Sifting through your bookshelves, or the pile under the bed, or the set n the stairs, or the jumble you browse through by the loo, or the stack replacing the leg of the bed (where that other pile is gathering dust….) can we invite you to bring a book to give away and maybe find a new one to read?
this caused quite a stir….
During this year’s Buxton Pride Picnic (Saturday 23rd July, Pavilion Gardens, Buxton. 2- 5pm, find us on the lawns in front of the swimming pool), we’re having a Book Swap: looking for those books that have proved valuable to us. This might not mean they are books about LGBTQIA+ issues. Their importance might be subtler but just as powerful: books about personal courage? Identity? Where someone found strength, compassion, tips for walking in Size 10 heels, who knows!
If you have any books to contribute simply bring them along on the day: there will be a big box for books: drop yours off and have a rummage and wonder at just who might have Brought this! Then take it away and read it!
feisty inspiration?
a quietly powerful classic
To get us started, please add comments on our Facebook posts about what books would you recommend as being relevant/rewarding (all of the above) to an LGBTQIA+ readership
our very first Pride Picnic Cake made by Little Chelly Cakes, 2017
Buxton Pride Picnic
Saturday 23rd July 2022
2pm – 5pm
BUXTON’S BIG GAY BAKE OFF After the Lockdown Years, and a Spirit of the Fringe Award for 2019, The Buxton Pride Picnic is back! A relaxed celebration of the town’s LGBTQIA+ community and its friends, the Picnic shakes its blankets over the lawns of the Pavilion Gardens in front of the swimming pool. It is a relaxed event: no loud music (but often some singing), low-key activities (how good are you at hula hoops?). Picnickers bring their own picnics and drop in for a short while or for the duration, taking time to meet old friends, make new ones, to chat and smile and laugh together
Keep track of plans:
Fb: @stoneandwater and @buxtonqueer
Picnic details: free event, 23rd July 2022, 14:00 – 17:00, Pavilion Gardens, Buxton, SK17 6BE, UK
The Buxton Pride Picnic is hosted by Stone and Water and is part of Buxton’s Festival Fringe where lots of other relevant, irrelevant , exciting or irreverent activities are happening. Of special note is Matthew Drapper’s “Bringing Me Back To Me” and we encourage Buxton Pride folk to think about joining us there
This year there may be some sort-of competitions to take part in (or, not really….). There will be a Puppy Parade (more details will follow). And after the success of 2019’s cakes (and rainbow coloured Turkish delight), Buxton’s Big Gay Bake Off will return this summer
Picnickers are encouraged to bring a cake or dish to share. Entries will be judged by local celebrities – the cooks from the Buxton Pudding Company and HPBC councillor and Picnic supporter Ruth George.
Yes, we’re looking for cakes but we are expecting to award points as much on the wonder of their names as on their taste and appearance. We are hoping there might be some · Gay Gateaux · or Bi-forest Gateaux · or Trans Flans · or Lesbian Tarts · or Camp Croissants · or Polari Muffins · or just a flutter of Fairy Cakes · Seductive Scones? · Risque rock-cakes · Who knows…..
If you have a brilliant baking idea, just bring it along on the day. Entries will close at 3pm on the Saturday with judging happening after that (ice cream entries are not recommended).
submission date for images updated to November 30th: send us your pictures!
Stone and Water would like to invite our assorted contacts to participate in an exhibition to be held at Buxton Museum and Art Gallery from Saturday 19th February – Sunday 12th June 2022.
The exhibition is a celebration of Derbyshire Trees and will feature the work of three artists: Sarah Parkin, Valerie Dalling and Gordon MacLellan (Creeping Toad) *. Within the exhibition, the artists have set aside a wall for contributions from the wider community. There will also be a rolling slideshow being projected featuring pieces that we couldn’t fit onto the community space. For a Buxton component, Stone and Water have been asked if we could use our connections to issue this invitation to the various artists, makers, families, friends and just about anyone who gets involved in Stone and Water activities
will you capture an acorn’s promise….
Sarah, Valerie and Gordon’s work will include photographs, paintings, poetry, a family of small birch tree people and a couple of 3 metre tall puppets.
