragon-girl left a letter for her dragon kin beside the mushroom and rang a tiny silver bell, the faeries would take the letter and slip through the portal to travel moonlit paths and deliver it to her dragon family. The faeries would return with letters from her dragon kin, bringing news of home and reminding her that she was so loved and would never be forgotten.

With every letter, the thread between worlds grew stronger.

And somewhere, on a small island across the sea and many miles away, a fae-woman smiled, because what could she want more for her tiny creation, than for it to become part of the enchanted story of a dragon-child searching for her family.

The dragon-girl is real, and so is her story. It was written by her human mama, , with imagination, love and a deep respect for the inner world of childhood. If you have not already read it, I hope you will.

Touching the Elephant

I Believe Her.

I was raised to be a believer. Growing up, that’s what we called ourselves. Believers. Believers in the authority of the Bible. Believers in salvation as the gateway to eternal life. Believers in Christ’s death as an atonement for our sins, and, most important of all, his bodily resurrection as the ultimate victory over death for— you guessed it— al…

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a month ago · 131 likes · 98 comments · Kendall Lamb

Touching the Elephant

I Still Believe Her

This piece is a follow up to one I wrote a month ago called I Believe Her. I’d encourage you to read that one first unless you are quite fond of reading things in an order that leaves you a little turned around, in which case, by all means, enjoy the twists and turns. I’m sure you’ll find your way. xo…

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8 days ago · 59 likes · 60 comments · Kendall Lamb

The dragon dream and the promise that was made are real moments from my childhood. Stirred back to life and made bright once more through the story of a dragon-child on the other side of the world.

Modern western society prizes the logical and the measurable. These things matter. They help us navigate the practical realities of adult life. Yet some of the most meaningful parts of being human resist measurement. How do you measure joy? How do you put a value on sending a little mushroom cottage across the ocean and watching a story flourish around it? How do you measure the distance between a seven-year-old child in the US in 2026 and a four-year-old girl in England in 1982?

As children, we are granted permission to inhabit enchanted worlds. We talk to dragons and with our teddies. We believe wardrobes open into other realms and that letters can travel between worlds. Somewhere along the way, many of us learn that adulthood requires us to leave such things behind. Yet the stories endure. Adults still return to Middle-earth. They still walk the halls of Hogwarts. They still wander through Narnia. The capacity for wonder does not disappear. Nor does the human need for it.

The pictures I draw look like they belong in children’s books. Yet they hang on my walls. They are the wallpaper on my phone and my computer. They have found homes with many other grown-ups too. The older I get, the more I suspect that the appeal of dragons and faeries and enchanted cottages has very little to do with age.

The pictures I draw have never really been for children. They are for the four-year-old within me who dreamed of dragons. For the child who promised her teddies she would never stop loving them.

They are for wonder, for enchantment.

For the children within all of us.

with love,

Georgie and the Dragon is available as an art print from Ink & Oddments2 and is one of the gifts annual paying subscribers can choose from my portfolio. The dragon illustrations are included in the welcome illustration bundle for new free subscribers, and the dragon dividers, created especially for this post, have been added to the Creative Adventurer’s Gallery for paying subscribers.

Little mushroom faerie cottages can also be found in Ink & Oddments alongside art prints, cards and other handmade things.

If you choose to support my work, thank you. Each subscription, print and oddment purchased grants me another moment of freedom to draw and write and make things, and perhaps weave a few more threads between the realms.

Subscribe now

I am sitting in the summerhouse with my feet in the washing up bowl. I have filled it with cold water and for good measure, added two ice blocks dug out from the back of the freezer.

My feet, ankles and lower legs have been so uncomfortably swollen for the last few days in this unseasonal heat, that they feel as if they are about to split open. I am horrified at them for this. I had thought that my kankle days were long behind me and I am incredibly resentful that they have gone from their normal state of moderate slimness to these bloated monstrosities that look like a pair of startled puffer fish.

I am thinking of rebranding them as ‘miss piggy’ ankles (thank you ), as that sounds much more glamorous, and hoping that this is not a sign of things to come as I head further into the depths of perimenopause. I am envious of the perfect ankle proportions of this beautiful lady who generously allowed me to photograph her as I walked along the River Itchen on Friday morning.

After the latest (and absolutely phenomenal) lesson with on her 6 month writing course, I have been considering my authorial voice.

When I look back through my writing and the essays and poems and stories that I love the most, they feel like my mind, my heart, my soul, spilling through my pen nib onto the page.

I believe them to be a clear reflection of my voice — I can feel my insides on the outside in them. But, every piece of writing that I share has been painstakingly crafted and carefully edited — read and re-read so many times that I could almost recite it by heart before I click publish.

It can take me days, weeks even, before I am happy enough with what I’ve written to share it.

But if I am to write this story from the wild place that I long to write, to find my voice in that story, I need a better method, I need to free myself from this painstaking process of ‘making well-shaped sentences’, and write more freely.

I write a lot that never sees the light of day — little snippets of things from my week that have inspired or irritated or amused me, reflections on things I’ve read, random thoughts that bubble up and spill over into the notes app on my phone, or my Substack drafts, or Word, or scribbled in my notebook or on a scrap of paper. I want to share them, because I enjoy writing to you. But I don’t because I feel that to do so, they need a little more crafting, they need to have some kind of structure, a beginning, a middle, and end. A point. A theme. A cadence. They need to be interesting. And by the time I’ve messed about with them to a point where I am happy they are ‘writerly’ enough, the moment has often passed.

So this is a small experiment.

To share the snippets, the scraps and fragments as they come, without polish or purpose, and see where I end up, in this moment.

With love,

Every good Substack publication should include in the About page, and for extra points, in a pinned “start here post”, a clear explanation of what the publication is about, what readers get from reading it, why they should subscribe, who the intended audience is, who the author is, how often articles are published…

There should be a clear call to action, perhaps testimonials too, buttons encouraging readers to subscribe now and upgrade for extras.

I have tried to do that, but I have found it somewhat challenging.

I have written and rewritten by bio, my publication description, my start here post, my about page, welcome page, a variety of email templates for a variety of purposes…

And while I’ve been somewhat happy with what I have written and rewritten each time I write and rewrite all of those things, I still don’t really know what I’m doing, and what this is.

What I do know, is that sometimes I write something that seems to come from a wild place. Somewhere that is both deep inside and far beyond, as if the words have risen from the fathomless depths of my soul and fallen, star bright, from some vast enchanted elsewhere.

Maybe that’s as good a place to start as any, to find out who I am, and what this is.

While I Was Drawing

I got lost. Between one pencil stroke and the next.

I sit at my desk in my studio. I look down, pick up my pencil and draw a single stroke. The edges of reality soften and blur. I can feel adventures and memories brush the back of my mind. Ideas and inspiration and endless worlds to explore and discover where the tip of my pencil touches the canvas.

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Let That Be Enough

I am lured in, lulled by opening words that are a siren song, that draw me into dangerous waters and onto jagged rocks that threaten to sink me. I am caught on the barbed hook of clickbait titles that rip a hole into my soul and let the monsters in.

