sharon o young

Birthday celebrations and more walks

2012-01-26T20:28:00.014Z

On Tuesday this week it was my DH's birthday, so over the weekend we had celebrations with the family.

We started off with DD3 and had a beautiful lamb roast and a little too much celebratory wine, so next morning we decided to take ourselves for a nice walk up the hill and down the other side.

And of course it was such hard work we had to have a birthday coffee and cake, well I didn't have the cake as our DD had served a wonderful full English breakfast less than 2 hours before.

On the way back I was looking for pattern shots and took this one in desperation ........

.......not knowing what was in the wood yard just round the next bend.

Apparently they made this in the quiet period, just for fun, isn't that wonderful, it even has inside accommodation.

On our way home, I spotted the "old man's beard" and couldn't resist this shot.

Our next visit was to DD2 who'd been very busy with her children making a birthday cake and cards.

Don't they look proud.

The following day it was the turn of DD1, but before we went there we had another walk and as I thought I'd left my camera with DD2 I had to use my phone to take the next 2 shots, I found it in my hand bag later, another senior moment.

We had a lovely visit to our DD who'd also been baking, and listening to Grandad's tall tales of how old he was to one of her sons.

We had a lovely roast dinner, so no cooking for me again, what a great weekend.

And there's more to come with a very special present soon to arrive from our son for his Dad.

So thank you all so much for a wonderful birthday weekend.

Dungeness again

2012-01-13T10:35:00.008Z

The weather changed and the illnesses retreated so we've escaped to our favourite bolt hole, Dungeness, it's like coming home for me, I start relaxing the minute we drive up the road.

We had a lovely pink sky on Wednesday after we arrived at about 3.0pm

And then the following morning we woke to this sky

It's not a great pic because it was too cold to go outside, so I took it through a dirty window.

This one just epitomises the place.

As does this one

And this was in a deserted garden

and this isn't lace as I first thought, but a star fish !

See you all soon.

A walk in the mud

2012-01-03T20:13:00.013Z

Well what a turn around in the weather. Yesterday was all sunshine and a blessed relief from the grey days of winter, and today was like the end of a hurricane, Im so glad we took advantage of the sun yesterday to get a very muddy walk.

When we saw the state of the path we should have been expecting what came next.

Why didn't I buy those wellies instead of snow boots.

But we trudged on over the field and were finally rewarded with this.

And a little further down the path there was this lovely collection on mini fungi.

I bet these aren't there today after that savage wind.

I couldn't resist these lovely old trees against the such a blue sky, I hope they're still standing.

And lastly on our way back home I spotted this lovely fence that they're laying opposite some very swish allotments that we have our name on the list for, maybe one day.

A belated happy New Year to all the bloggers and family who are kind enough to drop in and browse on my blogs.

A walk in the grey

2011-12-30T20:34:00.007Z

It's very grey around where we live at the moment, but despite my DH nursing a cold and a cough we wrapped up warm and braved a breath of fresh air this morning.

I decided to take my camera despite the gloom and was rewarded with this lovely log, the textures are almost like skin.

And the cows were enjoying the morning, so we felt we should be too.

And on our way home we found a short cut and passed this lovely little brook, so it was worth making the effort. I wonder where we'll go tomorrow.

Celebrations and thank you's

2011-12-28T14:00:00.006Z

Well that seems to be that for another year, onto the new one.

We had a wonderful round trip with our family this year spending time with each our DD's in turn, no cooking or veg prep for us, yippee. Well actually it did feel a bit strange but we both felt very cosseted, thanks to all of you.

To top the festivities off our DD3 hosted a gathering of the clan yesterday which was brilliant and we are very grateful to all her family's efforts to make it go with a swing, including the cleverly devised raffle.

Very popular with all concerned.

As was this wonderful gingerbread house made by our DD2 and her family, it was scrumlicious.

And of course Christmas wouldn't be the same without bucks fizz and smoked salmon on Christmas day morning .

And Father Christmas did come after a very long wait.

Thanks to our wonderful family for making it such special treat this year.

Stuck

2011-12-22T20:38:00.002Z

Hi there! I know everyone is very busy with it being only 1 day to Christmas eve tomorrow, but i just wondered if there were any clever knitters out there that might know how to recreate this diamond pattern as I've forgotten how I did it. As you can see I sketched it out to see how many stitches there were to a diamond and how they work together, but that's as far as I've got.

I'm off to watch The Young Victoria now as my brain needs a rest.

Escaping

2011-12-19T17:25:00.012Z

Having got very bored with being at home by Sunday having been holed due to this:

followed by a 24 hour bug that tuned into a 5 day stay:

We decided to go down to the South coast to a wild life reserve Pagham Harbour . It was bitterly cold but sunny so we took a walk along the estuary trail and while my DH was photographing this little chap,

I was busy photographing this,

you can see why we get on can't you, opposites attract, so they say :-)

But I think we both liked this,

And now to a happy ending. We thought we didn't need a Christmas tree this year as we're in a flat and probably won't be around a lot, but when it came to the festive season proper we realised that it would the first time ever since we've been together that we haven't had one. So I voiced our thoughts to our girls the other weekend and lo and behold our lovely DD3 produced this perfect 6' fibre optic tree, which fits our flat perfectly. Aren't children wonderful, thank you :-) I had to post a video because the lights don't show in the photo.

Happy Christmas

2011-12-11T20:13:00.005Z

Happy Christmas to all the lovely bloggers who've been visiting both my blogs over the past year.
And a big thank you to DD 3 for hosting a brilliant creative weekend.

Pyjama top made yesterday by DD2 for her DD

Something a little more scenic

2011-11-26T10:42:00.011Z

The other weekend we took a trip to Cardiff for a visit to our DS and DIL, and as usual we were treated to a wonderful relaxing time. For once we had some lovely weather and took a walk from the Mumbles to the next town along the coastal path. It was superb, especially as we were treated to a lovely lunch when we got there.

Looking back towards the Mumbles.

Half way there, getting hungry all this lovely fresh air.

And a final walk along the beach for lunch.

I did take a lovely shot of our hosts, but managed to delete all my pics off the camera instead of just one, so these are courtesy of my DH.

Just found this one from the DH collection, our hosts are striding across the beach eagerly anticipating lunch, they must be even hungrier than me!

We were all excited over the weekend as we're expecting another grandchild in March, so it was good to catch up with our DIL in person and know that mum and baby are doing fine. We know he's a boy and he's very active now :-). He will be number 13 for us. So we now have enough for a football team plus reserves LOL.

Thank you both for a great weekend.

And now a creative link for all textile enthusiasts Chelsea degree show
I was so excited when I found their web site, I haven't been this enthusiastic about an exhibition for years, I just wish I'd seen it early enough to go in person.

And finally, how about this for a winter warmer, my DH's corned beef hash...... yummy !

Home again

2011-11-23T20:52:00.006Z

Well Dungie worked her magic and we're back home feeling refreshed, it's such a shame we have to come home via the M25, all those lorries and so much traffic, after spending a few days in 'the land that time forgot' it's a bit of a shock!

This is what they do best there, we had a wonderful fish supper on Monday, I had pan fried whole plaice at the Pilot pub, amazing!

And this is the relaxing way to do it.

And this is where you could live if you have a spare £250,000, I wish!

And this is what gives light to an otherwise black piece of land once it gets dark.

I don't know why we love it, but it always brings us peace and quiet in a sometimes mad world.

But as with everything else these days, nothing is sacred. There are proposals to remove huge amounts of shingle from the beach to protect the power station, there will be up to 50 lorries a day from October to March for 12 years on this wonderful peaceful place, if the powers that be have their way.

Chilling out

2011-11-21T10:20:00.005Z

Dungeness, an unlikely place for R&R I suppose but we love it and come here often when in need of a wind down.

Just a few pics while on quick internet connection.

Bit cold and scary up there.

Alas poor fish.

Good to be back

Flamingos and dinner dates

2010-12-02T20:11:00.009Z

We've not long returned from a nice little 2 centre break in Gloucestershire and South Wales.

We went for a few days to Slimbridge Wetlands Centre. The weather wasn't exactly kind but we made the best of it and had a couple of nice walks round the site. One of my favourite sights were these beautiful colourful flamingos, sich a strange site at a British Wetlands centre.

On one of of walks I persuaded my DH to pose on these stepping stones, well i wasn't going to risk wet feet!

A really lovely surprise was this outside enclosure almost teaming with these tiny Harvest mice, barely 2" long. I've never seen them in the wild so this was a very unexpected treat.

After a few more excisions we made our way to Cardiff to visit our DS and his wife. We had such a lovely relaxing weekend, despite the weather. As we live in the country it's always a very different experience for us to spend time in the city, and Cardiff is a great place, very vibrant with a population that really know how to enjoy life.
I had a very pleasant time in John Lewis, wishing as always that I had a spare couple of grand to spend.

As usual we were spoilt with several great meals both at home and in the city, trying out alternative restaurants like Milgis, with it's DIY art on the walls, a Yurt in the back yard, and great veggie food.

Cardiff Arts Institute was pretty cool too, with its retro sofas and a great rubber glove installation!

I just wish I hadn't forgotten my camera, I could have shown you the window display at All Saints Fashion shop, it was full of old hand sewing machine all lined up on shelves taking up the whole window display.

Of course a visit to Cardiff is never complete without a visit to Craft in the Bay for morning coffee and cake, plus a look in the gallery of course, to give the men suggestions for Christmas presents.

It was so cold that the water round the fountain was frozen.

And having forgotten my camera on Saturday I thought I'd make up for it with this rare unpopulated shot of the Millennium Centre.

We had a great weekend and a big thank you to our thoughtful hosts.

We were pretty glad to get past this stuff though, once we left Wlaes, but if followed us home, and now we're snowed in!

Long silence

2010-11-04T19:31:00.008Z

I can't believe it's been about a month and a half since I last put up a post on this blog. My excuse is that since I started my C&G blog it's been really difficult to run 2.

But help is at hand, I finally saved up enough money to buy a 13" Macbook Pro today and it's divine!!!

It has everything I could want on a laptop for our travels in Connie, the most exciting being a ten hour battery and a back lit keyboard, which has been specially designed to help you make fewer typos. All I need now is to learn how to spell and touch type and I'll be blogging for England!

So I just thought I'd put a few pics of what I've been doing and where we've been.

Halloween's past, Bonfire night next, and then it'll be Christmas.

A new table cloth and napkins made for Connie, to match the tea cosy, I bought.

Dead trees always have that dramatic impact.

Seem to have mislaid the rest of my pics at the moment, but will find them soon!

Hope to be back soon.

Proud parents

2010-09-21T16:17:00.006+01:00

Just wanted to share a proud parent moment, when we watched a lovely programme on BBC 1 Wales last night that our son Dan has edited.

Not being golfers ourselves we were surprised to find what a wonderful story there was to be told about 5 Welshman "who have played in the world's biggest team golf competition," the Ryder Cup.

If you have even a slight interest in golf I know you will love this beautifully crafted programme. I'm not biased of course, but the cuts and music choice were perfect and often funny, just the right combination of brevity and humour. It made us proud to be British as it exemplified our 'Bull Dog ' spirit and a refusal to give up in the face adversity.

You can view it here on BBC iplayer

Well done Dan and the team.

Nice surprise and Dungeness

2010-08-31T19:41:00.017+01:00

Today my friend Shirley and I went to the Guildford Institute in Surrey to make the final arrangements for a 3 week exhibition we're having there. When we walked into reception I caught sight of some paperwork behind the desk that had my painting on it. After enquiring why, from the receptionist, she smiled and said "Oh haven't you seen it?" And it turned out to be their Autumn event and course catalogue. I was really pleased as this was a first, but then I looked at the credit inside, only to find my fellow exhibitor's name and misspelled too........ Oh well it still looks nice.