For the community wall, we are looking for Buxton (or High Peak as a whole and we’d probably sneak in a couple from Staffordshire Moorlands…) trees: garden trees, park trees, street trees, woodland trees: what are the trees that matter to you? What story would you tell of them? How would you want to share your delight in them: a photograph, a drawing, a painting, a poem? We would especially like to see images that reflect upon what individual trees mean to us as individuals
Brief
…or the glory of an autumn leaf
The trees you make work around can be any tree, at any stage of its life from seed to shoot, seedling, sapling, or some beautiful old grandparent tree. Your work can be new or existing pieces as long as they fit the brief – and the work is your own.
Please also think about your tree’s contribution to biodiversity and regeneration in both rural and urban spaces, along with the important value they have to our lives and our wellbeing.
Single images (or other pieces of work) please, up to a maximum of three submissions per person.
Black and White or Colour for prints etc.
Format: landscape or portrait: although portrait images are more likely to be fit into the community wall parameters while landscape often works better for projection
Size: the community wall frames will take A4 sized pieces of work so if your piece is larger than that please realise that we would print off a smaller copy
Media: we are looking for work that can be presented in frames or as part of a slideshow projection – so visual rather than spoken, danced or music work, please. We are expecting this to be paintings, photographs etc but if you have a textile you’d like considered send us an image to start with and if we need to talk about its display we can come back to you
Submissions: initially please send an image/doc (Word, preferred) of your entry: for projection that would probably be enough. For the wall itself if the original would be a better object to work with, we’ll talk about that. Key dates below. Please make sure your email address, artwork title and the name by which you would like to be known are clear.
selection of pieces will be made by the exhibition artists (Sraha, Valerie and Gordon). Their decision is final.
Stories – please provide us with one short sentence about your trees and why you connect to them.
Email: Gordon MacLellan: creepingtoad5@gmail.com (if images files are too large for easy email, maybe email first and then send by wetransfer or similar)
Display: all framing and printing will be arranged for you, and there will be no charge involved for participating. Credits will be given to the artists whose work is selected for the Community Wall, and all participants will retain their copyright. We can have a conversation about whether you want your pieces to be up for sale
The exhibition: access to the exhibition will be free (depending upon Covid-guidelines at the time there might still be a booking system in place for access to the museum)
Launch: people whose work is featured on the wall or in the projection sequence will be invited to the exhibition launch on 19th February 2022
You will see below Key Dates and submission for your images which will need to be adhered to in order for the three artists to select for either the Community Wall or Projection.
Key dates
Submission of all images, etc: by TUESDAY 30TH November 2021
Join us in the Pavilion Gardens for some gentle, laughful creativity. Making Mouse Queens, Mole Kings, Ladybird Princesses or Beetle Knights and the miniature castles they call home, we’ll create worlds of fabulous characters and send you off to tell your own wondertales.
This will be our 11th year of Tiny! days in the Fringe – and the photos here are from an earlier burst of delight
This event is free. Materials provided. Please bring a smile
Find us: in Pavilion Gardens, Buxton, between the young children’s playground the train stop for the miniature railway
Booking: given current restrictions we are running this as an event with timed slots. Please use the link below to eventbrite to reserve a space for yourselves
wonderful windows from the snowy streets of Buxton
UPDATING ON 21ST FEBRUARY: another week of windows has brought in owls and trees, squirrels and dinosaurs. Thank you everyone!
UPDATING THIS GALLERY ON 14TH FEBRUARY: after a lively weekend for windows here are some more to tempt, tease and entice you out there to have a rummage, find some bits and pieces and make your own. Our blog post , here will help you find out what to do. if you live in Buxton or the High Peak we have added a few more kits to our list (now reached 100 kits out there and are finding enough bits for another 20 we hope!)
Winter woodland windows are appearing……the gallery starts today (7/2/21). More additions will follow!
Are you lighting up your windows in February? We still have a few free kits available, (either email: stoneandwater@btinternet.com, or messenger through fb @stoneandwater). Visit our facebook page (@stoneandwater) to see the album of windows as they come in. A new gallery will be posted on this blog in the next few days.
