iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Deborah Vass @deborahvass.bsky.social · 11h

Jill Barklem's tiny mice don't miniaturise the countryside, they magnify it. My new Still Sketching post explores her years of looking, drawing and close observation behind the world of Brambly Hedge. #illustration #drawing stillsketching.substack.com/p/the-world-...

Autumn story illustration by Jill Barklem

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Tina Hagger @haggytea.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Strawberry Thieves, my new multi-block linoprint. The print is my play on the 'Strawberry Thief' pattern designed by William Morris (a hero!) , but instead of Birds, my Strawberry Thieves are Hedgehogs. There is a funny myth that Hedgehogs carry off Strawberries and eat them!!

A linoprint of two Hedgehogs facing one another with a Strawberry on each of their backs. There is a William Morris-esque pattern around them of Strawberries, flowers and leaves. Next to the print is an old book open on a page about Hedgehogs and a small plate with strawberries on it.

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Alison Brackenbury @abrackenbury.bsky.social · 01/05/2026

'Village', my new non-fiction prose book, features witches, wheelbarrows & cheerful survival-especially of women.The villagers dictated the blurb in the image! Kindle/phone/computer edition only 99p! Generous paperback £9.99.Only via Amazon. SEARCH FOR ALISON BRACKENBURY VILLAGE AMAZON

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Nick Acheson @themarshtit.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

My friends at @norfolknats.bsky.social and @suffolk-nats1929.bsky.social are hosting a joint conference on nature recording for nature recovery. Details below. It’ll be good!

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Deborah Vass @deborahvass.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Back to my favourite oak at Knettishall Heath, this time experimenting in colour. @suffolkwildlife.bsky.social #trees #sketching

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Jackie Curtis @jcurtisart.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

Starts today!

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Deborah Vass @deborahvass.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

In a postscript to yesterday's post, here are my own conker-less drawings . The conkers had all been snaffled. stillsketching.substack.com/p/the-change...

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JacquiWine @jacquiwine.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

'She had never been able to make up her mind which she disliked most: Mr Billings’s distasteful remarks and perpetual patience-playing, Mr. Howland’s flowing phrases and comfortable complacency, or the political opinions of Mr Lorellei...' #SpinsterSeptember jacquiwine.wordpress.com/2026/09/17/t...

jacquiwine.wordpress.com

The Gentlewomen by Laura Talbot

If you follow Nora (Pear Jelly) on Bluesky or Instagram, you’ll know that she’s currently hosting #SpinsterSeptember, a themed reading event showcasing books featuring unmarried women, from the cla…

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Deborah Vass @deborahvass.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Sylvia Plath wrote that drawing gave her a sense of peace, that she could lose herself completely in the line. This week I look at her remarkable drawings and what happened when I took my own dip pen and ink out into the Suffolk countryside. stillsketching.substack.com/p/the-change...

Sylvia Plath's drawing of horse chestnuts.

My drawing of an oak and my sketching kit.

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JacquiWine @jacquiwine.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

An absolutely brilliant novel featuring some of Brookner's best writing. The ghostly nighttime walk through the streets of London still haunts my dreams several years on... #BookSky 💙📚

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JacquiWine @jacquiwine.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

NO DOWN PAYMENT (Martin Ritt, 1957). Bar the ending, which lacks any degree of subtlety, this is an excellent drama about the hollowness and the corrosive nature of the American Dream. Focusing on the marital tensions of four young couples living on a new suburban estate, >> #FilmSky

Film poster showing a blonde woman lying on a bed looking at a bare-chested man lying face up on the floor.

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Deborah Vass @deborahvass.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

I went back to draw the oak again at Knettishall, this time in pen and ink. #drawing #suffolk

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Deborah Vass @deborahvass.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

The very last of the sunflowers. The seeds have been nibbled away, their heads now hanging low.

Pen and ink drawing of sunflowers seed heads.

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Radio Lento @radiolento.bsky.social · 14/07/2026

A BIG thank you if you have recently shared our posts - either as a RT or with a quote. Or if you have reposted elsewhere or sent a link to someone you know. We have a budget of exactly £0.00 for marketing and promotion and instead rely on word of mouth to reach new listeners. ❤️

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JacquiWine @jacquiwine.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

AT THE HEIGHT OF SUMMER / THE VERTICAL RAY OF THE SUN (Trần Anh Hùng, 2000). What a beautiful, surprising, sensual film this is. Smooth and idyllic on the surface, but full of unexpected turmoil rippling underneath. See @wilsonjettone.bsky.social's excellent thread for more info. #FilmSky

DVD - cover image shows a colour shot from the film, three women having a conversation with greenery in the background.