So if any one's in the area do drop in, they do a great lunch there and Guildford's a pretty good town for shopping.

The weekend before last we went to the amazing Dugeness Spit in Kent. To those of you who don't know it, its a shingle area of land that's unique in Europe and is the nearest thing we have to a desert in Britain. It's growing at the amazing rate of 8' per year.

It's definitely one of those places you either love or hate. For us it was love at first sight.

Now this may sound strange when the area is bleak with nothing but huts and ships and fishing paraphernalia as far as the eye can see.

With a power station at the end of the road.

But it's this very bleakness that has drawn people to live here, some of whom have embraced the stark beauty of the place and used it to fuel their artistic imaginations.

The little white hut with the bunting is an amazing studio for displaying this artist's work as is his front garden.

What a great way for beach rubbish to end up.

And this is the artist Derek Jarman's cottage.

And some of his amazing sculptures.

Us on the beach being blown around by 40mph gusty winds.

With all the decaying fishing equipment on the beach there were plenty of wonderful textures to be had.

I have no idea what this is, but it made me want to sketh it.

On the third day of our stay it rained quite hard on and off and the clouds were changing all the time so I stayed put in my cosy mobile studio and tried to capture the bleakness of the place.

We were so impressed with the quiet of the place and the lovely people that live there, so tolerant of visitors poring over their landscape, that we're going back up on our next trip, so hopefully the weather will be kind and we can find some more inspirational ideas for our artwork.

Fitting everything in

2010-08-18T14:47:00.019+01:00

You'd think wouldn't you, that when you get past 60 time would sort of melt away and you'd just be able to amble along each day doing whatever you fancied...........no chance!! Life seems to just get busier or I get more side tracked.

Well anyway I've managed to find a few moments to do some blogging, some necessary as part of my Diploma, which has now taken a very interesting turn into 3D land (or should that read lala land) judge for yourself. You never know when you head off into the unknown, whether your bordering on discovery or just 'lost in space'.

Half the reason I'm an absent blogger at the moment is the fact that we spend a lot of time with our newest family member, Connie.

I don't think she was too impressed to be used as a washing line, spoiling her beautiful lines :-)

We were away as usual the w/e before last at Singleton Open air Museum and I took the opportunity to use the camera again. Which I'm happy to say I'm getting used to.

There was a production of 'The Firework maker's daughter' being held in the grounds (unfortunately for us all tickets were sold out), but I took some shots of the wonderful lanterns as consolation.

This one had a 'fish eye' filter put on it in-camera.

These delightful waterlilies were also part of the show and of course had to be manipulated in the camera, just for fun.

I only wish I knew what part this gruesome thing had to play in the production

And these by contrast were lovely in the sunlight

Cyanotype anyone?

And just so I can join in Gina's sketchbook project I had to do a couple of 5 minuters.

There was a repeat on TV last night about the Nation's favourite flower, at the time I couldn't think of one, now I remember, I love it and every year I try to photograph it, and this year I think I got better.

And just to make the w/e perfect, how's this for a view from our secret wild camping lay-by. We had a quieter night than we would have done with our neighbours at home.

I'd just like to say good luck to all those taking part in the FOQ challenge that West Country Buddah set up last year. Hope all goes well for you, and sorry I couldn't take part after all.

Relaxing weekend

2010-08-04T21:14:00.013+01:00

After all the excitement of the exhibition, we thought we needed a nice relaxing weekend in our favourite town of Arundel. I think our children think we have shares in the tourist industry there as we spend quite a lot of our free time there.

I've been trying to get to grips my new Nikon D5000 for a while now, so thought I'd use the w/e to take a few shots. I've been using an old 80-200mm lense which is great quality but I can only use it on manual focus, so that's a bit of a challenge.

Someone had a sense of humour

A lovely summer evening

Some in-camera editing

Best foot forward

My ideal place to live, watching the river traffic while you dine

And of course a bit of texture.

And while sitting here I took my best shot of the day

Lastly a bit of the creative stuff...... "the mind rolls in in ever widening circles in order to progress through the jungle of creative paths, in an attempt to find the one that fits us best."

More info here

More fun on the roller coaster

2010-07-27T15:03:00.003+01:00

I'm getting ever closer to the finish of Module 1 on my C&G Diploma course, and I do think I've made progress on this last chapter here.

Love it or hate it the above sample is certainly a leap outside the box for me.

Good finish

2010-07-26T20:35:00.003+01:00

Thanks so much to all who commented on our exhibition, your enthusiasm and encouragement was much appreciated.

We had a great finish with lots more visitors than we expected and all made good sales.

We're already planning our Christmas one in mid November and are hoping to move into our local town of Farnham, where the museum has a newly erected Garden gallery, fingers crossed for a good visit in a week or two.

Private View

2010-07-24T20:57:00.003+01:00

Well here I am all dressed up, well casually, my interpretation of 'arty', (wearing my lovely b/day wrap from my DS, bought back from his holiday in Dubai) for our private View, pics here.

We had a great time and I was delighted to sell a large piece on the night another one today.

Hope tomorrow goes as well.

Alice Holt Artists Summer exhibition

2010-07-22T21:26:00.006+01:00

Our little group of artists has expanded this year from 3 to 4. We now have a lovely ceramic and glass artist Claire who does some amazing work and we are very happy to have her with us.

We're exhibiting in a new venue this year, very close to where we live so that will be handy.

As I was in the throws of revamping my web site I decided to open anotherblog so visitors could see some of my work before or after the show.

I know most of you will live too far away, but if anyone is in the area do drop in we'd love to see you.

Still on a French theme

2010-07-15T15:02:00.018+01:00

I decided to take a short break to catch up with my everyday blog, as opposed to my C&G blog, which has just taken me an unbelievable 4 hours to update the new chapter. I can only assume that my brain, which has never been the fastest on the block, has now decided to go on OAP mode, hmmmm! (actually no disrespect to other OAP's, I think this is more a me thing.

Anyway as it would take forever to post up even some of the pics from our recent French holiday, so I thought I'd post some of my journal entries. I'm a real newbie when it comes to creative journaling and tend to go for the obvious on most of my pages, so those of you who have wonderful examples, these are more modest offerings.

This was made with the lovely bread wrappers you get for your bagettes, and pics from promotional leaflets.

and here's me working in my portable studio :-)

.........and the result, dadah!

And the wonderful Chambord !

Not forgetting the glorious opportunity I had to sketch there, transporting me into another unseen world.

Oh! and how could I forget the magical, privately owned, slightly distressed Chateau De la Ferte Saint Aubin, where we lived the dream for a day, ahhh! what a life, I knew I was destined for aristocracy !!!!!!!

Sorry about the sideways recipe in the middle if the page here , but it's the back of the previous page's PC and I couldn't think of a more inventive way to show both sides, so had to cut a hole in the page, I told you I was a newbie :-(

And what a wonderful surprise this was, beautiful church wall paintings, so vibrant and skilfully painted. ( I've looked and seen I've mentioned these before, so apologies, here's some more.)

And a little bit of crafting. I got to use my mini sewing machine on holiday and the first thing I made was a quilted bag for my Polaroid Pogo printer that I bought for the holiday, it's a wicked little toy, perfect for journaling on the go.

And a plastic bag holder.

And some glass covers so they don't rattle in the cups, while in transit, my DH has a major aversion to rattles, in common with most men I suspect!

What about this for real luxury sewing, shame the shop was closed.

This pics's especially for my DD2 who loves dressing her youngest DD in traditional smocked dresses, but she'd have to pay a cool 65 euros for this one!

And just to finish off I had to include this pic, how often do you get your DH to sit on a toadstool, although he does make rather an oversised elf :-)

French holiday pics

2010-06-28T20:41:00.001+01:00

At last my feet have finally touched terra firma after our wonderful French holiday and I have been able to process a few more pics.

We started our holiday in the Loire valley with one of our daughters and her family, and here they are minus big brother, who thought it would be far too boring to come with us, so stayed behind, girl watching with his cousin.

We spent a lovely day at this chateau, which was completely unsupervised and relied on trust that visitors would be respectful. As a result we had an amazing insight into life as it would have been lived in the 17oo’s.

In the attic rooms we found a beautiful old school room which kept the youngest member amused, even if we did think the hat might mean something to do with bad behaviour. I was also lucky enough to spend my actual b/day on holiday, so of course we had to have a champagne celebration. And presents.

The birthday cake was good too :-) We followed my birthday celebrations with a visit to a

local village with lots of lovely art/craft shops but they were mostly shut as it was Thursday………….. shame.

And then there was my summer residence to visit of course. I wish.

How about these lovely curtains, they’re all over the region, but these were behind coloured glass, beautiful.

Finally before we left we popped into the village church and were stunned to find these amazing wall paintings.

I’m trying out Windows Live Writer for the first time, so I’m hoping it will publish this post Ok. It’s nice to see how your post looks with the pics and i think it’s a bit quicker too.

Home again

2010-06-17T21:37:00.007+01:00

We're back again, after a wonderful 3 week trip to France, the Loire Valley and the Nomandie, Brittany coast.

I took over 1000 pics so that'll keep me quiet for a while, did a bit of sketching and journaling and used my new mini sewing machine to make accessories for our new van, Connie.

This is just a preliminary post as I've been busy catching up on coursework on my other blog here, here's a taster of what I'm up to.

And a couple of holiday pics of my favourite chateau, Chambord, I'm in love with it.

And of course a pic of the sea.

Will post again soon.

Showered with flowers

2010-05-18T21:08:00.008+01:00

A couple of weeks ago I received this beautiful bouquet from my DD2, it came with its own glass vase and and a box of delicious chocs.
We were going away in our new motorhome, Connie, and I couldn't bear to miss a couple of days without them so I took them with me, just because I could. Perhaps I should explain, since my DH became semi retired we've adopted this new moto "just becaues we can", it seems to fit our new life just right :-)

As we'll be away in France for my B/day I decided it would be nice to go out for Sunday lunch last W/E, so we took ourselves and our DD's to a lovely local pub called the Cider House.

And here I am with my lovely girls, our son and his wife couldn't make it this time, but we will see them in July.

And the girls and their Dad.

I had some lovely cards and presents, chocs, and more lovely flowers, plus a subscription to Embroidery magazine, which I've wanted for ages. I even had a lovely hand made card from some of my Grandchildren.

And from my DH I had this delightful mini sewing machine, small enough to stow away in our motorhome, so no excuse now not to get on with those Diploma samples. It really is a sweet piece of kit and it matches the upholstery in the motorhome. I've read that under the JL bonnet is a Janome and I'm not surprised, for something so small it handles really well indeed.

So thanks to everyone for making it such a lovely early birthday.

And on to Taunton

2010-05-03T10:10:00.022+01:00

After we left Cardiff we went straight to Taunton in Somerset for a camping/motorthome holiday with DD2 and 4 of her children.

Setting up DD2's enormous tent.

One hour later, all done and ready for the wine.

We had a brilliant holiday doing lots of things we’d wanted to do, but not really had the time, or the inclination, as you don’t when the children have grown up.

We went on a lovely Steam railway trip from Crowcombe Heathfield station, which was about a mile from our campsite to Minehead. It took about an hour and was a lovely nostalgic trip for me, as I used to go to school on steam train, and wave to the drivers as the train passed the end of my garden.

The walk to the station was OK but there were some very tired legs on the way back and not just mine.

Here comes the train at last.

All aboard!!!

Posing for the camera.

It was quite a cold day on the beach but the children had a great time even if Mum was feeling the cold a bit, after loosing all that weight.

But the children didn't notice.