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Word Witcher

Do the words pour forth from your soul as effortlessly as it seems? Rising on gentle updrafts of thought, as an eagle effortlessly rises on thermals, circling ever higher, the barest shift of muscle and tilt of feather lifting beauty to new pinnacles?

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What if there were faeries…

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What if there were faeries dancing in the woods?
What if there were goblins making mischief (as well they should!)
What if there were elves stealing berries for their puds?
What if there were pixies whispering secrets through their hoods?

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AI cannot do this

It cannot press pencil to paper with the weight of a heartbeat or capture the spark of a soul with hands of sinew, blood, and bone. It cannot lay flakes of graphite across canvas with fingertips alive with thousands of nerve endings, nor transform a blank page into black feathers with the pressure of a human touch.

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The Artistry of Nature

Step quietly. The gallery is open.

Her artwork is not framed in gold and hung upon a wall.
It is not spotlit in silence, captioned in italics, or roped off with signs that say do not touch.
It is not encased in glass, or auctioned to the highest bidder.

You will not find her sculptures on plinths,
Nor her textiles hemmed and stretched behind velvet cords.
No alarm will sound if you lean in close.

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Another Shell

“Another shell, really?”, he says.

Yes, but look, I say. Look. This one is different. Look how the colours are grey and black and white. And cream. And speckled sand.

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Stolen Fire

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She has not light to call her own
No cascade of fusion spilling brilliance 
Instead, stealing molten gold from the sun
Cooling it's blazing fire in her tranquil seas
Then returning it to us, silver-bright and cold

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Notice

There is a tree in a hedgerow along the M40 that has long since surrendered to death. Skeletal limbs stretch skyward, its bark pale and smooth like bone. It stands just before the north bound junction of the M42, marking the gateway of my journey between the adult I have become and the child I once was.

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Birds of Prayer

They rise, scattered and solitary, lifting from fields and rooftops, drops of ink against the fading light. At first, a trickle. In twos and threes, they coalesce, wingtips catching the last gold of the day as they are drawn inexorably toward their distant roost and rest.

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Storm Heralds

Clouds heap into the horizon, their bellies bruised with thunder. Azure fades to grey. Shards of lightning flicker in the distance, splintering the darkening sky.

Rising wind, warm and restless, gusts between the buildings, tugging at palm fronds and tumbling an escaped plastic bag high into the languid air.

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with love,

Forty eight years and nine months ago, a single cell carried the infinitesimal probability of me into existence. A blueprint unlike any before or since — the vessel for this peculiar consciousness.

At the same time imperceptibly and all of a sudden, my body changes, my face shifts, silver threads appear in my hair, stories gather in the wrinkles at the corners of my eyes and are etched in scars and stretch marks on my skin.

But who I am on the inside feels no different to how I felt at four, at fourteen, at forty.

The same “I” looks out from behind these eyes. I am every variation of me that has ever existed and within me lives every variation of me that will ever exist.

When I was newly initiated into the corporate world, I became enamoured of the psychometric tests that seemed to explain who I was in neat combinations of letters and coloured diagrams.

The feeling of recognition they offered and the comforting sense of being understood found me subtly morphing my behaviour towards the descriptions that aligned most closely to my corporate ambitions.

For someone who had spent a childhood feeling out of step with everyone around me, there was reassurance in discovering frameworks that appeared to make me legible. Perhaps even well suited to the world I had entered.

But beneath the certainty there was disquiet. Other versions of me that also felt true. Confusion at how I could be analytical and imaginative, logical and intuitive, structured and impulsive. As if some deeper part of me was too mercurial, too contradictory to align within binary frameworks and predictable logic.

No matter how accomplished I am, how much expertise I have, or how far my career progresses, the disquiet only deepens.

Lately, it has started to irritate me — this presumption that we are explicable, and the judgements made on the basis of one ‘personality type’ or another. As though we are fixed coordinates rather than shifting constellations.

The very dear recently introduced me to the work and philosophy of the brilliant Jill Bolte Taylor.

Jill’s framework1 is more expansive in the way it allows for complexity and contradiction within a single consciousness.

We are profoundly situational beings. Different environments, experiences and emotional states bring different aspects of us to the surface.

But the hidden parts do not cease to exist because they are temporarily submerged.

Only what is visible changes.

Analytical and imaginative, logical and intuitive, structured and impulsive.

I suspect many of us contain contradictions that make perfect sense internally and far less sense when flattened to fit labels and categories.

And I think we all feel the pressure to remain coherent and recognisable. To choose one lane. One identity. One version of self that can be easily explained to the world.

But human beings have always been more complicated than that.

Accountant and artist. Amateur and professional. Illustrator, poet, storyteller, photographer, writer.

All are true. All are me.

Polymorph.

April and May have been busy months.

Earlier in April I took my first solo trip to London in many years to attend the book launch for Fallout by , a book that inhabits the complicated spaces of conflict and identity.

I spent the afternoon walking through the city centre in glorious spring sunshine — Trafalgar Square, Horse Guards, St James’s Park, Westminster Abbey and Parliament Square — before meeting Chloe and David and walking together to the London Review Bookshop.

I had made a tiny copy of Fallout as a gift for Eleanor and it was a delight to finally hold the real book in my hands.

Later in April, while Mr P and the children were at Wembley for the FA Cup semi-final, I spent a solitary day exploring Corfe Castle and village.

I wandered beside the river, climbed through the ruins and followed the footpaths into the hills behind the castle while skylarks sang overhead and stonechats chattering from the bushes.

The freedom to linger in the shops, galleries and hidden corners without anybody getting bored or hurrying me along was a rare luxury.

Last week I visited the Made Winchester Craft and Design Festival at Winchester Cathedral. The cathedral is an extraordinary setting for a craft festival. Walking slowly through the stalls and cloisters, surrounded by exceptional craftsmanship, stone, wood, glass, paper, silver, felt almost meditative.

There are places where centuries seem to gather heavy in the air. Standing in the doorway of the Morley Library, the smell of parchment, leather, wood, wax and stone felt almost tangible. Looking upward into the vast vaulted nave felt like standing within the ribcage of an enormous sleeping beast.

Yesterday I bought every piece of olivewood I could find. The patterns in the grain are endlessly full of stories and possibilities and I’m not sure when I will find more. I also came home with olive wood spoons and coasters to decorate and some beautiful artificial flowers for a summer wreath.

I have finally added new pieces to Ink and Oddments2, including some of my larger olivewood artworks. I would quite happily keep them here with me, and will be sorry and pleased in equal measure when they find their way to new homes.

On a practical level, I am also running out of space in the studio and saving for a new pyrography machine. Every purchase from Ink and Oddments and every new paying subscription to While I Was Drawing genuinely helps.

I love making and sharing my creative adventures with you, and I especially love the thought that some of my artwork will travel to the homes and lives of those I am connected to here by threads far stronger than the nebulous ether of algorithms and Etsy ads.

