Painting tutor of the month: Tim Wilmot - we’ve opened up a new week!
We are delighted to tell you that Tim Wilmot’s painting course at the Watermill, from 2 to 9 October 2021, is now almost full, so we have opened up an extra week for him, from 25 September to 2 October 2021. If you would like to reserve your place with this very popular tutor, now is the time to book. There are details and links below.
Tim Wilmot is an artist from Bristol in the UK, specialising in watercolours, exploiting the medium with tone and light. Tim says: “I seem to have an affinity with painting landscapes, although I have dabbled with portraits and still life in the past, but always come back to landscapes. I prefer a loose or impressionistic style when I paint, and I hope you like their informality.” His vibrant picture above is of the Watermill and river Rosaro flowing by.
Painters in the Watermill garden,
captured by Tim Wilmot
As well as being an exciting artist, Tim is also an inspiring teacher and on his course, suitable for all levels, he’ll help you to improve your drawing skills and, loosen up your style, teach you how to incorporate figures in a landscape, as well as nurturing you own artistic ambitions.
Here’s a comment from a student on Tim’s last course at the Watermill: “Everything was perfect, your welcome, the luxurious accommodation, and the delicious food, Tim’s tuition was first-class and it was lovely to be able to sit and paint all day.”
Our inspiring 2021 painting tutors
Here is the complete list of our painting tutors for this year. You can find out more about each of them by clicking on their Profile page link in their entries below.
Vicki Norman
3 - 10 July 2021 - four or five places remaining
Oils and watercolours (and other mediums)
To learn more about Vicki and her course at the mill, please visit her 2021 Profile Page.
Carl March
10 - 17 July 2021 - three or four places remaining
Drawing and watercolours en plein air
To learn more about Carl and his course at the mill, please visit his 2021 Profile Page.
Randy Hale
21 - 28 August 2021 - three or four places remaining
Watercolours
To learn more about Randy and his course at the mill, please visit his 2021 Profile Page.
Mike Willdridge
28 August - 4 September 2021 - four or five places remaining
4 – 11 September 2021 - two or three places remaining
Watercolour and drawing (also gouache and acrylics)
To learn more about Mike and his course at the mill, please visit his 2021 Profile Page.
Milind Mulick
11 - 18 September 2021 - two or three places remaining
Colourful watercolours
To learn more about Milind and his course at the mill, please visit his 2021 Profile Page.
Brienne M Brown
18 - 25 September 2021 - fully booked, waiting list open
Watercolours
To learn more about Brienne and her course at the mill, please visit her 2021 Profile Page.
Tim Wilmot
25 September – 2 October 2021 - NEW! plenty of places
2 – 9 October 2021 - one place remaining
Watercolours
To learn more about Tim and his course at the mill, please visit his 2021 Profile Page.
Ali Hargreaves
9 - 16 October 2021 - one or two places remaining
Watercolours
To learn more about Ali and her course at the mill, please visit her 2021 Profile Page.
Grahame Booth
23 - 30 October 2021 - four places remaining
Watercolours
To learn more about Grahame and his course at the mill, please visit his 2021 Profile Page.
Come and join us and enjoy the magic at the mill!
Why not bring your non-painting partner as well?
There’s a generous £250 discount for him/her if they share a room with you - and there’s plenty for them to do. Have a look at our Partner’s Activities Page for suggestions.
More and more men are enjoying the soothing benefits of knitting
Picture: The Guardian
We read an interesting story in the UK newspaper, The Guardian, recently about how increasing numbers of men took up knitting (or crochet) during the recent pandemic.
Among them Brendan Girak right. The first time he knitted in public, Brendan took a friend for support. “Lara and I went to a big park and that put my mind at ease,” the 28-year-old from Perth, Australia, says. “There weren’t that many people around and Lara’s a very confident person.” Knitting makes him calm: “It keeps my hands busy and stops me from being anxious. In the park, I was concentrating on what I was doing. I was being really mindful and in the moment.”
The Guardian reports that soon he was taking his yarn out in cafes, during college lectures, at the beach and down the pub -- and there are signs that other men may soon be joining him. Men account for 10% of Girak’s 65,000 followers on his Instagram account,@knitwitsandyarns. “A lot of men who knit have come out of the woodwork, ” he says. “What else do you do in lockdown?”
