I have created this blog to share my interest in all forms of stitching, quilting, sewing, knitting, medieval re-enactment and costume making – particularly my love of historical embroidery. I also love travelling,especially when it also involves any of my other interests.
As promised I can now reveal some of the things that I made for this Xmas as gifts for friends and family. I did do a lot of knitting which I will put in a later post but also some of my favourite traditional stitching.
I made this pincushion for a very good friend from re-enactment, Denise, who kindly posed for my Women’s Costume Page last year. She obviously makes a lot of kit herself and her partner Carl had asked me if I would make her a pincushion as a surprise for Xmas (he said they were thinking of buying a new leather sofa so he was trying to train her out of sticking pins in the old one – that is why I have a lovely old fabric one that is fine with that sort of behaviour!)
The pattern comes from Issue 165 of New Stitches magazine and is called Cherry Rose – I only stitched the flower element – the whole thing is designed to be a picture and includes stem and leaves as well.
The finished piece before making up
It is stitched on my favourite 28 count sparkly evenweave (it is only to be used at home not at events as blackwork (or redwork!) is not authentic for our period) with dark red Silk Mill thread.
For the finish I chose to back it with some red velvet I had in my stash and to edge it with some dark red braid. I also added some of my favourite little brass charms – I love using these on sewing gifts like the scissor keeps I made last year. This time I chose a spool of thread charm and a needle charm – both from the charms pack I bought from Stitch Direct earlier in the year.
The pincushion looking very festive among the decorationsThe back of the pincushion showing the charms
I was pleased with the finish – it was the first time I have used velvet as a backing and it wasn’t as slippery to work with as I had feared -and Denise likes it too which is good!
I realise this is the third post this week – a record for me I think. It is all to do with the snow as not much else has been going on this week. Did leave the house today for the first time since Saturday to go to Knitting Group. As well as Knit and Natter that meets weekly at the wool shop – shop info at the end of this link (Woolly Minded and Beady Eyed) I also go to a monthly one at the same shop – Yarn – which meets the second Thurs of every month 5 – 7 pm.
Had a very nice evening working on my teddy bear bag project and have also bought some more Noro Silk Garden wool to make myself a beret to match the Noro scarf that I wear. I cast on for this when I came home tonight and am using a simple pattern in my favourite Moss stitch. If this freezing weather is to continue a girl needs some head protection!
Well it is snowing again here – only lightly at the moment but added to the 20 hours worth from Sun night to Monday the world is very, very white again. Last night the back of my house looked like a set out of Narnia – we have a street light just outside the back garden and I was half expecting to see Mr Tumnus in a nice woolly scarf!
As promised here are a few of my pics from Spain – again I have chosen some of my favourite things about visiting.
The views over La Marina - a sunny Sunday on the way to the marketThe mountains - I love the fact that you can see mountains from wherever you areThe beautiful gardens - this one is my Aunt's newly finished front garden
Because a lot of the people who live on La Marina are retired they lavish a great deal of care and attention on their houses and gardens. The climate lends itself to desert flora and as there is little chance of growing grass people use hard landscaping and ornaments including fountains. My aunt has a wonderful collection of amphora pots here – it looks like a Roman dig! I love wandering round just admiring what people have done.
The cactuses have the most amazing sculptural formsAnd some serious protection against being nibbled!These pictures were all taken on my walk to the supermarket - a nature walk as well as shopping!
There are lots of communal green spaces in La Marina known as verdes where there are large trees for shade and public benches etc. What I particularly like are the way that people personalise these with planting or with their own seating. This pic below was taken just down the road from our house.
This small table and seats have been made from old tiles and shells used whole and in mosaic
The view from my favourite ice cream parlour
As well as the mountains I love the sea – as La Marina is on a hill I can actually see the sea from the kitchen of my little house. And you can paddle any time of year!