Thankfully, saved me from the costly discovery that I had accidentally listed a piece for 35p instead of £35. I was very happy to instead gift it to Julie as her annual subscription renews in May.

With wishes for endless inspiration,

There are butterflies fluttering in my lungs and muscles from cheekbone to mouth contract, lifting my lips into a smile.

My heart dancing, inspiration spills a silvery cascade of anticipation through my veins and stories gather, luminous, waiting to be told.

Some stories are told with words on a page, some through the tip of a paintbrush, the curve of a lens, or notes on a stave.

Some are shaped from fragments and textures and found things, or drawn to life line by careful line.

Some stories are written with fire, burned into wood with slow deliberate marks and some are stitched and glued and painted into being.

They weave their magic through acorn faerie cottages suspended from lichen-encrusted twigs.

A whale shark swims through spiralling galaxies and stories swirl in its wake, their undertow etched in olive-wood grain.

They tangle and twist beneath the eaves of mossy roofs, where wide-eyed elves listen for their whispers.

The March Hare’s eye gleams with tales of starlit nights and open fields, watchful and still.

They are silk-smooth olive wood beneath your fingertips and the lingering scent of woodsmoke in the air. They are a flicker of gold catching the light. Brush them through your hair, hold them in your palm and let them settle into the quiet spaces of your day.

They are stories told for you alone, never quite the same in the retelling, carrying tiny pieces of my soul, rippling outward to become part of the joy that lives in others’ lives.

With wishes for endless inspiration,

P.S. some of the pieces featured here, along with others, will be released on 1st May at 7pm BST via my Ink and Oddments shop.

I capture the outline of her face. A tiny smile, a little upturned nose. Eyes closed. Hair drifting.

At first she wears a dress with her arms stretched behind her. Her feet pointed downward and slightly behind, as if she is floating. But no, that doesn’t work.

Her hands fold lightly over her heart. The dress is replaced by dungarees. She stands straight with her tiny bare feet flat on the ground.

Yes.

The background comes alive with blues and greens and tiny white dust motes.

The music is next. A treble clef and five lines of a stave expand and curl away from her — semibreves and quavers, crotchets and minims — the notes pour forth from her heart.

I begin with pale pink for her face. But again - no. That doesn’t work. She is a lighted soul. I fill her outline with soft white mist.

I draw her hair. It wisps and drifts from my pencil onto the canvas. Pale and glowing layers like shining strands of gossamer. I sketch light onto her skin and dungarees.

Radiance from the stars that are yet to appear lights her face and her little nose. A touch of candyfloss pink luminescence on her cheek.

And here are the stars.

She is creativity, spun from iridescent strands of imagination.

She was with me making mud pies and moss gardens and perfume from rose petals, pressing flowers and crafting homemade cards to send to family and friends.

As I learned to play the clarinet and the flute, the time I built a matchstick model of a vintage bus and when my sister and I recorded episodes of a kids radio show that we called Dogs Tales that no one heard but us, she was there.

She guided my hands as I made little people and animals from polymer clay, stitched clothes for my dolls and myself, as I knitted and crocheted, carved decoy ducks from wood, created intricate marquetry pictures, and drew, and drew and drew.

She has been there from the very first time I discovered the joy of creativity. At my side through every discovery, every experiment, through every success and every failure. She is with me still, when each beautiful creation from another soul touches my heart.

I drew Eirlys in September 2023.

She coalesced from a nebulous collection of half ideas as I searched for a way to tell the story of how creativity makes me feel.

She came from the Wild Place and she has found her way into the story that I am writing.

I have her on my phone and she is available to download from the Creative Adventurer’s1 Gallery.

Eirlys is also available as a print for annual paying Creative Adventurer subscribers, if you’d like her to keep you company too.

With wishes for endless inspiration,

I met at Gladstone’s Library on the first day of Kit de Waal’s six-month writing course a couple of weeks ago. Sixteen writers gathered to listen, learn, and write together. Ju and I sat beside each other for the whole day.

Afterwards I subscribed to Ju’s Substack and discovered the astonishing breadth of her creativity: her artwork, writing, music, and her own intricate pyrography.

Through Ju’s work I have begun to glimpse the contours of a remarkable creative life, and the experiences that have shaped it. I am very glad to be able to share some of that with you here in her words and artwork.

Creativity weaves threads between us. Through art, writing, music and making we reveal whole worlds to one another. We find one another in places that are fathoms deep.

Sometimes I paint because the image that comes out of my fingers solidifies something in the memory, recaptures a moment. Sometimes I compose a song because the message it sends is one that isn’t possible to deliver in person anymore. Sometimes I write words because the world those words inhabit are created within the solace of my own head, away from the distraction of real life. Painting, drawing, music, writing, they are all elements that enable me to communicate what gets mashed up in overwhelm when spoken. Speaking involves rehearsal, eye contact, knowing when to enter and when to leave a conversation, reading the signals, delivering the answers, twisting myself into knots. Painting and songwriting as art forms are transient for me. Improvised. They can only be painted once. The song can only be played the same just once. I have no understanding of music, notes, sight reading, composition. Each piano chord is a shape that I imagine, like the cornice of a beautiful ceiling. Those shapes accumulate and invent themselves and the words and the melody arrive together, never separate. I cannot physically play the same song twice. I forget where fingers laid and where notes landed as soon as I have played them, I record them and there they stay like a stubborn bull in a field. But words, words have a dance to them, they change, they join up like puzzles, they merge into imagery that goes deeper into the heart of what it is for me to be human, there is freedom in that, revisiting, reworking, re-writing, re-inventing. Writing is a life force.

This chalk pastel drawing; Terraces Near the Pot Banks, sits alongside a song written for my mum when she was diagnosed with Parkinson’s related dementia. It was my birthday. I went to the shop and purchased a card, ‘to my daughter’. I asked a friend to show it to her, offer her a pen where she could make a mark, put a kiss. I wrapped up a little gift of some soap with some pretty paper and I left it on her table. In the morning I lifted it gently, read my name on the envelope and thanked my mum for my beautiful gift. Her smile was worth a thousand birthdays. This song was trying to will her to stay, reminding her of the places we had been, the people, the friends, the love. I guess that this was as much a prayer as it was a piece of art. Trying to hold onto her when she was losing the capacity to hold me back.

Over the years I have seen such incredibly beautiful examples of times when the arts have cut through. The joy of a young woman with profound disabilities seeing a paint mark that she had made incorporated, prime place, into a mural. A young man with learning disabilities and no spoken words recognising the song that his father had played him when it came on the radio, before he was left at the long-stay hospital. The tears he cried were tears of loss and separation, from someone historically and inaccurately labelled in medical notes as ‘unable to communicate’. A stunning car of match sticks, made with love by a dad for his child as he sat in his prison cell. Creating a song with a group of people who each contributed a word or a vocal sound or the bash of a drum or the crash of a cymbal and that song sounding like a symphony, the choirs joy one of the most beautiful sights I have ever witnessed.

