I have had a wonderful, non-monarch-related afternoon in the studio with my friend and fellow artist Helen Garbett, otherwise known on Instagram as @LimpetWoman. We sat alongside each other, each doing our own thing, mindlessly, while we talked. It was lovely, heartwarming, relaxing and fun. And I got quite a few twigs wrapped. We talked about many things… but much about our mutual love of gathering and collecting (her limpets and my twigs) and how we work with them.

In some ways, this part of the cycle of work is my favourite. Because I have already made certain decisions and made some experiments, I have the materials in front of me to just get on with it. I have plenty of twigs to wrap, I know how to do do it and can just get on, either listening to the radio, to music, or chatting. 

I think I enjoyed this afternoon because although I’m not doing the same sort of work as Helen, there is a camaraderie between two women working together as there might have been if we were sat around the same quilt, stitching. I feel a history of generations of women before us, just getting on with stuff.

The twigs have become part of a larger more wide-ranging project, (more of which later when it’s sorted out) and in order for it to work how I want it to, I need hundreds of them, possibly thousands? But for now and the foreseeable future, I will be found either picking up sticks, or laying them straight. And wrapping them. Then playing with them, and with a variety of boxes, or hanging methods. Each iteration holds them in a different light… at some point I will need to make more decisions.

But not yet.