I was also lucky enough to get to see Face to Face, an exhibition of textile pieces by Stitch Textile Artists a group that my tutor Sian Martin formed in 1999, which was being held in Taunton. The work was very inspiring and as a distance learning student it was lovely to meet my tutor in person and have a good chat.

Sian's piece, which I believe was inspired by the birth of her granddaughter.

Music Hall Veronica Broadley

I don't know the artist, but I was drawn to this piece as I had worked with a face recently on my course and this reminded and inspired me.

We only had one day where the weather was really overcast, and it would have to be the day we decided to visit Dunster castle, which sits on the top of a very high hill, and I think that day the wind was probably coming straight off the Arctic Tundra. Still, the children enjoyed doing the NT quiz and playing the historic games that were on show for the day.

On a couple of the really warm days we had lovely BBQ’s on the camp site and had toasted marshmallows and strawberries dipped in chocolate, something I could definitely get used to.

Another real treat was organised for us by our DD when she took out a 3 day membership for the site gym, which had a wonderful spa, sauna and steam room, very welcome at the end of a day’s busy sightseeing and walking.

We found a great local small seaside resort where there was a craft shop that was supplied by several local makers and had wonderful knitted goods and children’s dresses, so of course we had to have nice long visit there while Granddad looked after the children, as you can see above they had a great time.

We also had a wonderful lunch there too, all home cooked to order.

On our last day we went back to Minehead as our DD was determined to have proper fish and chips, as she hadn’t had any for over a year. We had a lovely day on the beach and all came back tired but happy.

And while we were there I made a few sketches for my coursework and you can see what they were for here if you're interested.

It was a great holiday and lovely to spend quality time with our DD and her children, thank you to all of you for making it such a special trip.

Family holidays

2010-04-27T20:01:00.011+01:00

We've been so busy since my last post, I feel as if I've barely been home.
We left home the day after my last post on 9th April and have been holidaying with our children almost ever since.

We went to Cardiff to visit our son and his wife on the Saturday morning and had a lovely chilled out weekend. We went to a new gallery that we hadn't been to before and as you can see I started my chilling out straight away.

As we were leaving I noticed these amazing figures on the next door building which happened to be a Chinese Christian church.

After having a lovely lunch, followed up by some retail therapy, which is always enjoyable in Cardiff, we took a stroll back through the park where everyone was enjoying the Spring sunshine at last.

In the evening we all went to see Alice in Wonderland in 3D, which was brilliant and of course I had to get the pic of us all wearing the Michael Caine glasses.

On Sunday morning it was time to pay our usual visit to Crafts in the Bay where I had to buy my copy of Embroidery and some hand dyed silks.

But not before a delicious coffee and cake of course.

So a belated thanks to our lovely hosts as usual and we're already looking forward to them coming to visit us in July.

After leaving Cardiff we went to Taunton to start a weeks camping/motorhoming with DD2 and her children, next post.

Proud Mum and Dad

2010-04-07T21:05:00.005+01:00

The weekend before last our DD2 made us very proud when, following in her dad's footsteps, she ran her first 10k race in out local FC woodlands.
And this was her post on Facebook a few hours later
"Race results online! I came in at 53.02 - 27th out of 248 women who finished the 10K. Ecstatic with that for my first run :)))))"

We couldn't be more proud of her as this is the culmination of a long haul since January 2009 to loose weight and get herself fit. She has now lost over 7 stone and is achieving amazing results in her weight lifting routines, and general fitness regime.

What an achievement, well done Hannah.

Needless to say the waiting got a bit boring for the younger members of the family who came to give Mum some support.

Thought you might like to see how I spend my weekends, supporting my DH, well sometimes!

But it was worth it, he had 3 like this one.

".........because Nanny misses Bently"

2010-03-22T20:37:00.009Z

Out of the mouths of babes......

My DD's and I had our belated coffee morning on Thursday and they gave me their lovely Mother's Day presents. I was extremely touched when my DD2 told me that when she went to buy my card her youngest DD, who's just turned 4 said she must buy me this lovely card, "because Nanny misses Bently", how's that for sensativity. And what a thoughtful present, just right for all the trips we can now make in our third age. I love those flamingos.

My DD1 bought me a beautiful early morning tea cup from the V&A designer collection, inspired by William Morris wallpaper, and of course my favourite chocs, all presented in this delightful bag.

And DD 3 bought me a lovely breakfast of Earl Grey tea and toasted tea cake and jam, what a lucky Mummy I am.

We do miss our lovely old dog it's true, and at the moment with our trips out we seem to see nothing but dog walkers, but I think in our hearts we both know that we have to give it time before we commit to another family member to care for, but it doesn't make the hole any smaller.

For now though I think I have plenty of things to keep me busy and our trips to the seaside have been wonderfully inspiring for my new course.

Here's a few more inspiration pics from our travels.

You can see where I took this here

And this is what they look like in closeup, definitely one for the texture file.

Mother's away

2010-03-16T18:03:00.011Z

I wasn't home for Mother's Day this year, instead I was chilling out at , yes you've guessed, at the "Seaside". Well where better to do some creative research.
However, the bush telegraph must have done it's job and I received these gorgeous flowers and divine little chocs yesterday from my DS.

I shall be off for coffee my DD's on Thursday so I think I've got the best of all worlds.

We went to Littlehampton, which for those of you who don't know it, is on the South coast and is about an hour's drive from us.
My quest for beech inspiration proved fruitful , with these super beech huts all laid out in charming crescents.

And how about this for some mad beech sculpture, it's a cafe!!

I was trying to capture the rhythm of the waves going in and out, but this was the best I could do, still it's a nice pattern shot.

And here's a fish recipe for you, I thought this was pretty clever, there were at least 2 others with different recipes.

We were finally treated to this wonderful sunset before we went home.

And before that I had the chance for some sketching, so not a bad day, all in all.

For those of you who were kind enough to say you'd be interested in following my progress on the diploma, I've put up my first post here.

I'm gradually finding my old routines again and want to get back into regular contributions on the blog scene, so please be patient as I try to find moments in this new regime to surf around and comment on your blogs, in the meantime thanks to all those who've stayed with me and commented on my erratic posts, it's much appreciated.

News and catching up

2010-03-08T20:28:00.010Z

Thank you to all who sent my OH birthday wishes, it was much appreciated.

We've been incredibly busy getting used to our new life in semiretirement, my OH only works one day a week now, so we've been enjoying the novelty of going out mid week as well as the w/e, so not much time for 'at home' creative stuff. Still I'm sure we'll calm down when we get used to it and the novelty's worn off.

We had a lovely w\e in Kent a couple of weeks ago and took one of our Grandsons along too, so here's a few pics of us enjoying retirement.

I just loved the colours of these beech huts, which have now become quite significant, as I'll explain later.

Our grandson fishing for clams, and nearly getting a soaking.

Us enjoying a quiet w/e at Bognor

And a bit of beech sculpture

The end of a very happy day

And now to a bit of creative stuff. It was DD1's birthday last month and she said she wanted something handmade, so after much thought I decided to make a jewellery roll for her w/e's away, thanks to Kathy's great instructions.

It was quite a hit, so I think there'll be a few more in the pipeline as well as one for me.

And finally to the Big News, I've signed up to do my C&G Diploma embroidery with Sian Martin at her online textile school, Distant Stitch. I've just received my first module where I've been asked to choose a theme for the duration of the course and have decided on 'the seaside'. I'm really excited to be working from my own inspirational source this time. I've set up a separate blog which I'll link to so you can follow my progress if you want to.
I can't wait to have something to blog about.

Another 60th Birthday

2010-01-26T20:06:00.014Z

Last weekend saw my DH reach the same milestone as me, his 60th birthday.

In true family tradition our children hired a cottage in the New Forest that was big enough to accommodate our dynasty of 20!

We were welcomed with an amazing banner made by DD1 and her family.

Fortunately the cottage had been an old Estate bothy and the huge Victorian greenhouse had been converted into an enormous dining room, just perfect for all of us to have wonderful family meals.

The children had great fun making a den in the large garden as well as playing football, as we now have enough grandchildren to make up our own team :-)

Being right in the heart of the Forest we had plenty of opportunity for lovely walks and for my DH to play on his improvised seesaw. I always said that inside every man there's a five year old boy trying to get out.

On Saturday evening our DD3 gave a lovely reading from a 'this is your life' book that she compiled for her Dad with many hilarious anecdotes, some of which had been long forgotten and lovingly remembered. And of course a lovely tribute to a wonderful Father and husband.

Later that evening we let off some Chinese lanterns that our SIL 1 had got specially for the occasion and we all made our wishes as we sent them into the sky.

On Sunday, my DH's birthday, we had a traditional Sunday lunch and afterwards had the Birthday cake, his favourite chocolate gateaux.

And our youngest grandchild seemed to think it was his favourite too when he stuffed the biggest piece of chocolate icing in his mouth that he could manage.

And finally to his present. Of course it couldn't possibly have been anything else, as he's such a keen carp fisherman, it had to be the best and the biggest bed chair on the market :-)

So all in all it was a wonderful weekend, my DH said it was the best birthday he's ever had, so not a bad way to start your third age.

It was a great privilege to once again be treated to an amazing weekend by our wonderful children and their partners, we're both very proud of them and feel extremely blessed to have such a wonderful family.

Christmas and beyond

2010-01-10T19:45:00.021Z

I can't believe it's been nearly a month since I posted, but then again that Christmas thing does seem to take over.

I suddenly got very busy making things with my latest new toy, which seems to have taken up a lot of my time since I bought it, the embroidery unit that is.

I made little bags for all the grown up girls in the family with computerised designs on them while I discovered some of the machine's previously hidden secrets. It took me 7 designs and much help and encouragement from the Bernina Central forum but at last I achieved a near perfect stitched design. Unfortunately I was in such a rush to wrap the Christmas presents I forgot to take pics, so no creative stuff from me this post.

Christmas was a wonderful family affair this year with a lovely Christmas day meal hosted by DD3 in her new house. No detail was overlooked in the lunch preparation, we all had beautiful place settings and even personal favors.

Of course us girls set to with the veg prep and used the the time for a good catch up.

L-R DD3 our DIL and me.

Meanwhile the men were on baby watch.

Or maybe not, "........now if she just lets go I'll be off then"

We had a great day and it was lovely not to have the responsibility of lunch, thanks to all who made it possible.

Granddad, youngest GS and big brother and Nanny, all shattered after a hectic day.

Boxing Day was busy too with a lovely party hosted by DD2, and we had a great Christmas tea with DD3 on the day before Christmas Eve, so the only cooking I did was on Christmas Eve for our DS and our lovely DIL.

And so to the snow, hmmmm......... it's getting extremely tedious now and seems to have prolonged that horrible flat feeling you get when Christmas is over. I can't seem to shake myself out of creative lethargy, I feel 'winter tired'.

But it has to be said, when the sun's on it, it really does look like a magical wonderland. Here's some pics of the forest around our home, where we've been marooned for a week.

Happy New year to everyone, hope it 's a successful and creative one.

Crafty stuff and socks

2009-12-12T20:08:00.011Z

We had our annual craft Fayre at My DH's work place on Tuesday, so I was quite busy getting my contribution ready for it all last week.

I belong to the knitting group and our challenge was to make miniature stockings just big enough for a chocolate. I managed 4, which doesn't sound very many, but they take about 2 hrs each by the time you've sewn them up and made the hanger.

For my own table I made a patchwork cushion with the patchwork packs that I've been selling on my Etsy shop.

It worked well as I sold 3 packs when people realised that they could make a whole cushion front with the 25 squares, relatively easily, and it was nice to see them get excited about having a simple, pleasing textile project to get their teeth into.

