Wood engraving is used to make blocks for printing illustrations on paper so once the engraving is done it’s time to print. I’m a member of the Splinter Group and we meet about once a month to chat, eat cake and engrave. We’ve been working on a project together, a Scottish Animal Alphabet, which we’re going to exhibit at Fortingall Art at the beginning of next month. We exhibited wood engravings last year and it went down well so we were inspired to bigger things. An alphabet was quite an undertaking, 26 letters and the Scottish fauna weren’t always easy to match up. Even I was a challenge. But we’ve got there, more or less, though we haven’t got N yet. It was completed by the engraver minutes before she went into labour with her son. Baby George arrived very quickly and very well, though we’re still waiting for the block, perhaps it’s stuck in the post.

We’ve spent four days printing so far and it’s nearly done. We’ve been particularly ambitious because, as well as separate prints, we’re putting them all together into a (very) limited edition book. It includes prints by Linda Farquharson, Alyson MacNeil, Philippa Swann, Ruth Atkinson, Becky Coope, Penny Kennedy, Callum Strong, Malcolm Appleby and Anna Orr. It is entirely handmade, printed on an old Colombia press, with its eagle counterweight (there's a press like it in the new Museum of Scotland), and each one with a unique, hand printed cover.

The book and prints will be for sale in the very pretty Molteno Hall, in the even prettier village of Fortingall, Glen Lyon, Perthshire from 30th July to 7th August.