Me paddling on New Year's Day
This year we were there for a festival that we have not seen before – the Festival of the Three Kings which is the main celebration of Christmas in Spain. This takes place on the evening of the 5th Jan and we went to see the parade in Torrevieja before going out for a lovely meal near the seafront.
In true Spanish style there were wonderful over the top helmets!The kings arrive on floats accompanied by bands, dancers and sparkly elves who give out sweets and presents to the childrenThere are also camels, oxen, donkeys, a llama and of course fireworks!
We went on a couple of cycle rides again – as well as the rides over the scrubland one of our favourite ones is down to the Marina at the local town of Guardamar and then along through the pine forest and dunes for lunch on the seafront.
Look at all those lovely boats!
Prices have gone up a bit in recent years but things are still very cheap and I discovered these handy little wine packs in the local supermarket for 1 euro!
Unfortunately they do not come with straws...
As you know I am always on the look out for stitching and we went to visit the Belen – a large nativity scene – outside the church in Torrevieja. I have been to it before but had not noticed this little animatronic model …
There she sits with her little cross stitch of an angel - needle going in and out all day.
The stitcher and her husband in her little house at the Belen - I think he is making a crib
The last two pictures of La Marina are not mine – I found them on Flickr but I hope the photographer does not mind me sharing them with you. These were taken by Pablo icu202 canon who also has a house on La Marina and who has taken some wonderful sunset pics of the local area.
The sunset over the mountains seen from La Marina The view from his villa showing another beautiful sunset
He is obviously a much better photographer than me with a really good camera!
I can’t wait to go back to Spain at Easter. I will leave you with a more seasonal pic from England – not one of mine – this was off one of the Yahoo news sites but is a very pretty snow picture.
Pretty snowy England
I hope that you are all coping ok with the bad weather – we are fine as I live within walking distance of the shops and one of the advantages of not owning a car is that I don’t have to worry about getting it out and stopping it sliding down the road!
I also have lovely neighbours who have been very helpful in taking all our rubbish to the tip as the bin men have not been able to collect for 3 weeks now!
I hope you are all keeping warm and taking advantage of the weather to stay in and stitch.
Hello and a very happy 2010 to everyone. I am having a very nice unexpectedly quiet and domesticated weekend thanks to the snow. I should have been teaching this Saturday but all classes have been cancelled due to the bad weather so instead I have been concentrating on knitting and making soup!
We arrived back from the sunny shores of Spain on Weds – a little late but safe and sound into a very snowy Manchester Airport. We are now once again fairly snow bound here as our road is pretty bad and the pavements icy but we are near the main road and buses are running and I have been and stocked up with food and lots of soup making and baking ingredients so will not go hungry! More snow arrived today and more is forecast for Mon and Tues so who knows if classes will be running this week!
At Jake’s request I made Tomato and Red Pepper Soup from my Covent Garden Soup Company Recipe book yesterday – doesn’t the veg look pretty ready to be roasted.
Lovely healthy veg!
Today I have made Cauliflower and Roquefort using the Delia Online recipe (Jake didn’t want any of this one though it was lovely!) Tomorrow will be Parsnip and Sweet Potato (a variation on Nigella’s Butternut and Sweet Potato recipe) using some of my left over veg from before we went away. Am also planning to cook the Cranberry and White Chocolate Cookies from Nigella’s Christmas book that we didn’t get around to doing on Xmas Eve.
Have been spending some more time knitting just recently and have decided that 2010 will be my year and improving my knitting skills. In terms of knitting for re-enactment purposes I would love to be able to knit my own socks, stockings and hats so need to get really good with double pointed needles and know how to turn a heel before I can attempt these feats! My fellow knitters at the Woolly Minded and Beady Eyed knit groups assure me that socks are really easy once you can understand the pattern so I shall aspire to master that this year. I have just come across an online resource about historical knitting – from this month’s Let’s Knit mag – called Knitting History so will be looking at that for info.