I also made a couple of small FME pieces, having been inspired by the Talking Threads program that's been on Sky TV recently.

Too much watching Meerkat Manor on TV

And a couple more pieces went off for Chrismas presents too, which was nice.

At last!! I finished my socks!!

Creative weekend

2009-11-30T17:45:00.009Z

This weekend my 3 DD's and myself treated ourselves to a creative retreat as my DH was off on a boys w/e at an RSPB reserve.

The girls all had lovely ideas for things to make and had been looking forward to the w/e for several weeks.

My DD1 wanted to make an advent calendar like the one I made for them when they were young, and this is the gorgeous result she came up with.

I know her children will just love it tomorrow.

My DD3 decided that it was time her little son had something more than a feather duster to ride around the house on after he'd been watching the horses pass by their window every day.

I think he'll be one happy little chap on Christmas day, don't you? He's also got some lovely bunting and bags for his new bedroom.

My DD2 decided to take a well earned break from fabrics and join her Mum and Grandmother in our passion for knitting.

We were all ready for a lovely feast on Saturday evening and started the meal with this baked camembert.

My DD's work extremely hard juggling work commitments with caring for their families and it was lovely to be able to spoil them a little bit over the w/e and see their wonderful creative talents blossom.
Thanks for making it sooo..... special, can't wait for the next one.

Alice Holt Artists Christmas show 09

2009-11-23T19:43:00.010Z

It's that time of year again!
I can't beleive we've just staged our annual Christmas art show agian. Doesn't time fly.

As usual my DH Mike, myself and our friend Shirley, whose web site is in the making, had a great show at the Forestry Commission, for the third year running.

I was pleased to have put together 18 pieces most of which were new work, and some were pieces that I'd completed on my C&G.

As ever Mike had plenty of work to show and a lovely selection of his African pictures, which proved very popular.

Shirley's Lino prints looked beautiful and I'm rather hoping I might get her lovely Heron, in the foreground, in my Christmas stocking :-)

I was pleased to sell my first mini quilt, especially as I was told it was a Christmas present for an interior designer.

The punk on the left was also a Christmas present for someone's brother.

The lizard was a new lino print, the inspiration for which came from our African safari, so it was particularly satisfying to sell it, as I have decided to return to my lino printing after being very inspired by Shirley'e lovely work.

It was also nice to sell African inspirations, on the left, as I'm planning to make my quilt for the FOQ 2010 on this theme.

It was lovely to meet up with lots of people and have the chance to display some new work, to an enthusiastic audience.

2 thank yous

2009-11-09T19:54:00.015Z

First of all I'd like to say a big thank you to all those lovely people who sent messages of comfort to us, on the parting of our lovely old dog. We are still missing him hugely, but are coming to terms with it and trying to remember the fun times we had together.

I had meant to post about our lovely w/e with our DS and DW, in Cardiff on 31st.

We arrived with them after they finished work on the Friday and had a lovely meal of Vegetable Wellington, followed by Pecan pie, cooked by our DIL, after her hard days work, it was a great treat, and very much appreciated

The following morning I started my day in perfect fashion, with a swim and spa (part of their complex facilities) and then of course we had to make our pilgrimage to Craft in the Bay where we all had yummy cakes and coffee.

I spotted this wonderful embroidery by Louise Gardiner , one day when I'm very rich I'd like to have a series of her pieces, they'd make me smile every day.

After that we went off to Roath Park for a lovely walk around the lake, which is huge for a town lake.

And here's the happy couple.

The Autumn colour was brilliant.

And how about this for shear textural magic.

And pattern.......

After we'd had our fill of the gardens we had a look at the new shopping centre in Cardiff, John Lewis is amazing, can't wait for another visit.

Then on the way back I spotted this amazing shoe shop, sadly too old for most of these now.

For our evening entertainment our DS had spotted a 'Light up the night" extravaganza at Dyffryn gardens, but what we hadn't expected was lots of very excited children all dressed up waiting to be spooked on Halloween. It was brilliant, lots of shrieks and blood curdling screams from witches and ghouls, plus the amazing spectacle of the garden lit up at night.

And then on the back to the car we spotted this!

We finished off the evening with a lovely meal at Penarth and were lucky enough to have table with a sea view.

I started Sunday the same way as Saturday and we both felt really chilled out and thoroughly spoilt when we left for Redditch to pick up my CHF exhibition piece.

So a belated thanks to you both for a stunning w/e.

Saying goodbye

2009-11-05T13:42:00.002Z

On Monday my DH and I had to say goodbye to our lovely old dog Bentley who was nearly 12 years old.

He had had a progressive paralysis of his back legs, which had been working its way up from his toes to his spine for the past couple of years, and he finally collapsed on Monday and couldn't be moved from our van.

The house is very quiet without him, he used to bark loudly at anything that moved at the end of the garden and frequently got a telling off for it, and now I would love to lean out of the window and tick him off.

He was a great friend, listening patiently to all my woes over the last 11 years. He never blamed me for bad moods, just waited till I felt better and was ready to pet him.

He was a big dog with an even bigger heart and we miss him hugely.

Patchwork packs launch

2009-10-23T19:03:00.008+01:00

As I mentioned in my last post, I was going to make up some patchwork packs from the left over fabrics of my DD1's baby carrier business.

Well I've posted the first pack on my Etsy shop

These are the patterns I've selected for the first pack, so do pop across to see the details if you're interested.

And now to the draw, courtesy of my DH, looking suitably impartial :-)

Coincidentally it was Laura who won, which is really weird as I won her draw last week. I'll send a different pack so as not to spoil the surprise Laura, unless you really want this one.

This and that

2009-10-19T19:32:00.009+01:00

The other weekend we went for a lovely bike ride around Hayling Island. There's a very good cycle track along the beach and along the way I found this wonderful Sea Holly.

I liked it so much that I did a copy in sepia (in the camera), I was quite pleased with the way it came out.

On the way round we saw this wonderful charred log, it was a pity someone had set light to it, but then there wouldn't have been this lovely texture.

We stayed for the day and were treated to this lovely sunset, anyone who knows the area will recognise the Spinnaker Tower in Portsmouth in the distance.

It was a lovely day, but we certainly knew we were out of cycling practice the next day.

With the sudden onset of cold weather I've decided to make my socks a priority, and have sucessfully turned the heel on the first one, hooray!!!!!

Likewise my jacket seems to be a good idea too, it'll be a long project though, I've jut got to page 3 of 10 pages of instructions.

The interfacing's in and the darts successfully negotiated.

The lapels have been pad stitched and the roll line set to make them roll back. I was very impressed with the pattern instructions, it even told you to pad stitch the conners of the lapelsin a different direction and size so they turned into the body of the jacket. Hmmm!!!!!! clever.

Finally, and unbelievably it was my second blog B/day yesterday, I can't beleive I've been blogging for 2 years. It's been really great, I've learned so much from everyone and had such wonderful support, thank you all so much.

I'm going to start making patchwork packs of the lovely fabrics that my DD1 uses for her Connecta baby carriers and put them up for sale on my Etsy shop, so if anyone would like a pre sale pack just put a comment here and I'll put your name in the hat for my blog b/day. I'll draw it on Friday.

Shopping therapy and goodies in the post

2009-10-14T19:54:00.010+01:00

I had a lovely visit to the Knitting and Stitch show on Sunday with DD2. We had a great girlie day out and both spent 'loads of dosh', as you do! I heard lots of conversations at the end of the day regarding hiding credit card receipts etc., but then it is only once a year.

I thought I'd make quite sure I had enough projects to do for the next year, or 3, so bought some lovely skirt fabric, some superfine woven interfacing, wonderful stuff, a fat quarter from the African fabric stand, for my present project, and lastly this gorgeous hat and hand warmer pattern in the softest alpaca wool.

Last year I was really disappointed not to get a Clover iron and everywhere I went they said they were being discontinued, so I was thrilled to bits when I saw this one for sale on one of the stands.

And lastly I couldn't go to the show and not buy a book, could I, so this year I just had to have 2, well, it would have been rude not to :-)

We both arrived home absolutely exhausted, but had a lovely day, how lucky am I to have DD's who all love working with textiles.

I've had some lovely goodies in the post too, firstly this gorgeous PC from Sandy which was her entry for September Calendar Girls challenge. We had a Hundertwasser painting for inspiration this month.

And this was my interpretation, I went for lollipop flowers instead if trees.

Sandy also very kindly included this gorgeous fat quarter with my PC, I love it.

Finally I was delighted to be the winner of Laura's give-away and received this lovely bag and stamp in the post this morning, thank you so much.

Moving on

2009-10-07T19:28:00.009+01:00

My explorations into the African project have taken a couple of diversion at the moment.

The first being a suggestion from Laura to make a 12x12 quilt for the Colours of Africa project. I had meant to do something before I went to Tanzania, so having experienced a little of the African culture I was really ready to have a go. It's an amazing project, so if any one has some free time to help I know it will be much appreciated, you can see some of the work that's already been submitted on the blog.

It's not quite finished as you can see, I think I will add a little bit of hand stitching before I bind it.

The second diversion was as invitation to join The West country Budda group in making quilts for next years FOQ, which is very exciting and a great motivator, so thanks to Annabel for setting that up.

As a result I'm still exploring different ideas in my sketch book and decided to have a go at lino printing for the first time in many years. I bought a piece of wrapping paper on holiday and it was decorated with lots of lovely lino cuts, one of which was this great little lizard.

I wasn't too happy with the colours so went back to the original source to see if I could improve on it.

I do love the expression of the male dancer in the top pic, I'd like to think of a way of incorporating this in one of my designs.

I bought a Kuba Cloth at one of the lodges and have found it very insprirational, I love the way it's been pieced. I tried to incorporate the visible turnings into my design for the quilt but found it too cumbersome to work three layers with it, so I think that will have to be a separate project.

Creative spurt

2009-09-28T19:52:00.012+01:00

I don't know if it's the thought of winter coming or just a general creative surge after a rest period, but I'm feeling very energised at the moment. I've finally managed to get back into the routine of taking my 2 dedicated creative days a week and have found that really helpful. I never quite know how the day will pan out but I find it a good discipline to stick with the project and see what happens.

I'm gradually moving the African project forward and as a result of my sketch book experiments, I've moved into stitch earlier than I usually do, which is a good sign, maybe I'm becoming more confident, who knows.

Anyway I wanted to see if my paperwork plan would work in reality, so I took some fabrics as close to the original colours as possible and started to work the appliqué patches. Despite having a couple of hand dyed samples, thanks to a swap with Françoise, I wasn't happy with the colours and knew I'd have to dye some fabrics to the colour scheme I'd worked out.

It was such a lovely day I did it outside so I could make a mess with impunity. I used Procion dyes, using the immersion method as I'd run out of Urea and couldn't paint on the dye as I usually do.

The colours came out paler than I would have liked, so I'm now wondering if I should have left them in the dye bath for longer (more than an hour) or put in more dye. My dyes are about 10 years old so it could have been that too. Still, I like these shades so will experiment with them.

Still on a roll I decided to dye my sock wool that I bought back in the Spring. It was pack with the dyes included to be done in the microwave, I couldn't believe how easy it was, can't wait to knit it up now.

And finally I decided to dig out the tailored jacket that I started before the C&G, and have now decided to finish it.

Oh! and plus I blocked my jumper at last today, so now I can sew it up, phew I feel tired just thinking about all of this.

New African project

2009-09-22T19:40:00.008+01:00

At last I've been able to get back into the studio after the hectic goings on for the past few months.

Having been so inspired by our holiday in Tanzania I had to make a start with a new sketch book to flesh out some ideas of where I wanted to go with it.