The arts cut through, level things out, hold no boundaries and yet access to them is often a luxury not afforded to so many. I have sat in London galleries, private viewing, near to my own work, cross legged, free wine in hand, listening to the critics and the dignitaries disseminate what ‘He’ the artist set out to achieve and why. When the only reason for those colours was that they were the only tubes I had left and the sweeping expressions to the right were definitely not to do with my political ideology (as professed by the visiting Tory minister in the then Thatcher government), but the last eeked out ochre from the palette, picked up on my palm and slapped across the canvas so as not to waste it. Nothing is wasted in art, nothing. We all see what we want to see. We can find what we are looking for within the worlds we create, the music we play, the words that we write. We all have a contribution to make. We are all just looking for home. I have found mine.

Thank you, Ju, for sharing your art, music and words with us, and for this beautiful reflection on the ways creativity connects us beyond language — to memory, to place, to the people we love.

You can find more of Ju’s writing and artwork here. I’ve been very moved by Ju’s work and I’m grateful to have met. I’m looking forward to meeting again for the next instalment of Kit’s course.

Ju Blencowe

Time to take the dust sheets off, come out of hiding and just get on with it....writer in progress who paints and sings abit

With wishes for endless inspiration,

Worms squirm in my belly and wriggle up into my throat. They knot and coil, tightening into a lump as I stare at the blinking cursor. I try to find words that don’t taste awkward in my mouth, that won’t sour my stomach as I swallow them down.

I feel a little sick. I open a new tab and close it again. I draft a sentence and delete it. Draft another. Delete that too.

I know the language. It is everywhere.

Act now don’t wait only a few left clock’s ticking don’t miss your chance get it before it’s gone…

I do not want to press on a bruise or manufacture a lack. I do not want to create urgency where none exists or suggest that you need something you do not need. I do not want to stand in the middle of the room jangling my work like loose change, waiting for applause.

And because this is the language I see everywhere, I find myself not knowing how to speak at all.

The cursor blinks and the worms twist through their endless conundrum.

It’s not about the money…

I would rather give my art away than contort my brain into knots trying to offer it for sale without feeling as though I’m selling out.

As soon as my thoughts stray from where will the adventure lead next to what should I make that someone might buy, my insides rebel.

And so I remind myself: it’s not about the money.

I write, I draw, I create for joy alone. I follow the thread of curiosity wherever it leads, for its own sake.

And yet, I still dream. I still hope. I still wish for more time, more space, more days to draw, to write, to create.

Money may not be the reason, but it does matter.

Because it is time.

Another moment of creative freedom. A doorway to the next adventure.

And so to the worms I return.

Perhaps there is another language, different words, that are neither persuasion nor performance, but invitation.

I wrote this, I drew this, I made this — and I love it. I am sharing it because I think you might love it too. Maybe enough to want it in your home, in your life, in your hands.

The knots loosen and the worms settle…

With wishes for endless inspiration,

If you would like to support this creative adventure, you can buy a handmade gift from my Etsy Shop, Ink and Oddments, or upgrade to a paying subscription and get access to the Creative Adventurer’s Gallery.

For anyone choosing an annual paid subscription I would also love to send you an art print from my collection, as a thank you for gifting my creativity another moment of freedom to explore and create.

And none more so than this, created by . A picture book with a difference, pages glued and carved, ink and watercolour transforming paper into trees and flowers, sleepy foxes and rabbits peeping from their burrows.

Sally shared a glimpse in Notes in January, doing what she loves — working small, in the detail, creating an altered book for her daughter.

I was enchanted, and I am sure that you will be too.

I have always loved to draw, paint, garden, make books and used to create miniature model gardens from plasticine! My mum was a seamstress and taught me to knit, crochet and sew from about four years of age and my dad could turn his hand to making and repairing anything as well as a part time sign writer, using oils and gold leaf to create beautiful signs. They both missed their true vocations but it meant that I had such a variety of skills to take forward with me into an art career.

I achieved the required grades for art college but I had also been advised to apply for an apprenticeship in a drawing office just in case I never got into art college. Both letters arrived on the same day in 1974. The job offered £7 a week and meant I could support my family who were poor. I was also offered a place at art college. I chose the job. I do not regret choosing employment over art college, but I have often wondered how different my life might have been had I followed my true heart.

Part of my training as a draughts person in the early years was to be very precise and accurate, and that suited my love of drawing and detail. Even though I quickly climbed the corporate ladder in engineering and became a chartered engineer and college lecturer, I constantly dreamed of one day getting to art college and even took some evening classes in graphic design. As time passed, the 15-year-old girl’s dream of making art for a living became buried.

The plan to retire to Spain ten years ago was meant to fulfil my dream of being able to create art full-time. Again, life throws you curveballs and, let’s just say, things went badly wrong after only 18 months, and creativity had no place in my new world. I had to once more get a job and care for my sick husband. As he became well again just over two years ago and things improved financially, I have had the headspace to create once more.

As well as writing, I thought I wanted to earn a small income from my art, and so I retrained once more through online courses and learned whatever new tech I could find. I researched all the art supplies that were out there and found the iPad for making lots of digital art. I also filled journals and sketchbooks with drawing and painting. I took free art courses from abstract painting to pattern design to children’s books. I entered art challenges and followed trends. I was desperately looking for my ‘style’ as it is said you must have one to be successful, and I guess I thought art college would have taught me.

However, as I reviewed 2025, I realised I had spent so much time learning so many different areas of creativity and was trying to fit into moulds that were not what I truly loved. One day I was looking through the thousands of photos on my phone for something, and what struck me was that I kept stopping to look at certain photos of artwork I’d done over the last few years. It occurred to me they were all the same type of artwork, fine illustration.

I had seen some altered books on YouTube when my husband was ill and instantly fell in love with them. I remembered them being made from cheap sketchbooks or charity shop books, so I thought I could do that and it wouldn’t matter if I messed up. I watched videos over and over to see what they did. It wasn’t a course, just watching the films of processes.

Our daughter has always been my best friend and rock, especially during the challenging times recently. She has a love of beautiful, handmade things that she finds in artisan shops in the UK. She buys me wonderful small gifts. I wanted to give her a similar, handmade gift for her birthday, which I could not buy here, or afford to buy online, and I thought I would try to make her my first altered book. Once I had glued the book, the pencil sketches literally poured out of me for the idea. It is based on her love of nature and growing flowers in her garden, like poppies and foxgloves, and also a fox that had recently come into her life. It was as if my 15-year-old self had truly been resurrected!

As I inked, carved, and coloured the book, I could hardly sleep without thinking about it until it was finished. When it was finished, I felt so proud that I had done it for her but also to prove to me, now at the other end of my life, that I still had those skills and creativity. I realised that making art is not about thinking how you can make money or following trends. It is about making art with love for people you love or know will love your art. Because when you do that, the art just follows. I have rarely shared my work before and have been blown away by the reaction to this tiny work of art here. Some people have even asked if they could buy one or if I take orders! My daughter has yet to see her book, but I am very hopeful she will love it too. And I have already started another one.