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Dave Borthwick @borthwickdave.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

& striding out touches roosting time now - quiet otherwise of birds - scissoreared hare catches light in their whiskers, hawthorn twines through beech (rare pairing), silverwater in ruts, over Solway signals berry on

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Deborah Vass @deborahvass.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

A drawing of an oak made at Knettishall Heath at the weekend, just sitting quietly for half an hour at one of their picnic benches. I used a Derwent Lightfast pencil, which are so soft, in a wonderful shade of midnight blue.

A drawing of an oak at Knettishall Heath in pencil.

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iolanthe @iolantherosa.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

I was inspired by @deborahvass.bsky.social to try my hand at some #InkAndWash of the purslane I posted yesterday. I can only hope to achieve the lively, intricate work she does, but this is a start. #ArtYear #Drawing #Sketchbook

A detailed line drawing of a purslane plant. Large flowers emerge from a a mass of small petals in black and white.

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Deborah Vass @deborahvass.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

What happens when we draw with no thought of making a finished work - nothing to see, exhibit or even show anyone? My new post is about sketchbooks, looking, and drawing something because we need to. #drawing stillsketching.substack.com/p/drawing-wh...

stillsketching.substack.com

Drawing while no one was looking

On sketchbooks and the freedom to draw without purpose, along with some uplifting reading and radio drama

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Deborah Vass @deborahvass.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

I became rather lost in this one. I love how sunny sunflowers develop into something much darker, with claws holding the seeds. #drawing

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JacquiWine @jacquiwine.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

'...I am confronted, too, by a fragment of the old self. I cannot pick out any incident that might be called a memory, but I can see forms, outlines, and it frightens me that they may come back, rushing at me, knocking me off my balance.' #BookSky 💙📚 jacquiwine.wordpress.com/2026/08/18/g...

jacquiwine.wordpress.com

Gaining Ground (Abra) by Joan Barfoot

Back in 2023, I read and loved Claire Kilroy’s Soldier Sailor, a superb novel in which ‘Soldier’, a married woman in the early months of motherhood, experiences a loss of identity, an erasure of he…

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Deborah Vass @deborahvass.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

This week I search for the illustrator Lola Fielding. Following traces of her working life, from record sleeves to travel posters, from books to magazines, fragments of her life unfold. More than ever, I realised how easily such artists can slip from view. stillsketching.substack.com/p/an-artist-...

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Deborah Vass @deborahvass.bsky.social · 16/08/2026

Back to pen and ink and another garden corner. This time an old apple tree with sagging hellebores at its feet. #drawing

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JacquiWine @jacquiwine.bsky.social · 11/08/2026

From the archive for Mavis Gallant, #BornOnThisDay in 1922, my thoughts on GREEN WATER, GREEN SKY. An excellent novella set against the backdrop of Venice, Paris and Cannes…it’s full of light and shade. #BookSky 💙📚 jacquiwine.wordpress.com/2024/07/07/g...

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Green Water, Green Sky by Mavis Gallant

There’s a scene near the beginning of Mavis Gallant’s 1959 novella Green Water, Green Sky which seems to encapsulate this stunning book. We are in Venice in the height of summer. Seven-year-old Geo…

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Deborah Vass @deborahvass.bsky.social · 10/08/2026

Another pen and ink drawing, and then with a splash of soft pastel. These small sunflowers dance between the French beans and the chard have been such a cheering sight. They are the last flowers standing in the heat. #penandink

Pen and ink drawing of sunflowers with yellow soft pastel.

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JacquiWine @jacquiwine.bsky.social · 10/08/2026

'All those things he’d said—she didn’t believe a word of it. She could tell that he was used to lying to women, she’d have to be very careful. Family, family everywhere, and no one to turn to—she was on her own.' #BookSky 💙📚 #WITMonth jacquiwine.wordpress.com/2026/08/09/l...

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Love in a Fallen City by Eileen Chang (tr. Karen S. Kingsbury and Eileen Chang)

Last year, I wrote about Jasmine Tea and other stories/novellas by Eileen Chang, one of the greatest chroniclers of Chinese life in the 20th century. In these pieces, Chang exposes the traditional …

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Deborah Vass @deborahvass.bsky.social · 10/08/2026

About ten years ago, I planted a walnut in a pot. Three years ago I planted the sapling out in my garden and now here are my first walnuts.