Love and Passion Parade, Buxton, maybe 2007
Stone & Water grew from a pursuit of love and passion, on a cold and wintry February evening, when we paraded lanterns around the Pavilion Gardens in Buxton. A night when loss and sadness gave way to hope, passion and celebration, culminating in joy, dancing and music.
We thought we’d look at lanterns near and far, celebrations of light around our world. Lanterns have been used for centuries for many different purposes. They can be made of all sorts of materials.
Originally, they would have been made with naturally occurring things using fats as the fuel often as an open flame. Candles were developed and could be used in a case to protect the flame and cast the light further. Oil lamps gave light for longer and could be better controlled.
In winter, in our dark time, we have nights we can illuminate with glowing lanterns. We can welcome and encourage new light and new dawns.
In Slaithwaite, Yorkshire, the Moonraking Festival happens in February each year. Usually a grand parade of lanterns, this year they will be making window pictures and a “moonshine” trail for bubbles to explore in a covid safe way.
We all know about carving pumpkins at Halloween, but this tradition began through carving turnips or swedes. A child in Scotland or Ireland would be given a teaspoon to perform the annual tedious task of carving a tumshie or neep (turnip) potentially leading to RSI in later life. Crude faces would be carved out and a candle put inside. The smell was … interesting.
The tradition went with Scots and Irish migrants to America where they found more favourable vegetables to carve in the form of pumpkins. That tradition returned to the UK as pumpkins became more widely available and they became known more widely as Jack O Lanterns.
Even our Celtic neighbours now would prefer a pumpkin to carve, yet some still have a Scottish theme. Here’s an example from Aberdeenshire by Tracey Menzies and family.
At the Chinese Qingming Festival where family tombs are cleaned, lights are floated in lotus flowers to create a lake of lanterns to commemorate lost family members.
Also, from China we think of paper lanterns at Chinese New Year. Often red in colour as a sign of good fortune.
Near and far, Diwali is a festival of lights, diyas (small clay lamps), lanterns and candles may be burnt alongside celebratory art and dancing.
Old streetlights used to be lit and then snuffed out by someone each day by lamplighters.
You can still see some lamps like these in Buxton, albeit powered by electricity now.
In. Buxton, we had hoped to lay a trail of tiny bottle lanterns through the woods at Buxton Country Park during the middle weekends in February. That does not feel like a sensible thing to do just now so we thought we would turn things around. Instead of inviting the residents of Buxton to come into the woods, with lights, perhaps local people could bring the woods with lights into their homes. So, we have Winter Woodland Windows
There are “make it yourself” films as well with links from the blog posts above or directly
Windows:
Bottle lanterns:
Please, share a little glowing joy with anyone wandering down your street of a dark evening at the end of winter…and please send us a photo of your window and we’ll add it to our gallery
Thanks:
To Sarah and Gillian for putting this blog together
To photographers and news posts where we found images
Here in Buxton, we had been planning a weekend of lantern walks through the woods in February 2021. It is clearly not a good plan to organise an event like that just now, so we thought we would invite anyone who feels so inspired to bring the woodland into their homes and share their trees with other people by making winter woodland windows!
We have two activities to help with this (you could, of course, invent your own Winter Woodland Windows without using any of our ideas!)
Bottle Lanterns: little glowing lanterns for a window ledge or a darkened room
Woodland Window Panels: black card, coloured cellophane, a sense of stained glass….
When
on the weekends of 13 and 14th February and 20, 21st February 2021
Between 6 and 8pm those Saturdays and Sundays (and other days and times if you want!), we invite people to fit a Winter Woodland into one of their windows letting your light shine out so anyone out for an evening stroll (go on, take a carefully distanced wander) might get a touch of Winter Woodland Wonder. If people take photos, we’ll post a gallery of winter woodland windows!