Thank you, Sally, for sharing this glimpse into the art of altered books. After seeing Sally’s book, I fell deep down the rabbit hole and have been daydreaming of my own — thinking about which forgotten volume I might glue and what small world I might carve into its pages.

It’s on my creative bucket list!

You can find Sally at Ten of Cups on Substack, where she’s sharing more of her writing and art from her mountain home in southern Spain…

Ten of Cups

The Ten of Cups is a thought-provoking, personal publication exploring life through science, beliefs, curiosity and wonder in order to process the Whys.

By Sally Jupe

and @marksandmotifs on Instagram…

With wishes for endless inspiration,

Four uncomplicated words, framing a simple question with an answer that is anything but.

My first answer: I don’t know, many things.

I want to start work on the illustrations for our next book. I want to crochet another rainbow jellyfish, needlefelt some tiny dogs, decorate more little wooden mushrooms, and create more tiny hand-made notebooks to fill with my favourite quotes. I want to make a shell mobile and knit some socks and paint with watercolour and draw with charcoal and sculpt a wire fairy.

I want to finish Archive of Stone and write a poem about the silver birch outside my window and I want to finish all the half written essays accumulating in my drafts.

I wanted to do ’s 6-month writing course, but it wasn’t to be (this time, at least).

Then I read this:

Writing Kit

Own it.

When I was asked in the first class of my creative writing MA, what I wanted from the course, I said that I wanted to see my book on the 3 for 2 table in Waterstones. Everyone else said something like ‘I want to learn how to write dialogue’ or ‘I want to finish my novel.’ I assumed I had mastered dialogue, written the novel, found an agent, been accep…

Read more

5 months ago · 72 likes · 11 comments · Kit de Waal

I always tell my students to be honest about what they want… There is nothing wrong with aiming high, nothing wrong with ambition and the self-belief that comes from many hours of study, learning the craft, taking your writing seriously. The journey… might be long and might never happen but if [it’s] what you want, say it, own it and go for it.

Kit de Waal

Kit wanted to see her book on the 3 for 2 table in Waterstones.

wants to win the Booker Prize.

So, what do I want?

What do I really want?

I want many things, but there’s something else.

Something that I want that I have barely admitted even to myself. It is the reason I wanted to do Kit’s writing course.

And it started with a girl.

I drew Esmerelda in January 2023 without fully understanding who she was.

In September 2023, I drew Eirlys, and in the act of writing about her, she revealed her meaning to me — and with it, the beginnings of a shared world.

On 11 February 2024, standing beneath the Ukrainian Ironbelly at the Warner Bros. Studio Tour in London, the shape of what I wanted began to surface — to create a world and a story with that same richness, coherence, and imaginative depth.

A world and story I could love, as I have loved Harry Potter.

We flew to Spain on holiday the next day. Each night, as I lay waiting for sleep, the world of Esmerelda and Eirlys grew brighter and more defined.

On our final morning, I looked down from the balcony and watched a little girl dancing along the curved walkway above the water, lost in her imagination.

And from that wild place, the story began to unfold.

There is a magic in this world. But it is not the magic of wizards and wands, of spells and sorcery.

It is wild and powerful. Without it there would be no stories, no art or music. We would not dance or sing or make things.

It is a magic created in the space where pencil lines transform into art, where air vibrates into music, where movement becomes dance, where words gather into stories.

This is what I want.

With wishes for endless inspiration,

It’s a conversation about creativity and money, motivation and ambition, with and .

I started reading Eleanor’s work when she serialised her book Fallout through her Substack, The Literary Obsessive, and then A Memoir in 65 Postcards & The Recovery Diaries — a format that I have grown to love. The anticipation between chapters, the excitement of what comes next, combined with Eleanor’s unflinching writing, is electrifying.

I love David’s Substack, Sparks from Culture, for different reasons. He writes thoughtful personal essays about wealth and privilege, family, status, and identity, with an openness that invites engagement and extends into wider conversations in the comments.

After listening to a conversation between Eleanor and David about generational wealth, I was curious about what motivates them in their writing when it’s not about the money.

So, having been quite certain that Substack Live was something I would never do, last Friday I found myself hosting a live conversation with Eleanor and David. I tried to be cool about it, but honestly I was so excited…

We talked about how it’s not about the money for us, but how the money still matters to each of us. About how even small amounts of money can carry disproportionate emotional and psychological weight, and about how paid subscriptions and book sales are about so much more than money.

We talked about legitimacy and identity — what it means to call yourself a writer or an artist when creativity exists alongside other forms of work.

We talked about motivation: what keeps us writing and making when money isn’t the main incentive.

We talked about work, play, and pressure, and we talked about time and constraint — children, jobs, limited hours, and the ways restriction can sharpen intention.

We talked about brilliant writing and writers here on Substack (including and ) and about how reading work of that quality raises the bar. About how it makes writing feel harder, but also makes us want to be better, to keep learning, and to take the work seriously.

We talked about support, structure and learning, about ’s writing course and the idea that even experienced writers remain students of the craft.

It was such an enjoyable conversation, thank you so much to , , , , , and so many others for watching live. There were over 100 people tuned in by the end — which was both scary and brilliant.

It took me a while to come down from the jittery high afterwards, and I was still replaying fragments of the conversation in my head days later…

I applied for the bursary for Kit’s course that Eleanor mentioned, and although the deadline had already passed and I wasn’t successful, the process made me more certain than ever, that writing (as well as everything else I do creatively) is work that I will continue with. And that the story I want to write — that I mentioned briefly in our conversation — I will write, regardless.

Just because creativity.

With wishes for Endless inspiration,

If you would like to support this creative adventure, you can buy a handmade gift from my Etsy Shop, Ink and Oddments, or upgrade to a paying subscription.

For anyone choosing an annual paid subscription I would love to send you an art print from my collection, as a thank you for gifting my creativity another moment of freedom to explore and create, for joy alone.

Get more from Emily Charlotte Powell in the Substack app

Available for iOS and Android

Get the app

Delicate toadstools that hide in the trees
Dewdrops that sparkle, adorning dead leaves
Spiderweb garlands and snowy white wings
These are a few of my favourite things.

Small faerie bonnets in garlands of green
White and gold berries the rain has washed clean
Mossy green tendrils where bright raindrops cling
These are a few of my favourite things.

Pixie cups climbing up gateposts of old
Tiny red fungi that slowly unfold
Engravings of beetles where new life begins
These are a few of my favourite things

Rusty old teapots that hang from the trees
Soft purple sea thrift that sways in the breeze
Sunlight on bindweed, bees' delicate wings
These are a few of my favourite things.