I started with a double spread looking at the various influences I had found exciting, from the people and textiles to the animals. I set the page on a brown Parker ink base ( that I knew would bleach), because it reminded me of the African dusty soil.

From here I went on to look at the colours and designs that the Massai use in their clothing and jewellery. I was also struck by the fact that they use quite a lot of found objects to add to the beading, such as fragments of Coak cans that shine like precious metals in the sun. Their colours and patterns are very bold by Western standards, so I may have think quite hard about the colour pallet that I want to use.

I noticed these wonderful cushion covers in one of the lodges and recognised them as Shoowa cut pile embroidery made by the Kuba people of Zaire. It was great to see them and feel the rough texture of the raphia panels, as I'd studied these textiles on the C&G.
I thought I might use the designs to develop a print, either paper or cloth and maybe experiment with a starch resist.

These cloths, also Kuba, and made with raphia, had been used for lampshades in another lodge. They consist of strips that are joined together with the seams exposed and have various appliquéd shapes. I had the idea to maybe create a coloured version of this using the colours I'd seen in the Massai blankets, and also using the sewing machine to construct it. I wondered what the people would do with our textiles and machines if they had them at their disposal. Maybe they'd wonder why we bother to spend so much time, energy and money, in setting up a machine to do what they do naturally and with virtually no equipment.

As you see I'm a long way from making any decisions yet, but at the moment I'm just enjoying the feeling that I can take this any way I want to, be it a paper print, a painting, or a textile piece.

Freedom exhibition

2009-09-14T19:31:00.011+01:00

Well the day came at last on Saturday for the 20 finalists of the Charles Henry Foyle Trust Award for Stitched textiles to see our work on display and find out who had won the coveted prizes.

The standard of the entries was extremely high with several finalists having completed their BA's and pushing on to MA's or finishing them, so it was no surprise the that the stunning winning entry was an MA graduate/student (I'm not sure if she has finished her course) of Nottingham Trent University.
Her name is Donna Rumble-Smith and her piece was called 'Casting a Line'. She had used nylon monofilaments and other yarns 'to create a net that would catch technical words and sayings used, and observations made by both fishermen and embroiderers'

The piece was strung across an area of the Needle Museum the made it feel as if it was in perfect harmony with the surroundings, and gave the total 'wow factor'.

As some of you will know, I decided to make a hat for my entry and this was my entry in the catalogue.

On receiving the invitation to make a piece on the theme of Freedom, my first thoughts were ‘creative freedom’. Like many people I have always suffered from an interfering inner critic that does it’s best to undermine my artistic confidence.
I decided that I wanted to make something really special that would give me confidence and freedom from the voice. Every time I wore it or used it I would remember that I processed great creative strength and determination.
I would also like to think that other people might be tempted to make their own inner critic silencer.

It was remarkably difficult to photograph as I'd made it with reflective sheers and shiny threads, as Iwas trying to create a play of light on the fabrics and threads.

And this is the 'all seeing eye' that looks for unhelpful critical influences.

I would like to have shown more pics of the other entries but my DH took all the shots in raw and I can't convert them :-(

But if you get the chance to go in person it's well worth a visit.

A little bit of creative stuff

2009-09-10T19:45:00.009+01:00

Things have been a bit thin on the ground creatively speaking since I got back off holiday so I thought I'd take the opportunity to show the PC's that I've received and created for the CG group, since June.

I'm very late in my acknowledgements, so apologies to those concerned.

First up was Neki's beautiful PC for June, a very unusual take on the original source.

And here's mine.

We certainly managed a great variety of ideas that month.

Next was Lynda's beautiful cool version of the mountain scene we had for July.

And mine, extremely late I'm afraid.

August saw us messing about with hearts and I received this lovely romantic PC from Debbi

I'm afraid my sense of the ridiculous got the better of me on this one.

And lastly a joint effort with my DD1, who did all the designing and most of the stitching for this memorial cushion for my DS and his lovely wife's wedding. My DH was away for the w/e so my DD's and I had a lovely creative retreat and each did our own thing and thoroughly enjoyed each others company, roll on the next one girls.

I've started the paperwork for my African project so will be able to show some WIP pics next week, I'm really enjoying being able to follow up the experience while it's still fresh in my thoughts.

Tanzania part 3

2009-09-03T19:42:00.017+01:00

This is the last post I shall put up on our African holiday as time is passing and life is slowly returning to normal, just, with other things taking their place in my consciousness , mores the pity.

As you'll see from my journal entry, I had actually worried, before the trip, that I would be bored on the game drives, how wrong can you be ?

Although trying to sketch the animals on the move was very challenging, I found it gave me an enormous buzz and made me feel much closer to the animals than taking photos did.

After spending 2 nights at the crater we moved on to the Serengeti National Park, another bone shattering 5 hours on the dirt road.

But what sights we saw along the way.

This page appears to have all the sketches done in landscape and the text in portrait, sorry about that, must have been tired.

How about this for pattern inspiration

When I got home and was able to process my pics I added small prints to the sketches to remind me how the scene had looked at the time and how close, or otherwise I had got to capturing the essence.

I think this pic of zebras being spooked at the water hole has to be my favourite shot of the holiday.

Followed closely by this one.

There were so many highlights on this trip it's very hard to say which was the best, but one of them has to be our balloon flight over the Serengeti. It was a wonderful experience, slowly drifting over the tops of the acacia trees watching the game running below us.

And our wonderful pilot who carefully landed us in a text book landing.

And best of all the flight was followed by a full English breakfast under the acacia tree in the middle of the Serengeti.

It was a sad evening when we left the Serengeti for the last time, not knowing if we'd ever come back.

It was the most amazing trip, that has left a life long impression on me and I'm so grateful to my DH for making it possible, and at the same time I'm so sorry that I was such a wimp during the previous 1 1/2 years of preparation for it. I should have trusted him that I would find it an amazing life changing experience and want to go back for more, which of course I do.

Thanks too to my wonderful children who also had to put up with my winging, but consistently gave me the courage to do it.

Tanzania part 2

2009-08-27T19:28:00.017+01:00

It took a gruelling 5 hours to get to the Ngronogoro crater, mainly on dirt roads that were heavily covered with what felt like huge amounts of rocks and stones.

On the way we saw several Maasai villages, and having stopped to take pictures of one about half a mile away the children came running up the hill immediately they saw us, hoping for pens, sweets or money. Our guide said not to give them anything as it would encourage them for other clients he would bring there. It was heart rending though as it would have cost nothing and we'd bought sweets and pens especially.

On arriving at our safari Lodge we were rewarded with this amazing view. All the rooms faced the crater so we not only had this view from the balocony bar , but we woke up to it on the misty mornings too and were able to watch it appear as the mist dispersed.

The boys (my DH and my BIL) were champing at the bit to get down into the crater for the first game drive on the following day after our arrival but they had to wait for us girls to sample the local culture first, much to my extreme delight.

We were treated to the ceremonial dances of both the women and the men at a nearby village.

Even the little ones practice doing just what Mum does

At the time of writing my journal I had no way of printing any pics that I took so on this occasion I decided to use local PC's of the Massai, for the purpose.

This is a pic of our host who was keen to show us the beautiful beadwork his wife made to sell on these tourist visits. Needless to say I couldn't resist and shall treasure the boxes and bowls I bought, having met the maker. My DH also succumbed and bought our host's ceremonial club, well it's a 'man thing'.

Next post I really will get into the animal part of the holiday.

Freedom exhibition

2009-08-26T20:17:00.007+01:00

I'm interrupting my holiday posts as I've recently received the details for the Charles Henry Foyle Trust Award exhibition.

It's to be held at the Forge Mill Needle Museum in Redditch near Birmingham.

From 12th September to 25th October

If anyone is in the area on the 25th September at 2.30pm for the Private View it would be great to see you, just let me know if you might be there and I'll save a glass of wine for you :-)

Tanzania part 1

2009-08-24T19:21:00.013+01:00

As I mentioned on the previous post, our Tanzanian adventure was a mixture of cultural shock and magical life changing experiences.

My DH really wanted to do this for obvious reasons, being a wild life photographer, and saved for 18 months to do it. I, on the other hand was a snivelling wreck of fear that I would either be eaten by a man/woman eating lion, contract a fatal disease or get stuck in a country that was in the middle of a military coup.

By the time we came to board the plane at Heathrow my anxieties had hit an all time high. I hadn't flown on a long haul flight since I was 21 and wasn't looking forward to an 8 hour flight.

Needles to say it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be.

The arrival at Nairobi was somewhat of a shock though, I hadn't expected the departure 'lounge' for the connecting flight to Kilamanjaro to resemble a cross between a depressed school classroom and a Bedouin tent.

My initiation into travelling outside Europe had begun, and I wanted to record my feelings every step of the way.

We flew to Kilimanjaro in a plane that resembled something I'd flown to Jersey in when I was 15, only I'm sure the take off didn't threaten to split it in half with all that noise and vibration.

Needless to say we arrived safely, but to a reception of masked airport attendants and immediately had to fill out medical forms with regard to the Swine flu pendemic. We also discovered the my DH's bag had been lost somewhere in the flight transfers, not a good strart. It did catch up with him 4 days into our holiday, thank goodness.

Finally we made it to our tour vehicle and were on our way to the first hotel. This was our first taste of Africa.

A snatched shot on the outskirts of Arusha

We were both overwhelmed by the real life sights and sounds of Africa as opposed to what we'd seen on TV, for a while the journey, of about an hour, felt quite surreal.

But this was the sight that I had conquered my fears to see, a Massai village, later in the holiday we had the privilege of visiting a village and I was spellbound.

We finally arrived at our swish, luxuriant hotel, which was situated at the end of a dirt road, where people were living their daily lives and children were having their morning break in school.

I found the contrast of going though the lodge gates into luxuriant watered gardens very hard to come to grips with, when people on the other side of the gate had to collect their daily water in large drums on their bicycles or on their heads. Also the rainy season had been extremely dry this year and many of the crops had failed. I'm still trying to process this.

The following morning we left for the Ngrongoro crater and the start of the game drives, which will be in the next post.

Back at last

2009-08-18T19:08:00.018+01:00

Well it's certainly been a longer blog break than I intended but the last 2 1/2 months have been more manic than I would have thought possible.

Everyone's been amazingly productive while I've been away, I watch 27 blogs and between you you've clocked up 886 posts, I think I'd better make do with catching up with everyone's current activities or I'll be online forever.

The CHF award piece went in 3 weeks early as I was going to be on holiday for the final hand in date. The exhibition will open on the 12th September so I can show you what I made then, but here's a small taster.

The next drama, (and yes the final couple of days in the finishing of this piece were a bit of a drama, as usual) was my poor DH getting bitten by a dog in the face, at work, he needed 20 stitches in the Maxillo Facial unit of our local hospital.

It left him severely traumatised as the attack was completely unprovoked and the dog gave no warning. Luckily he's a quick healer and the doctor did a grand job with her stitching, he even asked her if she was any good at embroidery, apparently not.

At least the accident happened a week before we were going on holiday so he had time to have the stitches out... just.

We had 9 remarkable days in Tanzania incorporating game drives, a visit to a Massai village and a balloon ride over the Serengeti, amongst other things. Needless to say it was a life changing, magical experience that I will definitely be using for future projects, so watch this space.

And lastly 'The wedding'

As some of you will know our son got married to his beautiful fiancé on Saturday and what a wonderful day it was too.
They had a lovely church service at St. Cadoc's Church in Pendoylan South Wales.

An here's their first kiss as man and wife.

I now have to get used to a second Mrs. Young in the family :-)

They had the reception up the road at The Vale Hotel, which was total 'Hotel Babylon' if anyone watches the series. It was in a beautiful setting with the luxury of a superb swimming pool and spa on site, which of course we had to make use of :-)

I took a few pics, but not as many as I would have liked as I was so caught up in the day and wanted to enjoy every single moment.