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Lou Morgan @lmorgan.bsky.social · 07/08/2026

It’s taken me three goes to post this because it’s not the bit of writing I’m good at, but. For All This Time is available for pre-order. Would you like a story about love, a big house full of stuff, and an infuriating Victorian writer? Want to know more…? www.waterstones.com/book/for-all...

waterstones.com

For All This Time by Lou Morgan | Waterstones

Buy For All This Time by Lou Morgan from Waterstones today! Click and Collect from your local Waterstones or get FREE UK delivery on orders over £25.

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JacquiWine @jacquiwine.bsky.social · 06/08/2026

Easily one of the best books I’ve read this year. I loved the incisive prose, the subtle foreshadowing, the flashes of dark humour, the caustic pen portraits, the circular structure, the sense that everything was fated to happen from the outset. Just superb! jacquiwine.wordpress.com/2026/08/04/t...

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The Transit of Venus by Shirley Hazzard

First published in 1980, The Transit of Venus is the third novel by the Australian writer Shirley Hazzard, an author I’ve been circling for some time. It’s also one of the best novels I’ve read so …

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Deborah Vass @deborahvass.bsky.social · 07/08/2026

Today's drawing, the quince tree in my garden, which though has few fruit this year, is still beautiful. In this week's post, I talk about how drawing is much more than producing a picture and how beginning is the hardest part. stillsketching.substack.com/p/why-drawin...

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Mathew Lyons @mathewlyons.bsky.social · 03/08/2026

This morning’s guest on the Writer’s Bookshelf is the incomparable @misterslang.bsky.social open.substack.com/pub/mathewly...

open.substack.com

The writer's bookshelf: Jonathon Green

Eight questions about writers, books, and reading…

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Deborah Vass @deborahvass.bsky.social · 06/08/2026

Why Drawing Matters In this week's post I encourage you to start sketching: it brings calm, increases you attention and the doing might just change how you see things. Do join me. open.substack.com/pub/stillske...

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Deborah Vass @deborahvass.bsky.social · 06/08/2026

A drawing of my, much shorter than usual, runner beans.

Pen and ink drawing, with soft pastel, of runner beans.

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Deborah Vass @deborahvass.bsky.social · 29/07/2026

Dipping my toes back into drawing, and the ink pot, after a long break.

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Deborah Vass @deborahvass.bsky.social · 24/07/2026

This week a riverside interlude and a visit to The Manor at Hemingford Grey, home of the writer Lucy Boston, creator of the Green Knowe books. Come and dip your toes in the water. open.substack.com/pub/stillske...

Drawing by Peter Boston from Nothing Said.

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Adrian Ramsay @adrianramsay.bsky.social · 27/06/2026

I visited Camp Beagle in Huntingdon, where beagles are bred and kept in tiny cages. They have no access to outdoor space and are subjected to cruel experiments. These outdated practices must end and be replaced by modern, reliable methods.

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Richard K Broughton @richardkbroughton.bsky.social · 27/06/2026

The Met Office weather station on our Monks Wood site recorded 35.7C yesterday, 26 June. It was >30C by 10 am, and the grass temperature reached 45.2C. Imagine being a vole, hare, skylark chick, lizard or ground beetle in that heat. A foot deep, the soil was 22C.

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Prem Sikka @premnsikka.bsky.social · 26/06/2026

Royal Mail boss’s pay package triples to £6.9m. Cost of postage stamps rocketing RM hasn't hit delivery target for 1st-class post since 2017, 2nd-class mail since 2020. Ofcom continues to reduce targets. Bosses rewarded for fleecing people.

theguardian.com

Royal Mail boss’s pay package triples to £6.9m despite profits slide

Martin Seidenberg, chief executive of parent company IDS, handed payouts after takeover of UK postal service

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Deborah Vass @deborahvass.bsky.social · 25/06/2026

A forgotten name on a Penguin book cover led me to a cache of Burberry illustrations rescued from a skip, a Vogue profile of a "spy writer's wife" and a story of how easily women's creative lives can disappear. open.substack.com/pub/stillske... #illustration #womensart #midcentury

Burberry illustrations by Shirley Thompson

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JacquiWine @jacquiwine.bsky.social · 12/06/2026