Picture: The Guardian
The online community LoveCrafts reports a rise in young men crafting, with more than a third taking up some form of needleworkduring the pandemic, including knitting, crochet and sewing. The Guardian adds: “High-profile newcomers such as diver Tom Daley have recently joined their ranks. Daley came to crochet after his coach encouraged him to find a way to recuperate between dives.”
We haven’t any male guests yet on our two knitting courses at the Watermill this year but, of course, they would be more than welcome to join us for a relaxing, soothing, creative knitting week.
We are running two knitting courses this year: our first-ever knitting retreat, and the second, a tutored course with exclusive knitting projects, run by the renowned English knitting designer Louisa Harding.
Wating for you
The Watermill knitting retreat will run from Saturday 17 July to Saturday 24 July 2021 and, since there is no official tutor, we are offering a special discount of £200 (UK pounds) per person. We already have eight knitters booked into this course, so we have room for four or so more. Instead of having a tutor, individual guests will bring their own projects to knit during the week. The rhythm of the week will be much the same as usual, with morning and afternoon sessions on the vine verandah or in the Watermill sitting room, where you will enjoy convivial like-minded company in the peaceful ambience of the Watermill. There is a link with more details below.
We are delighted also to welcome Louisa Harding, the celebrated cashmere knitter and yarn producer, to the Watermill knitting team. She’s established a new brand, called Yarntelier, combining the finest yarns from the English county of Yorkshire with beautiful designs, to make each item a piece of hand-crafted couture. She will bring some of these yarns to her course. Louisa is now planning the projects she will bring for our knitters during her week and is talking of a cashmere shawl, where you can draw on designs in the Tuscan countryside and incorporate them in your knitting; and another, smaller project, involving beading using a crochet hook. Louisa will be with us from Saturday 7 August to Saturday 14 August 2021 Again, there is a link to more details about her week below.
And don’t forget, you will be Cool and Green: all our rooms are air-conditioned, powered by photovoltaic panels which make us self-sufficient in electricity.
2021 knitting breaks
Knitting retreat
17 - 24 July 2021 - three or four places
Knitting and La Bella Vita
To learn more about our knitting retreat week at the mill, please visit our 2021 Profile Page.
Louisa Harding
7 August - 14 August 2021 - four or five places remaining
Knitting and La Bella Vita
To learn more about Louisa and her course at the mill, please visit her 2021 Profile Page.
Don't forget your partner!
And don’t forget that your friend or partner doesn’t need to participate in the creative course, whether it’s painting, language or writing.
We offer them a range of Alternative activities for partners on all our 2021 courses, as well as a generous £GBP 250 discount if they share a room with you.
Literary AWS and OHS
dailywritingtips.com
Have you heard of the AWS and the OHS? We hadn’t until we read an article by Maeve Maddox online at dailywritingtips.com. She writes: “Several fictional characters are so memorable that their names have been attached to physical and psychological syndromes.”
Thus, AWS is Alice in Wonderland Syndrome: “One of the memorable aspects of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland and its sequel, Alice Through the Looking Glass, is the way objects change size and shape. The Chesire Cat appears and disappears. The Duchess’s baby turns into a pig. In the Looking Glass, the Red Queen becomes a kitten and the White Queen turns into a sheep.”
One of Sir John Tenniel’s
original Alice illustrations
Alice in Wonderland Syndrome, she writes, is a neurological condition that, in most cases, is related to migraine, but it can also be derived from brain tumours, viruses like Epstein Barr (a member of the herpes virus family), or even epilepsy. It causes hallucinations and visual image distortions. “This syndrome presents itself more frequently in children and, in some cases, they grow out of it. Because Lewis Carroll is known to have suffered from severe migraines, some writers have speculated that he may have drawn inspiration from his own symptoms.”