Make a Woodland Window film…
KITS:
We have 100 sets of kits to help make both bottle lanterns and woodland windows. These are available free to people in Buxton up to 10 miles away from here. If you would like a set please get in touch:
stoneandwater@btinternet.com
Facebook: @stoneandwater
Twitter: stoneandwater3, #Bwinterwindows
MAKING A WINTER WOODLAND WINDOW
You will need
*A sheet of black card or paper (our practice ones are on A3 sized card)
*Piece of chalk
Sharp scissors
A craft knife and cutting mat (scissors might do as an alternative)
*PVA glue, brush
small pot (to mix glue and water in)
*Coloured tissue or cellophane
Sheet of plastic
*Our kits include these bits. We include a sheet of A2 card (twice the size of the examples here). We have even bigger sheets of black paper if anyone wants to be really adventurous and make a whole forest! – let us know
1. Spread a sheet of plastic on a table to protect the surface. On your black card draw your window picture with the chalk (practice with pencil on paper first maybe). Think about outlines and shapes rather than careful colouring and shading. You need shapes that suggest the outline and features rather than a single big drawing to cut out. Keep it simple! Leave a margin round the edge of your picture
2. Cut out the drawing. A craft knife is easiest. With scissors if you need to cut in from the side of the picture, repair those cuts afterwards with some of the card you have removed from the shapes
3. Done? Look at the shapes: make sure the picture still “works”. If there are large empty spaces, maybe run a few card strips across them so that the whole sheet hasn’t become too floppy and delicate. If you have cut in from the edge, repair those slits with some of the card you have cut out
4. Use coloured tissue or cellophane to fill in the spaces….Try to keep all your working: chalk lines, coloured gluing, on the same side of the picture so there is a front (neat lines, bold colours) and a back (a bit messy)
5. Let every thing dry then lift it up….trim bits of tissue or cellophane if needed
6. Use blutac or similar or sticky tape to fit the picture in a window. Of a dark evening, go outside and enjoy your winter woodland window. If you have made a bottle lanterns, close curtains to frame your woodland picture and have the bottle lantern standing in a dark corner of the same window
looking out through a woodland window in the daytime….
Here in Buxton, we had been planning a weekend of lantern walks through the woods in February 2021. That is clearly not a good event to organise now so we thought we would invite anyone who feels so inspired to bring the woodland into their house and share their trees with other people by making winter woodland windows!
We have two activities to help with this (you could, of course, invent your own Winter Woodland Windows without using any of our ideas!)
Bottle Lanterns: little glowing lanterns for a window ledge or a darkened room (this activity)
Woodland Window Panels: black card, coloured cellophane, a sense of stained glass….
When
on the weekends of:13, 14th and 20, 21st February 2021
Between 6 and 8pm those Saturdays and Sundays (and other days and times if you want!) please light your window so anyone out for an evening stroll (go on, take a carefully distanced wander) might get a touch of Winter Woodland Wonder. If you stand outside yourselves, please take a photo of your own window and send it to us. We’ll post a gallery of winter woodland windows!
Kits
We have 100 sets of kits to help make both bottle lanterns and woodland windows. These are available free to people in Buxton and up to 10 miles away from here. If you would like a set please get in touch:
Pens: permanent for drawings, others will give you exciting smudges
*sheet of plastic to protect work-surface
*electric/battery tea-light
small selection of *coloured tissue paper, wrapping paper, feathers, thin leaves
maybe some food colouring
* a sheet of wet strength tissue paper
1. Lay your plastic sheet on a table-top. Using your sharp scissors cut off the bottle’s label if there is one. Take off the bottle top and squash the bottle flat to make it easier to cut off the top section (recycle or turn into a different decoration
2. Wrap wet-strength tissue round the bottle to get an idea of the size of piece you will need. Trim tissue: you will need two pieces about the same size
3. Lay 1 piece of tissue of plastic and decorate; draw with pens, work out arrangements of other decorations. Move tissue and all pieces to one side. Drawings in permanent pens should survive the next bit, non-permanent pens drawings will probably turn into exciting smudges. All pens might bleed across the paper. Sometimes yes, sometimes no. Don’t get upset.
4. Mix PVA and water in the pot: about equal quantities. Now paint glue onto the plastic sheet. Lay the tissue with drawing on it onto the glue and paint a layer of glue onto the tissue (building glue and tissue layers). Rebuild your arrangement of coloured tissue and stuff on the sticky tissue. If there is a bright side to the pieces lay them on with the bright side downwards. Lay the second piece of w-s tissue on top of all this. Gentle press tissue down with fingers. Paint another layer of glue onto this top sheet
5. Carefully set your plastic bottle at one end of this strip. Gather up that end of the tissue and glue sandwich, pressing it onto the bottle and gently roll the bottle along the tissue.