Father and son time before the wedding.

DD1 wonder what she's thinking

Maybe she's wondering what her son's going to with that tie next.

Proud Mum and Dad

The suit and GD Bethany in the dress that she made with me earlier in the year. It was a bit windy on the terrace.

Dan and Sue had practiced long and hard on a wonderful first dance routine, which was a total surprise and a real tear jerker, I think it was the highlight of the wedding for me.

Thank you both so much for such a wonderful, memorable day and for making us both so very proud.

The house is now full of the flowers that we received at the wedding which is a lovely reminder.

It's great to be back, I've really missed chatting with everyone and seeing what 's going on.

Thank you

2009-05-26T19:51:00.009+01:00

Well that blog silence didn't last long did it?

Seriously though I have 2 important thank yous to make.

Firstly, I would like to thank all you lovely friends who have wished me luck on my project and let me know that I will be missed while I'm away, I was very touched.

Secondly, I want to thank my lovely family for giving me the best birthday I have ever had.

Yesterday I became a pensioner, ouch!!!!, that looks even worse in print!!!!

I had said some time ago that my best birthday present would be to spend a weekend with all my family together, no small wish considering there are now 22 of us, and hiring a house for such an occasion was no meant feat.

I had put the idea to bed for this year as we all have heavy commitments and as some of you will know our son and his DF are getting married in August, but to make it up to me my OH said he would take me away for the weekend and take me out to dinner on Saturday night, so I needed to pack something posh to wear.

We set off on Friday mid morning to an unknown location, he wouldn't tell me where we were going, even though I thought it was a bit far North for a random weekend away, he just said he thought it would be quieter further North, hmmmm!!!!! I am renowned in the family for my gullibility.

It was not till we finally arrived deep in the Norfolk countryside at this beautiful house the I spotted a familiar vehicle, DD2's people carrier, and then I noticed the birthday banner on the door, and promptly burst into tears, my poor OH wondered if they'd done the right thing, but he couldn't have been more wrong, it was the best surprise I could possibly have had.

We had a lovely informal meal when we arrived and made ourselves at home in this gloriously spacious house, which was a real family home.

Here's our youngest GS ignoring the resident chicken, who later became his best friend.

On Saturday night we all got dressed up for a special dinner which was cooked and served for us in the house by a team of caterers and was absolutely splendid. We had champagne and a beautiful toast from my OH, another lump in the throat moment.

And then a family pic of course.

And just to prove that there's life in the old girl still, I had to have a go on the trampoline with one of the younger members, who later did a great impression of the little boy in the film The Shining, on his tricycle.

I had a wonderful birthday cake and to top it off had the most beautiful presents and cards from all the family, so I really did feel very special and loved.

Thank you all so much for making my dream come true, I soooo.... much didn't want it to end.

But I really will have to go now and get on with some serious work.

Bye for now

2009-05-20T20:21:00.003+01:00

Mike Young

The time is rushing by towards the hand in date for my entry in the CHF textile competition, so I have decided to follow the example/advice of a a very wise (hence the owl pic) blogger friend Val and take a blogging break until the piece is finished. I don't really want to be away from the scene, but I spend most evenings surfing and I really need that time to get my sketch books ready and work on the embroidery for the piece.
I shall look forward to sharing it all with you in September when it's gone on public display at The Forge Mill Needle Museum in Redditch.
I shall look forward to returning to Blogland in August.
Bye for now.

Apologies

2009-05-13T19:01:00.010+01:00

Time is taking wings, as usual, and I realised I had been very rude and not shown my last 2 CG PC's

This as my lovely PC from Pat working to our March theme.

And this one is from Carol M who's done an amazing job using techniques that I could only dream about.

And this was the inspiration, yes I know it says September, but it really was our April theme.

And just to show how 'out of it' I am at the moment this lovely PC arrived from Jenny this morning and I had no idea it was for me. It's really beautiful in the flesh.

The theme for this month is Monet's Water Lilies.

Thank you all very much, sorry it's taken so long for me to put yours up Pat.

Meeting Alice Kettle and the CHF finalists

2009-05-05T20:04:00.011+01:00

We had a wonderful w/e, which started on Friday with a lovely easy drive up to a great caravan site just past the NEC at Birmingham called Somers Wood. It's right in the countryside and best of all it's adults only, so it was really peaceful, which was just what we both needed after a very busy week.

As some of you will know I was a bit nervous about this workshop with Alice Kettle and meeting the other finalists in the competition, but as Julie so rightly said it would be fine and I'd have a great time.

The venue for the day was a purpose designed classroom with a bank of new Pfaffs to play with, and lots of lovely fabric and thread for our creative endeavours.

We started with a meet and greet session, followed by a show and tell. Everyone's work was very different, which made for much lively discussion, with Alice offering us all lots of encouragement and helpful suggestions as to how we might emphasise certain areas of our work.

I wish I had taken some photos of the work the others brought with them , but the day was a packed one and the time just flew by. We had a photographer with us for the day so hopefully we will get to see where the photos are being used at some point and I can show you.

During a working lunch Alice gave us a brief history of her career to date and a small insight into what it's like to be a successful working artist. There are some wonderful pics on her web site and we were privileged to see some her work in the flesh, which was amazing.

After lunch we settled down to doing some line sketches and collages of the still life compositions that Alice had set up for us. Our brief was to look at the type of line we could see in the objects and their relationships with each other, with the purpose of using the collages as a design source for our stitch samples.

These are two of my attempts, I had a spiky sanding drill bit, a chrysanthemum flower, a wire wool pot scourer and 2 fishing floats in front of me, amongst other things.

And this is one of my stitch samples, using techniques, stitch settings and materials inspired by some of Alice's samples.

Here are some of the other students work from the day.

It was so nice to meet the other finalists and have a chance to work together, under Alice's guidance, she is a lovely encouraging and generous tutor.

The rest of the w/e was gorgeous too, but that'll have to wait till later in the week as I'm still buzzing from all the advice and ideas I received on Saturday and can't wait to get on with the project.

New growth

2009-04-28T19:50:00.011+01:00

As usual, as soon as Monday comes around the week takes wings again. I did manage to do a little bit of artwork this w\e, but spent a lot of useless time once again trying to load things onto my web site, but as iweb is designed as a fun piece of software the code is inaccessible, so it won't let you put anything on it , like a paypal button.
However I have got my site republished and rejigged, so for anyone who hasn't seen it, it's been down for a about 9 months, you can see my 'other work' here.

I finally finished my bluebell sketch, which turned into a log sketch, as I became totally facinated by it's shape and lost interest in the bluebells.

I was going to work on the cowslip sketch but every time I looked at it I decided that maybe it was enough as it was and I might kill it if I fiddled with it, as that's sooo........ easy to do.

It's been so nice to get back to a bit of sketching practice, but I would like to spend more time on it and gain a bit more skill and confidence.

Over the w\e we went to a local heath that suffered a terrible fire about 2 years ago so I was delighted to see how much eveything had recovered in the meantime, but the scars are still there.

But even in their blackened state the trees make wonderful natural sculptures.

I deliberately underexposed this shot, very daring for me, to try and capture how dramatic this tree looked as we rouded the bend and saw it.

And I had a little help post processing from the 'master' for this one as the sky was really burnt out, but I loved the markings on the bark.

I'm off to my Alice Kettle master class on Saturday, so I'm very excited, I don't know if we'll be discussing our progress with our 'Freedom' project, but it'll be nice to meet half of the other finalists.

Spring fever

2009-04-20T20:08:00.010+01:00

As I mentioned in the previous post I had time to do a small sketch of the lake after dinner and have since worked on it. I should have photographed it first to show it just in pen, will do that next time. I'm exploring different media to use in the field at the moment and am trying out some very nice watercolour dual brush pens by Tombow. This web site sells them individually which seems to be unusual. They have a great range of colours and blend really well with a little water. They also work brilliantly with traditional pan watercolours, which is what I've used in this sketch.

Now to the Spring fever bit:
We decided to have breakfast out on Sunday, just for a change, and were lucky enough to pick up some lovely croissants at a local shop on the way to the river. It felt just like being on holiday in France.

We went for a long walk along the river and came across lots of these Kingcups, which I hadn't seen in such profusion since I was a child.

After the river walk we drove around a bit looking for a lake my OH knew of but didn't know where it was, so we had a rather enjoyable magical mystery tour and ended up in this glorious bluebell wood above the elusive lake.

I spent a very happy half hour here sketching some of the bluebells growing by a lovely log, which I shall put up later when I've had time to work on it a bit.

We also managed to steal away on Saturday afternoon to a nature reserve near Winchester which was coverd in cowslips, again a wonderful come back for a flower that was everywhere when I was a child. I sat for an amazing 2 hours on the hill sketching the flowers and working on the lake sketch.

So all in in all it was a pretty good weekend. I hope yours was a good one too.

BYW thank you all for your sympathy re my computer problems, I have to own up that the fault wasn't with Mobile me but with me. My OH discovered that I hadn't sorted out my settings properly oops!!!!!!!

We stayed local

2009-04-13T19:58:00.014+01:00

The Easter weekend didn't start well for me, what with the rain on Friday and Saturday. I made the mistake of thinking I would spend the time sorting out my web site on Friday, and subsequently spent a wasted day trying to get to grips with my OH's favoured software, big mistake. It's very male orientated and completely non user friendly. So on Saturday I downloaded a Mac trial of another web building software, this was better but didn't have a great help manual. By Saturday afternoon I was so fed up that I decided to hang the expense and reinstate my .Mac account to host my original site, only to find that's changed to the 'all singing all dancing" Mobile me, only problem is it seems to be completely incompatible with my operating system which is only 1 away from the latest one. So I'm no further forward :-( computers, don't you just hate them!!!!!

Fortunately we were having one of our GS's (Ben) over for a sleepover and a bit of magic playtime on Sunday.

We had so much fun making these ramps, (I know that's not the technical term, sorry Ben) for his mini skateboards, called Tech Decks, (hope that's right). It certainly got my ancient brain buzzing and we came up with 2 versions by the end of the day. We had such a laugh making them, sawing gluing and testing them out, I totally forgot about my irritating computer issues.

Ben also added a bit to his graffiti wall in my studio as I'd finally remembered to get the spray paints.

Thank goodness the sun came out today and we were able to leave the house at last. We decided to stay local as the traffic reports had predicted huge delays for the Easter break, so we headed for a local NT house Hatchlands park. We did the 1 1/2 mile parkland walk and were rewarded with the following treats:

Theses drifts of newly opened bluebells, I don't think I've ever seen so many.

And then we came across these beautiful anemones.

I was rather pleased with my next discovery, apparently it's called a Jew's ear fungus and when you touch it you know why. I just love the translucency of them.

And when they start to die off the get these lovely folds.

Just at the end of our walk I saw this tree with it's amazing textural growths, they look like cauliflowers.

And the last pic I took on the walk was this lovely big tree silhouetted against the fluffy clouds.

We ended the day in our usual fashion, dinner out, courtesy of Rosie by a local lake.
It would appear that the computer gremlins are still here as Blogger has decided, enough is enough, and I can't publish the lake pic.

Oh yes I can!!!

I even managed a couple of sketches today, which I'll publish later when I've reviewed them, I'm trying to do a sketch a day, starting today.

I hope everyone had a great Easter break and is refreshed for new exciting , creative adventures.

It's not my birthday....... yet

2009-04-07T19:32:00.013+01:00

It's not my birthday till next month, but my lovely OH decided to start early with these beautiful flowers, the lilies are enormous!!! I really would like to sketch them, maybe they'll last till the w/e and I'll have a bit of time .