Ladybird sleeping hid deep in the nettles
Seafoam and driftwood and buttercup petals
Shells stacked like prayers that the sea gently sings
These are a few of my favourite things

Sunrises and sunsets and frost covered farms
Stone walls, cathedrals and tumbledown barns
The circle of seasons, of sleep and of wakings
These are a few of my favourite things

Unfurling ferns, a caterpillar that crawls
Bluebells and blossoms, a feather that falls
Sunflowers golden with pollen dustings
These are a few of my favourite things

When the world feels close to breaking
And my heart is sad
I simply remember my favourite things
And then I don’t feel so bad

After the sparkling chaos of December, I delight in the gentle relief of returning to winter’s slower pace through January — moss vivid in the rain, frost spinning lace on dead leaves and the silhouettes of skeletal trees in the fog. There is so much to love in this stillness.

Here begins another dance through the seasons, wandering, wondering, spellbound. Gathering tiny splendours through my lens and sharing them with you in the Creative Explorer’s Gallery.

I’ve added new photographs from December, and I’ll continue to add more as the seasons shift and I wander my way through the year ahead.

I hope the gallery brings you a little spark of wonder, and that you find your own favourite things in the turning of the seasons to come.

I would be delighted to see what you choose to do with them, and if you would like to tag me and link back to my Substack, I’ll happily reshare your creativity.

With wishes for endless inspiration,

If you would like to support this creative adventure, you can buy a handmade gift from my Etsy Shop, Ink and Oddments, or upgrade to a paying subscription.

For anyone choosing an annual paid subscription I would love to gift you an art print from my collection, as a thank you for gifting my creativity another moment of freedom to explore and create, for joy alone.

P.S. In a couple of hours, I am hosting a Substack Live with and — Because Creativity - it’s not about the money. I’d love it if you would join us!

(I’m trying to be cool about it, but honestly, I’m so excited…)

Emily’s Desk
The Studio
WIWD HQ
England

28th December 2025

My dear friends,

There is magic in the air, and the teacup and I are positively brimming with excitement at the happenings this month. Emily continues to be somewhat distracted by “art that begins with an ember1”, and so this week I have taken it upon myself to write to you, a letter about letters — and the small enchantments they cast across space and time.

Now, you might be thinking — of course there is magic in the air. Isn’t this supposed to be the most wonderful time of the year? The teacup certainly seems to think so. I’m not entirely convinced. I’ve always felt that wonder resists being pinned to a calendar.

If you look carefully enough, I suspect you’ll find that magic is everywhere, quietly going about its business. It isn’t confined to carols or candles. And this month, a particularly fine sprinkling of it arrived in the form of a letter — a real, proper paper letter — fluttering all the way from the other side of the world like a tiny, determined migratory bird.

You may remember that when we were first introduced, Emily kindly indulged my growing fondness for correspondence and shared my offer to write letters (the sort that arrive through the door and require stamps). It was in response to this that I received the most delightful message from in Tasmania (Tasmania!) asking if I might send her a letter, and enquiring after my favourite hobbies.

I cannot tell you how perfect it felt that my very first letter would travel over 10,000 miles, to a place of devils and angels and daffodils, of forests and wild skies and wonder.

And so, after a moment’s consideration and the making of a most important stamp, I wrote…

Dear Daffodil,

What a joy to hear from you all the way from Tasmania! The name alone makes me feel like I’ve just unwrapped a secret map and spotted an island of wonders tucked away at the bottom of the world. I’ve never been, but I once read about a forest there where the trees are older than stories, and the air smells like eucalyptus and mystery. Is that true? I do hope so.

You asked me about my favourite hobbies, and I had to ask the teacup for help in choosing — she’s very opinionated. After some deep stirring and one biscuit too many, we decided that storytelling is my very favourite. Especially stories shared in snug corners with good listeners (and you sound like a very good listener indeed).

I also like collecting odd buttons, watching clouds from the windowsill, and trying to learn the languages of birds. Some of them are very chatty. Others prefer to whistle softly and pretend I’m not there.

I should also tell you, I’m quite the mushroom hunter. Of course, I don’t eat them, I prefer to admire them from a respectful distance. Some of them look like they might be plotting.

I also collect stamps — partly for the pretty pictures, but mostly for the tiny stories they carry on their backs, like well-travelled beetles. And speaking of beetles, I find insects absolutely fascinating. I’ve become something of a connoisseur, really — not in the gobbling-up sense, you understand (though I am a frog) — more in the way a tea taster appreciates a fine oolong. Some beetles are spicy, ants have a zingy tang, and woodlice are rather nutty if you’re into that sort of thing. But mostly, I marvel at how industrious they are — always sorting, sweeping, and scurrying.

What about you, dear Daffodil? Do you have a hobby you love? Something that makes your fingertips fizz with excitement or your toes feel like dancing?

Sending you a hug wrapped in ribbon and folded inside this envelope,

Much love, your friend from up top,

Floella 🪄

P.S. If you ever see a Tasmanian Pademelon, please give it my regards. I hear they’re quite shy, but very good at keeping secrets.

And oh… what a letter returned.

Daffodil wrote back on the most beautiful stationery, adorned with woodland fungi wearing their very best hats in an envelope that itself is a work of art. Tucked inside was picture of one of my cousins (embroidered, I think) and a little bundle of stamps — a gift chosen with such thoughtfulness. I had to sit down with a fresh cup of tea to admire them properly. Some were adorned with a wonderful variety of mushrooms, others with different marvels: a blue mountains water skink, a leafy sea dragon, fringe lilies, swamp daisies, white headed pigeons and even a duck-billed platypus. Each one a pocket-sized doorway to delight…

Dear Floella,

Thank you so much for your delightful letter which arrived safely in Tasmania. It was a joy to read.

I am now recovering from a broken wrist and all is going will with the plaster cast being off for a while now. I got referred to a physio for getting things back in action.

I hope all is well with you. Over here it is spring and we are only now getting some milder days but there has been plenty of rain… And that is an understatement.

I have been crafting over the weeks and am enjoying junk journaling, embroidery, eco-dying and knitting which has been very good. The 2 knitting projects are simple blankets so nothing too mind boggling.

In the garden here in North West Tassie we are seeing our seedlings pop up — tomato/ zucchini/ capsicum/ chilli/ cucumber and we have recently planted strawberries. We also have raspberry bushes which were inherited from the previous owners. They are very fruitful and we usually harvest at Christmas and New Year. Everything we grow needs protection from the wildlife — pademelons/ possums/ rabbits etc so our veg, special roses, poppies and dahlia are situated in a totally enclosed garden with raised beds. Lots of bees out and about in our part of paradise.

We have two chickens (know as chooks here). They have a lovely pen my husband built with outdoor area for scratching/ dust bowls etc. We get an egg a day as we think one of them is no longer laying. The other night we spotted on our outdoor camera a Tasmanian Devil near the pen but it cannot get in as they are locked up at night but I think the devils prefer deceased beasts to stack on anyway!

It was good to read of your story telling, insect fascination, stamp and button collecting. I hope you are enjoying your autumn days in your neck of the woods.

Please pass on my best wishes to Emily Charlotte and wishing you all a peaceful remainder of 2025.

With love and hugs, Daffodil Angel xxx

So here we are… proof, if any were needed, that magic know how to find its way.