Fat Boy Joe
from Dickens’
Pickwick papers
OHS is Obesity Hypoventilation Syndrome and if that doesn’t seem particularly literary to you, its other name is Pickwickian Syndrome. It is named after a fat boy called Joe in Charles Dickens’ Pickwick Papers, who is always falling asleep, no matter what excitement is going on around him. Maeve Maddox says: "It occurs when breathing is inadequate to rid the body of carbon dioxide in someone who is obese. It causes daytime sleepiness, intense headaches, shortness of breath, lethargy, and depression. Left untreated, OHS can even lead to heart failure, sexual dysfunction, hypertension, and even death”
Other syndromes, such as PPS, Peter Pan Syndrome, haven’t yet reached the medical dictionary.
We are sure that none of our newsletter readers are suffering from AWS or OHS, or even PPS, but it is fascinating how memorable fictional characters can enter into the real world. And perhaps in your lifetime you have met some colourful, curious characters who you can bring to life in your memoirs. Come and tell us all about them on Jo Parfitt’s Writing Your Life Stories week-long residential course at the Watermill this Summer. We already have eight people booked into this course, so there’s room for three or four more writers, and their partners if they’d like to come, too.
Jo Parfitt is an author, journalist, teacher, blogger, conference speaker and poet. She has published 32 books herself, has helped more than 100 authors into print and more than 1,000 people to begin writing. Jo's a compassionate, inspiring, and encouraging teacher: her motto is 'sharing what I know to help others to grow'.
Her workshop will include several methods and genres and is perfect for anyone wanting to write about their own lives for an effective journal, memoir or blog. If you would enjoy an injection of inspiration in a safe and supportive environment, this course is for you. It is appropriate for students of any level.
And don’t forget, you will be Cool and Green: all our rooms are air-conditioned, powered by photovoltaic panels which make us self-sufficient in electricity.
2021 Our uplifting creative writing course
Jo Parfitt
14 – 21 August 2021 - two or three places remaining
Write your life stories
To learn more about Jo and her course at the mill, please visit her 2021 Profile Page.
How to order spaghetti without saying a word
It is well known that the Italians find it difficult to speak without using their hands (There’s a rumour that early telephone boxes were bigger in Italy than in the rest of Europe, to enable boys to ring their mother and communicate properly!)
But we never knew you could order spaghetti without opening your mouth. The video clip above, from our Italian language teacher Francesca la Sala shows you how.
Words and gestures from Francesca
For our week-long course, from Saturday 16 October to Saturday 23 October 2021 you’ll not only learn Italian words and phrases, but gestures too. You’ll meet Italian people and interact with their daily lives. There will be formal lessons under the vine verandah (some 20 hours in the week), and we’ll also be making trips and excursions to enjoy the natural beauty of Lunigiana, the area surrounding the mill, to explore its history and culture, to sample its traditional foods – and above all, to meet the people, speaking Italian, practising what we’ve learned.
And if you want to see more Top Tips from Francesca about how to use hand gestures to communicate in Italian, then become a Watermill Patron for the full version of her video!
2021 Language Course
Francesca la Sala
16 - 23 October 2021 - one place remaining
Learning Italian with the Italians
To learn more about Francesca and her
2021 course at the mill, please click here.
Everything's included in your watermill painting holiday, creative writing holiday, knitting week or Italian Language course
Don’t forget that everything is included in the cost of a painting holiday, writing, knitting, or language holiday: tuition, accommodation (including all linen and towels), pre-dinner aperitifs, all meals and local transportation (including transfers to Pisa airport; an excursion by train to visit the ancient walled city of Lucca or the stunning seaside villages of the Cinque Terre).
All you have to do is to get to Pisa airport and we do the rest.
Whether you're travelling alone or with a partner you can be sure of a warm welcome, and that you'll be well looked after. We have built our reputation on the comfort of the mill and the care we provide.
Become a Patron of The Watermill at Posara
Visit our Watermill Patrons website (Link below). Just follow the instructions to subscribe and enjoy special privileges. By becoming a Patron you’ll enjoy many exclusive benefits, including practical and inspiring tips from our international painting and creative writing tutors, recipes from the watermill’s mouth-watering menus, and podcasts on Italian life. And there are also exclusive offers at the higher tiers for our courses and holidays.
We very much look forward to welcoming you to the mill and, for those of you who have already tasted the many delights at The Watermill at Posara, we look forward to welcoming you back.
With very best wishes a tutti
Lois and Bill Breckon