Speaking of sketching, I was having a moan the other day that I hadn't been able to buy cloth backed sketch books since I was at college, 13 years ago, as the price has been going up and up. After much sourcing my OH found a company who was offering them at a sensible price and bought me enough to keep well into retirement, including some jumbo square ones which are gorgeous. Of courses it would have been rude not to use one so I started with the small sketches I'd done at the hat exhibition and created a double spread in one of the A3's. It was lovely, felt like 'coming home'. Inspired by Stephen Jones's Mohikan hats I found a lino print from my college days that I'd never used and had a go with that too. It was so nice to get back in my garden studio after the winter and make some mess.

We had a lovely afternoon out on Sunday enjoying the sunshine at Motttisfont Abbey. Everyone was really enjoying the Spring weather, having picnics and walking by the river. But true to form I was looking for the little things and found this wonderful pot with it's beautiful handle detail.

And then I spotted this amazing mosaic, I think it must have been a relic of the original Abbey, but I'd never noticed it on previous visits.

Lastly a bit of inspiration. We went to a lecture the other weekend given by a very well know landscape photographer, Jo Cornish. Now, as I've said many times in the past, I'm no photographer and don't aspire to be one, but Jo's approach to his photography really resonated with me, maybe it had something to do with the fact that he was an artist before he bacame a photographer, and as such I think he sees things in a different way.
I was particularly delighted to find that he had produced a book on Northumberland, which I've recently become very attached to, so of coures my lovely OH had to buy be the book (another early b-day present?) as like the Queen I never carry money :-)
Oh! and I insisted he had it signed by the author of course.

Hat exhibition at the V&A

2009-03-27T20:18:00.014Z

Yesterday I went to the V&A to see the Hats Anthology by Stephen Jones exhibition, which runs till May 31st, thanks to a very timely post by Gina. I had a wonderful time, it was a superb exhibition with hats on show from every possible inspirational source you could think of, as well as some wonderful classics from the V&A archives.

I spent 1 1/2 hours just soaking it all up and as there was no photography allowed I was forced to try and sketch the ones I liked. A great challenge and one that I really enjoyed, so I thought I'd share the results with you.

And this what the bottom one actually looked like, I managed to buy a PC.

Another PC

I managed to find this pic on the net as the hat was so difficult to sketch but I really loved it, it's so quirky.

The hat in the centre of this page was my favourite and as I couldn't find a post card I had to buy the book that accompanied the show, shame!!

Another internet sourced image.

It was a great opportunity to have a 'me day' and enjoy the whole experience without having to rush, I even had time to spend about an hour in their lovely bookshop.

If you want to know more about the designer there are several video interviews here

Mother's day

2009-03-24T19:46:00.011Z

I had a lovely Mother's day on Sunday with my family and felt thoroughly spoilt. It actually started on Saturday with a lovely card from my DS with a very sweet message that made my day.
On Sunday morning I met up with 2 of my DD's (my DD1 was at a church service where her son was singing in the chior) at a local garden centre, and was treated to a full English breakfast, by my DD3, which is most unusual for me, as I'm a toast and marmalade person, normally. I had a pressies and cards, one of which was this lovely embroidered note book from my DD2, I can't believe how intricate and beautiful the embroidery is.

You might notice the absence of the box for the Lint chocs, I never could resist these.

After we's spent a couple of hours chatting and eating we all went our separate ways and my OH and I decided to head for the sea, or nearly. We went to a place called Hamble that's near Southampton and is more of an estuary than the seaside.
It was very busy but I did mange to get a few shots. Last time we were there it was winter and very quiet, on that occasion I actually managed a sketch, but this time it was too busy.

There's a little ferry that takes you to the other side of the river and it's Pink, as are all the others in the fleet and all their little sheds etc, very unusual.

As the tide was out I managed to get a few textural shots, as you do.

Before we went for a walk we went into the village as I'd spotted this shop on the way in, I couldn't beleive the embroidery on these shirts. Unfortunately the reflections on the windows were really difficult to avoid, but I hope you'll get the idea.

We decided to leave Hamble in the early afternoon as it was so busy, and headed off to Winchester Hill to have our dinner in Rosie, looking out over the fields. By the time we'd finished the sun was setting, so we moved a bit further down the hill and took some shots of it setting behing the trees.

What a great day!! I read somewhere that you call such days, 'memory days', I like that. And best of all I get to catch up with my DD1 on Thursday for another pressie, so it'll be nearly a week of Mother's Day, can't be bad :-)

Bethany's work

2009-03-19T19:42:00.014Z

As I can't show my current work at the moment I thought I'd show you some of Bethany's, (one of my GDs) instead. These pieces are bout 2-3 years old and I'm ashamed to say have been in my possession for about a year and a half waiting for me to get around to photograph them, bad Nanny!

Anyway the quilt was Bethany's first attempt at FME, her next quilt won her 3rd place in the 12'-16's at the FOQ 2006.

The Winny the Poo cushion followed on from quilt number one, I think! And the little bag was made for a long forgotten party, how time fly's!

And this is her latest project, view B, in a gorgeous midnight blue taffeta, it's for our DS's and his DF's wedding in August.

We had a great evening's catch up yesterday putting the finishing touches to the dress. We hadn't been able to get together for a while, due to our busy lives and coursework, so there was lots to talk about while we stitched, not least the Japanese pop scene of which I am now an expert ( not LOL). I couldn't decide if our meet made me feel 19 again or 79!!! I think the latter, the former was just plain wishful thinking.

And just a PS to make you jealous. My OH took a day off work today to enjoy the sunshine and we went to one of our favourite places the Arundel wetland centre and I spent a very happy couple of hours working in my sketch book in this lovely living willow arbour.

I just couldn't resist taking time off from the project to have a go at sketching in this beautiful hidden garden, especially as it has the most wonderful inviting seat.

Finished at last!!!!!

2009-03-12T19:29:00.008Z

Well the C&G is finally finished and the CD has been sent for the final assessment, yippee!!!!!!!!!!!!!

As some of you know there were grave doubts as to whether I would finish it, and to be honest, without the wonderful support of my family, friends, and my tutors I would never have done it.

I received wonderful help and support from so many generous bloggers, who gave me great sound advice and I'm very grateful.

It's a bit of a flat finish as there is no exhibition or final finishing get together, as some of you will already know, Opus have sadly stopped operating as a school for textile arts. But a huge thank you to all those tutors and administrators who stepped into the breach and rescued those of us who were about to qualify.

It wasn't until I had to collate all the work for the final assessment that I realised just how much ground I'd covered and how much I'd learnt. C&G is a great skills based course and the nature of it is to teach you processes by which you can interpret the ideas in your head. I spent so much of this course kicking against the ordered exercises that I didn't realise that the process was embedding itself in my brain, despite my best efforts to thwart it.

My proof of this presented itself when I started working on my next project, this time on my own without the exercises to prompt me, and I found that I was doing what I've done for the past 2 1/2 years without even realising it.

That brings me neatly to my next challenge.

A few weeks ago Pippa asked me if I was going to enter the Charles Henry Froyle Trust Stitched textiles competition. Well I'd never heard of it, but decided to enter anyway and posted off four pics of my C&G work plus one close up, and to my utter amazement I made it into the finalists list. Now my new project is to create a piece on the theme of Freedom, so that'll keep me busy till August. And as finalist I will also have a Master Class with Alice Kettle, fantastic.

Unfortunately I won't be able to show you my progress as the piece will go on exhibition in September, with the sketch books as well.

To finish up I thought I'd show you my favourite piece of the whole course and the story behind it, my apologies to those who might have seen it on my web site when I had it up and running.

The story behind the gauntle is as:

It has been designed to impart power to the wearer. It has strength and magic within the entwining snake. However the wearer must be careful to use the power wisely. If not the false fragility and beauty of the dangerous and carnivorous dragonfly will become transparent and his true aggressive and predatory nature will be revealed.
The wearer must wear the gauntlet with pride and strength and only use its protective devices when mortal danger threatens.

I did a photoshoot with one of my GD's, Bethany, some of you will have seen her on my blog and Ben acting out a little tableau in the woods. I had visions of them being the backdrop to my exhibition in The Mall, where Opus held the Pathways exhibition for the C&G students, so I thought I'd show it here instead.

So once again a big thank you to all who helped me get this far :-)

Mummyboasting

2009-03-10T20:06:00.007Z

Thank you so much for all the lovely comments wishing Ben a speedy recovery. Thank goodness he's well on the mend now and feeling very bored, but apparently he did manage to make some wonderful Easter biscuits today all by himself. I wished I'd had telephone tasting.
Unfortunately Rosie (our Dub) is porely again, this time it's a hole in the exhaust, so I couldn't go and fetch Ben as planned for a studio day :-( it'll probably have to be the Easter holls now.

And now to some Mummyboasting, please excuse me but it was a very exciting occasion.

Some of you will know that our DS is an editor for BBC2 Wales and recently he was asked to take time out from his usual job of editing sport to work on a new children's series called Telly Tales. It's a series of Myths, legends and tales from around the world, "A mix of animation and live action where children help create the artwork and play all the characters. A mix of multi-layered pop-up book and magical stage play."

The series had a premier in Cardiff, where all the actors and the series makers had a great night out, which sounded very swish. And yesterday the first program went out on BBC CBeebies with our DS's name on the credits, so you can imagine the excitement on seeing his name on National TV.

If you interested you can see the episode here. This is the Welsh version as BBC 2 cut off the credits.

Ok boast over, and as I hate putting up a past without pics, I thought I'd show you the finished wall hanging that started here.

I'm just going back to have a another look at the i player, aren't we mummies sad.

Wounded soldier

2009-03-05T19:08:00.007Z

My blogging activity has been put on hold for a few days as we had a bit of a trauma at the weekend when Ben, one of or GS's, some of you will already know him as he sometimes comes and works in the studios with me, was rushed into hospital on Saturday night with suspect appendicitis.

The pains continued through the night and consequently he had to have it removed on Sunday afternoon, poor chap.
So Nanny and Granddad took his baby brother out for a hike, and as my DD doesn't use a push chair we had to get our heads round using one of her sister's baby carriers. It was very successful as you can see, Finlay was almost asleep at this point and finally dropped off and slept all the way home, about 45 minutes walk.
Granddad's not really Mr. Grumpy, he's just not used to being in front of the camera and not behind.

Anyway, Ben's home again now and making a good recovery with the aid of a new 'all singing all dancing' TV and the loan of an X-box plus games.

As things had returned to near normal I decided it was OK for me to make my planned visit to the Prism exhibition in London today. Imagine my surprise when I was looking at a particularly poweful piece of work and I recognised a fellow blogger's name, Gina. There are some great pics of the hanging on her blog and it's well worth a look.

Unforunately I can't show you any of the pics I took because although I bought a photography permit I had to sign a form not to show them on the internet. It was a very interesting exhibition with lots of variety in the work.

Speaking of varied work, those of us on the Calendar Girl group have once again been over taxing the little grey cells this month with another inspirational image, this time supplied by Sandy

Val sent me this wonderful interpretation which is in pride of place on my pin board and catches the light beautifully when the sun shines.

This was my interpretation this month and if you want to know the thinking behind it , I've recorded it here.

I'm looking forward to picking up my blogging habits again next week and will hopefully be able to post up some creative stuff, at last. It's taken me 3 weeks just to photograph all the work and collate it for a Remote Monitoring Report.

Ikea virgin

2009-02-18T19:15:00.014Z

Last Thursday Ikea opened a new store in Southampton, which is about an hour south of where we live. As my DD2 had never been, I don't know how that happened, my OH and I decided to make it a day out with her on Monday. We thought we'd be clever and go on Monday after the weekend rush, big mistake.

