Clare Gaylard Glass 

Loving the levels of ornamental detail on armour - and then rendered in marble. Sketching yesterday in the National Musem (and taking refuge from the heat) back home to very autumnal chill today.

I'd never been to Rome before this year - then ended up there (although briefly) twice. I happily returned to the huge, almost empty Museo Nationale Romano with its four floors of remarkable antiquities. This is an entire room /courtyard and even transplanted to a museum interior in the city it still exudes cool, verdant tranquility.

Eldest has steady hands, and a good eye...... Photo by Liz Gaylard

Clear, cold and glistening, a rockpool in your hands.

Anthony Gormley in the RA Courtyard (did anyone else see 'FIELD' at the Southbank about thirty years ago?) and Extinction Rebellion on the streets.

Something beautiful from today for World Mental Health Day, and for understanding when a brain can’t seem to fit properly or rest easy inside its shell.

A nest came down in the winds, SO soft, intricately woven and well insulated.

Eldest takes a fine photo in a hurry and doesn't need art direction.

The old biscuit tin lit up in a shaft of light. Oddly it's when I've very carefully wrapped work that something has been broken in the unwrap - it's mostly very robust.

A good range of mandrels primed and ready to go, sunshine valiantly trying to get through a very dusty window, the Victorian glass, laudanum bottle on the windowsill is purely decorative.

Strange and wonderful, I have loved his illunimated books and poetry for a long time but never really connected with the paintings - well this comprehensive exhibition made me. I'm still baffled by the decision to paint all the vast gallery walls with claustrophobic, dark colours like indigo and oxblood which drew the walls in a crowded gallery right in and fought with the delicay of Blake's work. 

Guinevere Glasfurd has written a significant and apropos, second novel centered around climate change and political upheaval - in 1815. I'm very, very excited about reading it - and very quick to claim an acquaintance. Published by Two Roads Books.

An elemental walk in the fields last night, moon rising on the left and sun setting on the right. Framlingham water tower in the evening giving me The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam: (doesn't happen very often)  ‘Lo the Hunter of the East has caught The Sultan's Turret in a Noose of Light.’

I've been completing summer commissions and trying to get some semblance of order back to my chaotic desk and studio, ongoing. I'm stealing time between teaching and accounts to do more with this as I had to down tools for an exhibition as soon as I was in the flow.

I like it best in the late summer to early autumn where you can start adding berries and seed pods into the mix. I like the flavour of a traditional Dutch floral painting, Rachel Ruysch for choice.

It’s been a summer of (amongst other things) three exhibitions, five Open Studio weekends, teaching workshops, completing a complex commission with twenty-four elements, plus significant exams for all three offspring from GCSEs to finals. All completed in a highly satisfactory manner and to some heady measure of relief. THIS was my kind of glass on the weekend.  

Went to the National Portrait Gallery for the BP Awards, an intense, tight, much smaller exhibition this year with a noticeable emphasis on skills and diversity - I thought. Liked the attitudes of the folk in front of that wall, and the remarkable winning painting, not shown. Payed my deepest respects a couple of floors up (as usual) to the glorious Tudors.

A house FULL with only a day between exhibition-ending and a weekend of guests, I reckon this 'Bark' was worthy of mention for its singular beauty as well as the utter ease of making. Greek yoghurt, honey and whatever lovely things you want to throw on top of them and freeze.