Across oceans. Across seasons. Across wild skies and quiet desks.

The stamps are being admired daily. The picture of my cousin has been introduced to the teacup. And somewhere between Tasmania and my blotter, the small enchantments continue to ripple outward.

Which feels, to me, like exactly how the world is meant to work.

With all my love,

P.S. If you’d like a letter, you’re most welcome to send me a message with a question, to share something you’ve noticed, or simply request a story from my corner of the world. All I needs is your name, your postal address, and a little time to find just the right stamp….

Message Floella

Since I’ll be writing from within the pages of While I Was Drawing, the letters I send will sometimes be shared here — so you’ll need to be happy for yours to be included too. And, as a small kindness, I ask only that you subscribe (for free!) to While I Was Drawing in return. It helps Emily know her work is valued, and allows this little exchange of letters to keep fluttering to distant corners of the world.

Subscribe now

It has been weeks since I last wrote.

Weeks since thoughts spilling sideways — looping, tangling, transforming — travelling from mind and heart and soul, through fingertips, to dance across my keyboard and blink into pixels, sent out into the world.

Technically, I have written every day, but only as function of necessary communication. Not as art.

There are reasons.

Because this time of year accelerates, demands flashing past like a bullet train, and creativity waits on the platform.

Because I do not want this space to be filled with the functional or the technical.

And because what time I have had to spare, has been almost entirely claimed by something else….

The time will come when I am done. When I am ready for the next creative adventure. But for now, the obsession persists.

With wishes for endless inspiration,

If you would like to support this creative adventure, you can buy our book, Is Aunt Moll from the North Pole, a handmade gift from my Etsy Shop, Ink and Oddments, or upgrade to a paying subscription.

For anyone choosing an annual paid subscription in December, I would love to gift you a copy of our book and a print from my collection, as a thank you for gifting my creativity another moment of freedom to explore and create, for joy alone.

I am lured in, lulled by opening words that are a siren song, that draw me into dangerous waters and onto jagged rocks that threaten to sink me. I am caught on the barbed hook of clickbait titles that rip a hole into my soul and let the monsters in.

Between their words, I read my own failure. Behind them I see how I am not enough. Beneath them I feel my joy being washed away.

The windmills of my mind are set spinning faster and faster. Hustle hustle, whisper the blades. More more, grind the gears. Monetise, measure, optimise, grow grow grow.

Take this place, they say, these friendships, this community, your art and humanity, and exploit the heart out of it and worship at the alter of capitalism, turn creativity into a competition, community into data, turn art into content, and worth into metrics and beauty into a commodity.

And the monsters hiss in my ear as they dig their claws into the soft, yielding vulnerability of my desire. The part of me that longs for my words to be read, to matter, to make a difference, for my art to be seen and loved, for a life filled with creativity unbound, writhes in pain.

You’ll get left behind, they say. You’ll get drowned out in the noise. You much niche, you must be consistent, you must post across every platform, you must have a daily practice, you must sell, sell, sell.

Or don’t you really want it? Maybe you’re just not good enough, not committed enough, not clever enough, not hardworking enough.

Maybe you’re lazy.

Maybe you are just not enough.

But something else stirs. A faint luminescing glow, a gentle effervescence, a breath of warmth, an exhale. I am not a brand. I do not fit in a niche. My art is not content. My writing is not a nurture sequence or a sales funnel or a conversion tactic.

I am capricious and contradictory. I am mercurial and messy. I want to write poetry and decorate tiny mushrooms and make handmade notebooks. I want to paint and play music, illustrate magical stories and draw birds and butterflies and photograph dewdrops and daisies.

And of course I want my stories to be read and my art to be seen. I want to send you our gorgeous book to delight your little ones with festive mystery and magic.

I want Nox to keep you company when the dark presses close and remind you that the stars can only be seen in the depths of the night.

I want the Birds of Prayer to fly with stories of hope, humanity and kindness to your heart.

I want my creations to carry tiny pieces of my soul rippling out to become a part of the joy that lives in other’s lives.

But not for fame or fortune and not if the price tears the soul out of the things that I love, not if the machine of more demands their softness as sacrifice.

I choose, deliberately, stubbornly, to step away from capitalist definitions of success that demand everything be monetised. You cannot hustle your way to meaning. There is no sales funnel for wonder. There is no growth hack for joy.

And so, if you, like me, have been reading words lately that tell you that you must do more, post more, sell more, grow or disappear, that you are not enough, then this is for you.

When the words take their time, give them the hours, days, weeks, years that they need and send them into the world filled with every ounce of beauty and feeling that you can muster, and let that be enough.

When they come freely and lightly and in the moment, gift them into the world lightly and freely without a second thought, and let that be enough.

When your heart aches to stich and sew, to felt and crochet, take what is fabric and thread, yarn and fibre and transform it into softness and love and comfort and send it into the world, trusting that its warmth will be felt, and let that be enough.

When your hands long to shape and mould, to paint and sketch, caress life into clay, brush joy onto canvas, press longing into paper, and release it with all the wonder you carry within, and let that be enough.

when your soul longs to be filled with music, raise your voice, breathe steady and true, dance your fingers across the keys, let the vibrations form songs that beat as your heart and send them soaring into the air, carried by breath and spirit, and let that be enough.

And when all you have is your presence, quiet, steady, and true, offer it gently to the world, knowing that being here, fully and wholeheartedly, is always enough.

With wishes for endless inspiration,

I do not know your name
I do not know your face
I do not know what day you died
Nor where your end took place

I think that you were scared
I hope you weren’t alone
I guess you had a family
And wanted to go home

I know you had no choice
I know that you were brave
I know that you were far too young
To lay down in your grave

I honour you today
I hold you in my mind
I think of all you sacrificed
For those you left behind

I thank you for my life
Though strangers we may be
I promise to remember
Just what you did for me

Words by , pictures by

If you enjoyed our poem, you might also like our Children’s Christmas Picture Book, Is Aunt Moll from the North Pole, available from Tree Keeper Books or Waterstones

Subscribe now

P.S. free for all subscribers of While I Was Drawing, there is a downloadable copy of our illustrated poem in the Creative Explorer’s Gallery, and for paying subscribers, a bundle of poppy clip art in the Creative Adventurer’s Gallery.

Come out, come out my dearies
All Hallows Eve is nigh
With spells and tricks, your best broomsticks
Soar up into the sky  

Fly high, fly high my dearies
And cackle loud and long
Call out black cats and vampire bats
With your haunting song 

Brew fast, brew fast my dearies
Keep your cauldrons hot
We’ve just one night to serve a fright
Add spiders to your pot 

Look up, look up my dearies
The moon is full and white
The ghosts and ghouls, the grey werewolves
Are roaming free tonight

Be gone, be gone my dearies
Before the sun doth rise
Hide your power past the witching hour
Cast your human disguise. 