We knew we were in trouble when we arrived to full signs in most of the major car parks including Ikea's. Undaunted and with a very excited DD in tow ( just like the old days) we headed for the entrance on foot.

It's very swish with travelators that take you up to the third floor where you enter the store. That's when we realised just how many other people had had the same idea. Still it didn't dampen our enjoyment of a very rare opportunity to all be out together sans children.

After having a good look round the living rooms, bedrooms, bathrooms etc we were ready for lunch, oh dear!!! The queue was enormous and I could definitely see my poor OH thinking, "if only that gas engineer had been a few minutes later at the house I would still be at home waiting for him." It took us an hour in the lunch queue, but it was worth it in the end, the food was good and welcome.

We couldn't hold our DD back from her mission any longer and headed straight for the fabric dept. where she bought these wonderful fabrics for her new range of Connecta baby carriers. I think there were a few more but it had all become a blur by this time.

So guess what Mummy'll be doing next week?

I was very restrained and just bought some calico, very boring but amazingly cheap at £1.57pm, BTW all the above fabics are under £4.0pm and are 150cm wide, you can see them here.

Despite the crowds and the queue for lunch we had a great day out together, and I found out today that our DD went there again yesterday to get even more stuff!!

Long live romance

2009-02-15T13:02:00.013Z

I had a wonderful Valentines day yesterday, I received a beautiful card from my OH first thing, with a lovely (lump in the throat) verse, after which he announced that I would need to dress up in the evening as he was taking me out for a candle light dinner, but the added surprise was that we'd be going for a walk first so I would need to wrap up, intrigued? I was.

We left home at about 6.0 and I'd convinced myself that we were going on a ghost walk in a nearby town, but no, we went the wrong way for that. Still, I thought there was Guildford in the other direction so maybe they did ghost walks. No!!! wrong again and then we were heading for London and I still hadn't twigged. It was only as we neared Wisley gardens that I began to wonder if it might be something that was going on there and I was right this time.

The new glass house has been home to exotic butterflies for several weeks and as a special event they were hosting an evening of a walk to, and round it with a candle lit dinner for Valentines' night.
It was a truely magical experience to see the gardens lit up at night and as we approched the new glasshose it shone like a magic palace, the only problem was I was so excited I forgot to take a picture of it, but here's one of us inside that a very nice lady took for us.

It was so great to have the glasshouse to ourselves, not more that abot 30 or so people. I was really pleased I'd taken my camera and as my OH had left his at home he was happy to give me some tips.

This prayer plant only puts its leaves up like this (hence the name) at night so you never get to see the beautiful underside in the normal opening hours.

Don't you think this close up would make a wonderful mini quilt?

I had to have a go at the butterflies of course.

And this beautiful Stralitzia

We spent a delightful hour in the glasshouse and then made our way through the floodlit garden to the restaurant, which of course added to the magic of the evening.
The ambiance was lovely as there were mainly couples dining, and enjoying one anothers' company. The meal was lovely too all cooked beautifully with seasonal veg that I suspect was from their show gardens.

I think it was a wonderful surprise an one that I shall always remember.

Keeping it in the family

2009-02-12T19:58:00.006Z

I thought you might like to see the latest shot that my brother in law put up on one of the photo groups he and my OH belong to. I think it must be in the genes, this eye for a good pic.

I'm still beavering away with the finishing touches to the C&G and although it's out of sequence I thought I'd put up my last final piece as I was rather pleased with the pic, a great rarity for me as I'm married to such a good photographer.

This little bag was inspired by the shirts worn by the Plains Indians who wore them during the performance of the Ghost Dance. This was a ritual dance that they believed would help them bring back the old ways of a life of hard work and peace which they had been used to before they were confined to the reservations.

The circles represent the earth and the stars the heavens, I constructed it from indigo dyed muslin, discharge dyed cotton for the circles and Procion dyed cotton scrim. The lining is Indian cotton and the stars are silk organza. The beads are polished stones.

It will contain special items that have a significant meaning and power for the dancer. It has been constructed with the idea of it being made by the dancer’s wife in the spirit of protection.

The piece is small enough to tie to a belt at 11cm x 8cm.

I will post up more pieces as I get into the marathon task of photographing all the work for an on-line assessment, thank goodness I started blogging in module 3 as at least I have good documentation from then on.

St Teilo's church

2009-02-07T19:41:00.011Z

As promised in an earlier post I now have the pictures of the medieval church we visited at St Fagans National History Museum near Cardiff. We were completely amazed to see the finished paintings inside this lovely little church that had been lovingly relocated and restored at the museum, this is what it looked like when they found it, you can read the rest of the story here.

And this is what the outside looks like today.

We had seen the start of the paintings inside the year before, so when we entered the church last year and saw the finished work we were thrilled and astounded at the result. Apparently most medieval chuches were decorated like this as the majority of the congregation couldn't read and often the serman was give in Latin anyway, so the pictures had to tell the story, like this one.

And this one.

This is what the inside looks like from the back wall.

And then of course there were all those wonderful patterns just waiting to be used in a future art work

And lastly.......

If anyone is in the vicinity this little church is so well worth the visit and to make things even better, the museum itself is free to enter as it's funded by the Welsh government.

For our friends in Australia

2009-02-03T20:24:00.006Z

In an effort to cool down some of our friends in Australia who have been suffering ferocious temperatures over the past weeks I thought I'd put up a few pics of our unusually cold weather conditions in southern England, we haven't had snow like this for about 20 years.

This is what it looked like at midday today, poor old Rosie (the dub) hasn't been too well lately and this must be the last straw, after being called an 'old bus', by a motorway patrol cop when we had to resort to the hard shoulder on the way back from Cardiff because she lost power completely, well she showed him anyway because after a short stop she shot off at 70mph!!!!!
I think she's really upset with all our talk of getting a bigger van next year.

The poor old dog won't go outside unless I go with him and the chickens haven't been out of their coops for two days.

The sheep seem to be totally confused, they walked all the way across the field up to their bellies and then went back again.

And as for the birds, well they're just in a feeding frenzy, and now it's freezing again out there, so goodness knows what the weather will throw at us tomorrow.

Knitting

2009-02-01T19:18:00.007Z

As some of you, who have been watching my blog for some time will remember, this time last year I bought the wool and pattern for this cardigan. Well I never got round to starting it till June, but due to this bout of Arctic weather and recently joining a knitting group, (yes, yes I can hear you saying, "but she said she wasn't going to take anything on till she'd finished the C&G, but this is my reward for a hard day beavering away at samples'), I've finally finished it, and the that's what I wanted the buttons for, that I bought at Hoobycraft.

Anyway here's the result, Oh, and I'm sporting a new hair do, created at the hairdressers, I'm afraid my version is a lot less posh and controlled, still it got me a dinner out ot on Friday courtesy of my OH, he must have been impressed:-)

I knitted the scarf as a challenge from one of the group members as she could't get on with the wool and offered it up to anyone who wanted it, or the cat would have had it. The only thing is she was so impressed that she wants me to knit her one with the other ball she bought.

Birthday weekend

2009-01-26T18:30:00.020Z

Just thought I'd share the lovely weekend we had with our DS and his lovely DF in Cardiff Bay.
It was My OH's B-day on Saturday and before Xmas when we were visiting we noticed that the Scottish Royal Ballet were performing Sleeping Beauty at the Wales Millennium Centre on his actual B-day, so as it was 20 years since we last saw a live ballet I decided to make it his B-day treat.

As we were spending the w/e we went up to Cardiff on the Friday and had a great afternoon at the St Fagans, National History museum, which I shall blog about later as I took some lovely inspirational shots of a beautiful medieval restored church.

Here's one to whet your appetite.

After a lovely afternoon I had to visit the new hobby craft in Cardiff and bought these wonderful buttons, for a project I'll show later.

When we arrived at the flat we were treated to a delicious Paella which our, soon to be, DIL made for us as a lovely start to our w\e.

On Saturday we went for a long walk around Cardiff Bay and tried out the new barrage walk along the harbour. It was quite blustery, but very excillarating. Here's me between my two boys!

And here's our lovely hosts.

Before we went to the performance we were treated to a spelndid meal, which was a surprise treat from our DS and his DF, thank you both very much.

Just before we went into the millennium Centre I just had to have a go at this night shot, it was such a stunning display in real life, I'm afraid my pic doesn't do it justice, but you get the idea.

The inside of the MC is really modern and very stylish. The actual stage area isn't as large as you'd expect from the outside of the building but that helps to give it a more intimate feel I think.

Just before the curtain went up I managed to snap this shot of it as I thought it looked amazing.

The performance was absolutely super, I loved the fairy costumes and the intricate way the traditional story had been woven to suit a modern contemporary audiance.

One of the good fairies

The wicked fairy and her daughters responsible for trying to kill the princess.

The wonderfu princess (sleeping beauty) and her prince. They both danced magnificently together and seprately, bringing a lump to my throat with their tender interpretation of the story.

It certainly was a memorable evening.

Of course we had to round the w/e off with our usual vist to Craft in the Bay on Sunday for huge slices of cake and hot chocolate.

So a big thank you to Our DS and his DF for a fantastic w/e.

Australia

2009-01-19T19:45:00.006Z

I went to the cinema with 2 of my DD's ( my poor youngest couldn't come out to play as her baby son had a nasty tummy bug, maybe next time), on Saturday and saw the amazing blockbuster, Australia.

It really is a 'must see' film, the scenery is amazing, the plot keeps you on the edge of your seat and the acting is faultless, especially that of Brandon Walters, who plays Nullah, "......a mixed race Aboriginal boy left orphaned by the inhumanity of Australian law"

Having just been doing a very small amount of research into the Australian Aboriginal culture I was completely captivated and horrified by this side of the story.

I had no knowledge of the "........Stolen generation when mixed race children were banned from living either with their Aboriginal families or within the white community, but were taken from their homes to be brought up in church missions" and was shocked that such cruelty could ever have been allowed to happen.

Having said that, It's a good thing for us to be educated in such things and I think this film handled it with sensitivity.

On to other things, I now have my official finishing date for my C&G, March 13th, so please excuse me if I'm an absentee blogger for a bit as I have 2 modules yet to do and am trying very hard not to panic!!!

January CG PC

2009-01-13T19:24:00.007Z

This year the Calendar girls have each selected a favourite artist's calendar page as a design source for the month.
Debbi has started us off with a painting by Shane Picket, who as you will see if you follow the link is is one of the foremost Nyoongar artists working in Australia today.

I was fascinated by his wonderful work and by the Nyoongar, who are an indigenous Australian people who live in the south-west corner of Western Australia.

I did some research on the net and discovered that they have a very special relationship and respect for the land on which they live.

They beleive in the "The Wagyl (alternative spelling Waugal or Waagal) which is, according to Noongar culture, a snakelike dreamtime creature responsible for the creation of the Swan and Canning Rivers and other waterways and landforms around present day Perth and the south-west of Western Australia."

Also, "In Australian Aboriginal mythology, the The Dreaming or Altjeringa (also called the Dreamtime[citation needed]) is a sacred 'once upon a time'[1] time out of time in which ancestral Totemic Spirit Beings formed The Creation."

I found these accounts fascinating and wanted to illustrate my PC using some of the imagery that I found on another website,
here. I didn't realise at the time I was surfing that this artwork was on a freeway in western Australia.

The BG for the PC is a mixture of hand printing and digital manipulation, and the whole piece was printed onto print ready canvas.

I really enjoyed researching behind this artist and would have liked to have had time to explore the Nyoongar culture and myths, so thanks Debbi for such an inspirational start.