I recently spent ten days in the UK. Being a friend of the bride whose wedding I was attending, I offered to do the calligraphy for the reception.  I did the lettering over the month previous to the wedding and then carried it with me to set up there.  It worked out pretty well, don't you think?!

Seating Chart

Not knowing exactly what matte board would be available for me to set this up on, I think we did very well working via emails and fingers crossed!

close-up before the ribbons were added

photo by Keziah Trump

One of the table markers. They were double sided, the other side was a description of the Blue Anchor.

photo by Kez

The tables looked amazing!

I did the place cards as well. Everything turned out so wonderfully well.

After the wedding, my friend Rose and I were the lucky house sitters and carers to these adorable kitties.

Biscuit, a tiny cat with a huge presence! She rules the house and lords it over.......

Gray, who has only lived at the cottage for about three months. He isn't quite sure how to take Biscuit's snottiness but I'm sure they'll get it sorted soon.  He just has to realize that she rules the house! All he wants as much affection as possible and all the food.

We did a day trip to Dublin to see the Book of Kells. Of course, they don't allow you to photograph anything once you are inside the viewing room. It was wonderful, though, to go in the winter time because it meant that there weren't that many people there! We got to spend about 15 or more minutes viewing the books! There was a carpet page and a lettering page for the Book of Kells and a lettering page for the Book of Durrow and the Book of Armagh.  I think I liked the Book of Armagh page the best this trip. It looked to me that the scribe had over estimated the space required by the illuminator.  It was great to be able to have that time to actually look and realize that there was more space than necessary for the versal "P".

When in England, you always have to look for amazing lettering...

Notice the decoration on the bottom of the above page.  Reminiscent of an instructional sheet given to calligraphers by Cari Ferraro a couple of years ago!

How's that for an S?

Carved in wood.......

not bad, eh?

This video shows the amazing power of Mother Nature. There are a couple of caves in the rock face and as the waves come round the corner, a plume of water shoots out from the cave before the water crashes against the rocks.  We could hear the pounding surf from quite a way off. We stood and watched for quite awhile.

 

Ten days goes by very fast, especially when you try and pack as much in as possible!