I do know of a very talented woman called Sally Pointer who I met through re-enactment who makes all sorts of lovely knitted and felted items as well as cosmetics. She has a web site where you can buy her very informative books and patterns and I have just discovered her blog Wicked Woollens as well so shall be reading that as well for inspiration.
So I have decided to make lots of birthday gifts to practise pattern reading and new techniques. since all my knitted Xmas gifts were so well received. My first knitting WIP is a present for a friend of mine’s little girl and comes from the Nov 09 Let’s Knit mag –
The November issue cover
It is a very cute little bear with a knitted dress that has a bed that folds up to be a bag that the bear can be carried round in.
This is the magazine pic of the finished articleThe very cute teddy ….….. In her little bed
This is my progress so far …
The outside of the bag
I have altered the design slightly by chain stitching around the edges of the border and all the rectangles in an attempt to neaten them up! The pattern has not been too difficult to follow though there were no instructions on how to prevent getting gaps between rectangles when you swapped wools but I remember reading somewhere about twisting the wools together at the back on each row and that worked. I really like doing Moss stitch which is all around the border as it has such a pretty effect.
I was very pleased yesterday as my long-awaited ASOE Xmas ornie from Marlene in the US arrived. I was concerned as I knew that she had posted it well in time for Xmas but what with the volume of post and the weather issues here it took a long time to come! But it was worth the wait.
Marlene’s Xmas Exchange ornament for me
It is really lovely so thank you very much Marlene – I have taken the tree and all the other ornies down but this one is going to stay up for a few weeks and have its five minutes of fame!
I hope you all had a very Happy New Year – we had a lovely (warm!) time in Spain and I will be posting some pics of that later on. I hope that 2010 is going to be a very good year for you all. I had a really good 2009 thanks to my lovely family and friends and am really looking forward to this one. Thank you to all those people who have visited the Xmas newsletter page to read the summary of our year.
It is always particularly significant having a new decade and this one is going to be very full of big changes for the family – all very positive and lovely ones. Jake will finish school this year and hopefully go on to 6th form college and Ellie is very well settled at Uni. Who knows I might even be a Granny by the end of this decade – more things to knit!
The 1990s were very much about the kids for me – Ellie being born early in 1991 and Jake in 1994 and the 2000s very much about work and career as I started my full-time job at the University in 2001.
So this next decade is going to be about my new roles as I concentrate hopefully more on developing my ideas for my textile business. I am not in position to do much at the moment but have made a resolution for 2010 that I am going to produce a design from scratch based on my pictures from Spain. This is just the tiniest start but who knows what might happen!
Thank you for visiting, hope you are not too cold or snow bound and Happy New Year!
We have had a very nice, and very traditional Christmas this year – this is the first one in 5 years where we have not been away on holiday (first Prague then 4 years in Spain) and Ellie really wanted a traditional family time now she is away at University.
So we had a very lovely time – helped by the very seasonal weather – the first white Christmas I can remember for at least 35 years.
There was snowman building on Christmas Eve –
Jake and his friend Sammy built this
And lots of baking as we decided to make our own Yule Log this year –
Nigella's Yule Log recipe - very, very sweet frosting but it all got eaten!
The gingerbread house kit I bought had suffered a bit of structural damage but Ellie got very creative with the pieces –
Ellie's very good at using the writing icing for artworksAnd bits of it still look like a house!
I bought myself Nigella’s Christmas cookery book as a treat – for the last few years when we have been away I have done a pretend Xmas dinner before we go but it has not been much more than a glorified roast but this year I did lots of domestic goddess stuff and thoroughly enjoyed it – even started off Christmas Day with watching Nigella on TV and doing a bit of stitching before sorting out the turkey as I was up ridiculously early (of course the teenagers didn’t surface for presents till after 9!)
So we had a very nice lunch with some special additions of parsnip and sweet potato bake (not Nigella, think that was Good Food mag), and brussels with pancetta and then the buffets included Nigella’s Chilli jelly (bit liquid rather than solid but very tasty) and some other recipes from my new tapas cook book.