Words by , pictures by

With wishes for endless inspiration,

If you enjoyed our Halloween Poem, you might also like our Children’s Christmas Picture Book, Is Aunt Moll from the North Pole, available from Tree Keeper Books or Waterstones

P.S. free for all subscribers of While I Was Drawing, there is a downloadable copy of our illustrated poem in the Creative Explorer’s Gallery, and for paying subscribers, this bundle of Autumn and Halloween Clip art is in the Creative Adventurer’s Gallery.

What if there were faeries dancing in the woods?
What if there were goblins making mischief (as well they should!)
What if there were elves stealing berries for their puds?
What if there were pixies whispering secrets through their hoods?

Was it just the fireflies glimmering through the glade?
Or were they tiny golden sprites who in the moonlight played?
Was that just the shadow of the trees that softly swayed?
 Or was there a mischievous dragon hiding in the shade?

I thought I glimpsed a mermaid as I walked along the beach,
And wasn't that a unicorn standing tall upon the reach?
I've never heard a banshee but what else could be that screech?
But I have heard that a witch's laugh holds secrets none can teach.

If ever you should wander where the starlight greets the sea,
Or wonder whether magic plays on heartstrings wild and free,
Then listen close, and you may hear a whisper's melody,
That all the world is woven through with spells of mystery.

With wishes for endless inspiration,

The metal frame is rusty now, the moss dry and brittle as I lift it from the nail on the fence.

The pine and spruce fronds that once adorned it have long since decayed into compost. The gold-and-cream filigree bow, pinecones, cinnamon sticks, dried oranges, limes, and lotus seed pods wait in the potpourri bowl — ghosts of last winter’s wreath.

Waiting for a new season, a new breath of life.

The circle carries ancient meaning. A shape without beginning or end, echoing the sun, the seasons, and the rhythm of return. The wreath’s form holds that same resonance: continuity, eternity, the endless turning of life.

The word wreath comes from the Old English wrīthan, meaning to twist or to bind. In Celtic and Norse traditions, circles of greenery were hung to honour the cycles of death and rebirth, to invite protection, and to bless the home with fertility through the darker months.

Centuries later, the wreath found a place within domestic life — in winter, for harvest, weddings, and mourning. Its materials changed with the seasons: dried flowers in summer, fruits and nuts at harvest, evergreens in winter. Making one became an art form, a way of binding the home to the wider patterns of nature.

For my wreath, I gather fallen oak sprigs, trails of ivy, and dried bracken from the woods. I retrieve the lotus seed pods and pinecones from the potpourri, and along with some artificial Chinese lanterns, pumpkins and apples from the local craft shop, I begin.

I don’t have any florist’s wire, but I find something similar that is thin and bendy enough to do the job. I start by fastening it to the frame, wrapping it around a few times to anchor it. Then I gather small bunches of oak leaves and lay them along the mossy frame, pointing diagonally outwards. Holding them in place, I wind the wire tightly around the stems before adding the next bunch, overlapping to hide the stems and wire. I keep going all the way around the circle, bunch by bunch, until the frame is covered.

The leaves and twigs are crumbly and brittle, so I work out on the patio table where the mess can scatter as it pleases. The dogs are delighted — noses deep in the leaves, taking great wet sniffs and occasionally stealing the odd twig. Keeping the wire tight is important but tricky, made trickier still by their enthusiastic “help.”

The final bunch is always the hardest. It has to be tucked beneath the first so the circle closes neatly. When I’m done, I hang it on the fenced to see how it looks. The wreath is gloriously bushy, though perhaps a little lopsided.

Next, the decorations. The lotus seedpods and pinecones are still attached to the wires from last year’s wreath, and I poke these through the tangle of oak leaves and secure them in the mossy frame, along with some of the artificial decorations. The wreath is already so bushy that there are lots left over, so I arrange them in a large wooden bowl and put it in the summerhouse.

I hang the wreath on the front door and I’m finished!

I love the way the colours come together: the warm russets and deep browns, the flickers of orange and gold. The oak leaves look beautiful, each one a different shape and shade, but they’re trickier to work with than I’d expected. They crumble easily, the twigs don’t bend quite where you want and snap if you’re not careful. But I like it — wild around the edges, like this beautiful season.

With the wreath finished and hanging on the door, I would like to share something else that perfectly captures the spirit of the season — this beautiful poem, written by and illustrated by me.

You’ll find a downloadable copy of our poem, along with photos from this post, in the Creative Explorer’s Gallery. The autumnal dividers that I’ve used throughout and the illustrations from the poem are also available for paid subscribers in the Creative Adventurer’s Gallery.

I’ve now opened the full Creative Bucket List Club to everyone, all past and future posts free to read and enjoy. I’m so grateful to share this space with such thoughtful, creative souls.

Thank you for being part of it.

with wishes for endless inspiration,

Autumn finds me lingering not only in the blaze of colour it brings, but in the subtle grace of endings. Dried petals that are as captivating as the flowers in bloom, perhaps more so. The ecstatic abundance of fly agaric sprouting from fallen leaves and decaying bark. A dead tree I have written of before etched with the fine patterns of engraver beetles has become my axis mundi. I pause each time I pass and rest my hand against its pale bones. Where bark once held, ivy climbs and sheltering within its cracked skeleton are lives I can only imagine.

A threshold where death folds back into life.

We are visiting six form colleges with our daughter in prelude to her next step toward adulthood — and into the structures of a society that has long severed its relationship with the slow turn of the seasons and the cycles of life and death.

On a bench in the medical sciences classroom, incongruous and tangential to the subject, is a line of animal skulls. Fox, deer, badger, dolphin. I am drawn to them. I want to hold them, to run my hand along their smooth surfaces, to trace the delicate architecture that once held life. I am fascinated and unnerved by their beauty. Unsettled by the fact that I can only behold it through their death, and unsettled at calling it beauty.

This mingling of beauty and mortality is something I find again in The Deep End1 by — an exploration of life’s impermanence that is delicately but insistently reshaping how I think about death and dying, and about life and living. It looks at the ways our western culture’s discomfort with death seeps into everything: our obsession with youth, our patterns of consumption, our faltering ability to grieve, and our disconnection from the turning of the seasons. If you are curious to know more, I have added a link in the footnotes.

Alongside the beauty and vibrancy of living nature that has filled my camera roll through spring and summer wanderings, autumn has turned my lens toward endings: dried flowers in Mum’s kitchen, an explosion of fungi in the woods where I walk the dogs, curled and skeletal leaves, seedheads brittle with time.

I have gathered these images (and many more) into the Creative Explorer’s gallery2 — a living, growing collection that evolves as I continue capturing the world around me through my camera lens. They are small reminders, for me at least, that endings carry their own kind of beauty, and that life and death are more intimately connected than we often dare to admit.

You can find the updated link in the Chat for subscribers of While I Was Drawing.

I hope you find something that sparks inspiration, brings joy, or adds a little more beauty to your life. However you choose to use these photographs, I’d love to see what they spark for you.

With wishes for endless inspiration,

You can also support by exploring my Etsy shop — Ink and Oddments — where I have listed some of my creative explorations for sale…

Or buying our book, Is Aunt Moll from the North Pole…