6. Stand up the decorated (and wet and dripping) bottle. Gently adjust with fingers if needed. Leave bottle to dry. Leave fingers to dry as well if you like peeling PVA off your hands.
Final touch while still wet (at the end of stage 4 or stage 6): you could dribble some food colouring onto the wet tissue and it will spread in branching stains across the tissue. We use matchsticks to dab food colouring on.
When the bottle lantern is dry, switch on a nightlight, and pop it into the lantern. Turn off other lights and enjoy your own own little winter jewel
These are best indoors. Outdoors the is fine until it rains. Do not put real flame nightlights in these lanterns! Plastic will melt and the paper might burn!
a collection of festive lanterns drying on a classroom floor
a cluster of castle lanterns glowing on an evening walk
Having a bit of a fidget? Nothing to do? Bored? And it’s raining again?
(we posted this activity a while ago but are reposting here our friends at Creeping Toad have just made a little film to promote the activity…)
Why not dig out last year’s Christmas cards from the bundle at the bottom of the cupboard, or stealthily purloin one of this year’s, or the birthday cards you don’t quite want to throw out, or use a cereal packet (good card for making and folding, just maybe not as exciting in images as cards)
Make a little winter a scene to hang on a tree, a branch, a hook on the wall to stand on a shelf, or make a box to put that extra special present
(or maybe just the key that makes it go) in
You will need: a card or two, sharp scissors, a ruler, pencils or pens, glue (PVA is good here) and glue spreader, stapler, bradawl (or something for making holes – a pair of compasses would work), thin string
Stage 1, cut the card in half
1. Cut the card in half along the fold – keep the “plain” half, you will need it later
2. Using the picture half of the card, on the reverse, draw a margin maybe 2 cm from each edge of the card
3. Where the lines cross at the corners, carefully cut along one of those lines to the point where the lines meet
3, Cut to the corners
4. This card usually folds quite sharply, so now (use the ruler for a straight edge if you want to) fold up along each of those lines and where you have cut in, fold the short bit to make a corner
4. folded
5. Before glueing it all together, decide: if you are making a scene, keep the picture on the inside of the box. If you are making a box: you might want the picture inside or on the outside (you could always line the inside with some spare wrapping paper, or make a bigger box to become a lid.). Reverse the folding if you want to change the position of the picture
5. Glued and stapled
5. Making sure the sides of your box are sharply upright, glue the corner tabs onto the next side. A staple will hold it all in place. If the outside is too plain, you could colour it in or add some coloured tape. Or sprinkle it with glitter! ( we recommend finding some biodegradable glitter – or using some edible glitter {used on cakes} although this can be distracting….)
6. While the glue dries, prepare the scene to go in the box. Using the other piece of card (from stage 1 above), you could make a little tab to fix a figure to (we used some “embellishments” bought cheaply in a local craft shop), or you could draw your own character. Fix by glueing the tabs into the main scene. Again a staple might help. You might want to colour the tab so it fits into the background of the scenes. Some extra glitter might help again.
a reindeer sky
7. Use a bradawl or compasses to make a couple of holes (aim for places about 1/3 and 2/3 along the top side – use a lump of modelling clay under the card to protect tabletop or fingers), thread a piece of glittery string or ribbon through, knot it and hang up your scene.
Experiment with papers, colours, tapes, sequins. Try different places to hang them: from your ears? on your fingers (and create a fabulous dance around them)? a snowman’s nose?