#RIP David Hockney. This glorious exhibition is currently running at the Serpentine’s North Gallery. It’s a beautiful, life-affirming show, the very highest of recommendations. #Art #ArtSky #DavidHockney

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JacquiWine @jacquiwine.bsky.social · 11/06/2026

New on the blog today, I've written about some of my favourite COMING-OF-AGE NOVELS from the shelves. Featuring books by Rumer Godden, Jean Rhys, L. P. Hartley and more! #BookSky 💙📚 jacquiwine.wordpress.com/2026/06/11/c...

jacquiwine.wordpress.com

Coming-of-age novels – some favourites from my shelves

This is a post I’ve been meaning to put together for a while, a celebration of some of my favourite novels in which the dark realities of the adult world begin to impinge on the innocence of childh…

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Deborah Vass @deborahvass.bsky.social · 12/06/2026

One of the exquisite wood engravings by Agnes Miller Parker, the illustrator of Through the Woods by HE Bates, which is the subject of this week's post. open.substack.com/pub/stillske...

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Deborah Vass @deborahvass.bsky.social · 11/06/2026

This week's post explores the perfect marriage between writer and illustrator: HE Bates and the wood engraver Agnes Miller Parker, and how some books follow us through life. open.substack.com/pub/stillske...

Fox wood engraving by Agnes Miller Parker.

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Deborah Vass @deborahvass.bsky.social · 28/05/2026

For the past few weeks, my garden has been my refuge. This post began as a search for paintings of women in gardens which led me to Roger Fry, Jean Cooke and The Secret Garden. It became a reflection on how gardens can become places of refuge in difficult times. open.substack.com/pub/stillske...

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JacquiWine @jacquiwine.bsky.social · 27/05/2026

Some more pics from Tate Britain’s excellent WHISTLER exhibition. Haunting, hazy and ethereal all spring to mind… #Art #ArtSky

The Artist in his Studio
1865-6
Oil paint on paper mounted on panel
Meet James Whistler. He looks out from his studio, palette and brushes in hand.
Painting himself at work, he nods to artists of the past like Rembrandt and Velázquez. The artist Joanna Hiffernan and professional model Emelie Jones relax in loose Japanese robes. A display of blue and white ceramics behind them signals Whistler's interest in East Asian art.
The Art Institute of Chicago, Friends of American Art Collection, 1912.141
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Green and Grey, Channel (The Sea)
1865
Oil paint on canvas
The ocean tested Whistler. Tam not working quickly enough!' he complained.
'I have waited in vain for [the seal to be the same colour as the one on which I started!' He made a fateful decision: a wave - a cloud - it's there for a moment - these paintings... from nature can only be large sketches.
Whistler painted this landscape at the French resort of Trouville, where he worked alongside artist Gustave Courbet. He had already broken with Courbet's more solid style of realism.
Montclair Art Museum; Museum purchase; Acquisition fund
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Portrait of Dr
William McNeill Whistler
1871-3
Oil paint on panel
Whistler's relationships with men were often marked by conflict or loss, but he was close to his younger brother. During the American Civil War, William served as an army surgeon for the Confederates, who fought to preserve enslavement in the southern states. He settled in London after the Confederate defeat.
It is unclear to what extent Whistler shared his brother's political allegiance.
He was strongly criticised by some in his circle for sometimes adopting the air of a southern gentleman.
The Art Institute of Chicago, Gift of Mary T. Wentworth in memory of her husband, John, 1977.235
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Annabel Lee
1869-77
Oil paint on canvas
This work relates to Whistler's Six Projects, an interior decorative scheme with figures inspired by Japan and ancient Greece.
The professional model is unidentified, recorded only as Maggie. The painting's first owner valued the work's ambiguous, unfinished quality. It was later given a narrative title, Annabel Lee, after Edgar Allan Poe's poem about a child who lived by the sea.
The Hunterian, University of Glasgow
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JacquiWine @jacquiwine.bsky.social · 20/05/2026

‘…These things never die out. You can pay and pay but you never get rid of it. You think you’ve buried it all in the past but there’s someone knows somewhere, there’s a record kept somewhere, nothing’s ever wiped out.’ #BookSky 💙📚 #CeliaDale jacquiwine.wordpress.com/2026/05/19/o...

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Other People by Celia Dale

Over the past few years, Celia Dale has become one of my favourite rediscovered authors, largely thanks to Daunt’s reissues of her darkly compelling stories of suburban deception, A Helping Hand, S…

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