Our Ash Trees projecthas been a little quiet over the opening weeks of winter but as the snow closes in on Buxton again today it feels appropriate to return yet again to thoughts of firewood. Not that we are encouraging you to go out and forage for fuelwood: the fallen branches in our woods are an invaluable resource for wildlife but you could sit by your wood-burning stove, feeding sawdust nuggets to the flames and recite some of the assembled poems we’ve found that talk about the qualities of wood for burning. Some of us will have to make-do with a candle and radiator but we can still enjoy the poems
This little detour has probably gone on quite long enough but I’m going to add a final two “firewood” poems
The first has similarities with Honor Goodhart’s “Logs to Burn”. I don’t know if it is a version of Goodhart’s one – or maybe t’other way round. I first met it labelled as a “Traditional Devon Rhyme” a lifetime ago. It also turns up titled “The Woodcutters’ Poem”. What it doesn’t seem to be is sourced from “The Poem Book of the Gael” as some online sources claim. I have this book and the only firewood poem there that I can find is different again! I’ll add “The Song of the Forest Trees” after Fire Woods…and on this over-extended note I’ll stop posting firewood poems as we have new activities coming up next week!
Fire woods
Oak logs will warm you well.
That are old and dry;
Logs of pine will sweetly smell
But sparks will fly.
Birch-logs will burn too fast,
Chestnuts scarce at all;
Hawthorne-logs are good to last
Cut them in the fall.
Holly-logs will burn like wax,
You may burn them green.
Elm-logs like to smouldering flax,
No flame to be seen.
Beech-logs for winter time,
Yew logs as well,
Green elder logs it is a crime
for any man to sell.
Pear-logs and apple-logs,
They will scent your room,
Cherry-Logs across the dogs
Smell like flower of broom.
Ash-logs, smooth and gray,
Burn them green and old,
Buy up all that come your way
Their worth their weight in gold.
SONG OF THE FOREST TREES
any thoughts on maple wood?
O man that for Fergus of the feasts* does kindle fire,
Whether afloat or ashore burn not the king of the woods.
Monarch of Innisfail’s* forests the woodbine is, whom none may hold captive;
No feeble sovereign’s effort is it to hug all tough trees in his embrace.
The pliant woodbine if thou burn, wailings for misfortune will abound,
Dire extremity at weapons’ points or drowning in great waves will follow.
Burn not the precious apple-tree of spreading and low-sweeping bough;
Tree ever-decked in bloom of white, against whose fair head all men put forth the hand.
The surly blackthorn is a wanderer, a wood that the artificer burns not;
Throughout his body, though it be scanty, birds in their flocks warble.
The noble willow burn not, a tree sacred to poems;
Within his bloom bees are a’sucking, all love the little cage.
The graceful tree with berries, the wizard’s tree, the rowan, burn;
But spare the limber tree, burn not the slender hazel.
Dark is the colour of the ash; timber that makes the wheels to go;
Rods he furnishes for horseman’s hands, his form turns battle into flight.
Tenterhook among the woods the spiteful briar is, burn him that is so keen and green;
He cuts, he flays the foot, him that would advance he forcibly drags backward.
Fiercest heat-giver of all timber is the green oak, from him none may escape unhurt;
By partiality for him the head is set on aching, and by his acrid embers the eye is made sore.
Alder, very battle-witch of all the woods, tree that is hottest in the fight –
Undoubtedly burn at thy discretion both the alder and whitethorn.
Holly , burn it green; holly, burn it dry;
Of all trees whatsoever the critically best is holly.
Elder that hath tough bark, tree that in truth hurts sore;
Him that furnishes horses to the armies from the Sidh* burn so that he be charred.
The birch as well, if he be laid low, promises abiding fortune;
Burn up most sure and certainly the stalks that bear constant pods.
Suffer if it so please thee, the russet aspen to come headlong down;
Burn, be it late or early, the tree with palsied branch.
Patriarch of long-lasting woods is the yew, sacred to feasts as is well-known;
Of him now build ye dark-red vats of goodly size.
Ferdedh, thou faithful one, wouldst thou but do my behest:
To thy soul as to thy body, O man, ‘twould work advantage
Trans: Standish Hayes O’Grady
*Fergus of the Feasts: find him in the stories of the Tain Bo Cualinge
*Innisfail: ancient name for Ireland
*Sidh (pronounced “shee”): sometimes means the Faerie peoples but here probably also means the hollow hills where the Sidh live
celebrating the people and wildlife of the Peak District
(or maybe just the key that makes it go) in
Stone and Water 