Xmas lunch
We had lots of lovely pressies and I was very pleased that Jake and Ellie liked their hand knits – they had both asked for money and a few stocking pressies this year and as I have been trying to make a hand crafted gift for most people this year I made them both wrist warmers and Ellie got a matching hat as well.
Jacob likes his wrist warmers!
Ellie with her hand knit set
The patterns for these items are all freebies from Ravelry.
After Xmas lunch we went sledging which the kids very much enjoyed –
Ellie - with hat!A great action shot!
As well as the knitting I have been busy finishing the Xmas stitching. The Noel ornament from Helga Mandl that I have mentioned before was my ornie of choice for the girls who are my very good friends here in Hudds so this was the collection I finished just before Xmas –
I love this ornie - have now stitched it 9 times!
I am actually taking the pattern away with me to stitch one of my very own for the tree for next year.
I have also just finished these which are for my relatives in Spain – this is from the Gift of Stitch Mag – this year’s Xmas ornie edition.
A very pretty little snowflake design
All of these are once again stitched over my favourite 28 count sparkly evenweave (need my glasses to stitch this these days!) with Silk Mill threads.
We are off to Spain in the early hours of tomorrow morning (snow permitting!) so am looking forward to some warm weather (it is 21 degrees there rather than -3 in Yorkshire), some cycling, some lovely tapas and the Three Kings festival on Jan 5th. Am taking lots of stitching and my latest knitting project as well.
Hope that you all have a very happy New Year and let’s hope that 2010 will be filled with plenty of time for textiles!
As this will probably be my last post before the festive season really gets underway I would like to wish you all a very Happy Christmas and a lovely 2010.
We have just returned from Worcester where we were visiting my sister. We visited the German Market in Birmingham while we were there to have lunch of sausages, pretzel and chocolate dipped fruit and marshmallow skewers.
The beer and gluhwein stall
Some very nice Xmas decs on this stall - bought a lovely bag of pot pourri and a scented star
Ellie and Jake at the market sweet stall
Ellen is most excited to have returned to snow. They have not had any in Worcester and she was worried that the snow we had last week would have gone by the time she got here but no we got back and the world was even more white than when we left.
Lots of snow again to complement my carefully placed snowflake decorations!
So much snow that we have had to do our Xmas food shopping at the local store rather than go into town as at the moment taxis are not coming up our road. I did go into town for a few special things today (have treated myself to the Nigella Christmas cookbook so needed some more exotic ingredients!) so we are now fully stocked.
We plan to spend some time baking together tomorrow – making and decorating the yule log, making cranberry and white chocolate cookies, putting together the gingerbread house and decorating the Christmas cake. Ellie and I are going to Christingle service at one of our local churches.
I have masses of stitching and knitting to show you after Xmas that cannot be revealed now but I can show you the ornie that I sent to Marlene in the US as part of the ASOE exchange. This is a design called Noel by Helga Mandl – if you look carefully at the tree the word Noel is spelt out (on each half of the tree -you will have to look at the pic sideways for it to make sense).
The Noel ornament from Helga Mandl
We had our Embroiderers’ Guild Xmas meal last week and I was very pleased to see that Barbara, my very talented friend, had made some little trees for table decorations following my instructions on the blog. Here are some pics of the trees and their maker.
Barbara's patchwork tree
Barbara at the Guild meal with the tree decoration
I do hope that you have a very lovely time with good food, good company and lots of time for relaxing and stitching. Jake and I are off to Spain for New Year for some sun and warm fingers!
Happy Xmas and happy stitching! Thanks for visiting.
We have had a very lovely and very busy weekend starting with the annual Festival of Light in the town centre on Friday night. This event is always a street theatre of some kind with a grand fireworks finale.
This year it was a group from France called Trance Express who led a parade round town with a float containing a rock band and two huge drums played by men on swinging trapeze. They were followed by a band of drummers and flares. When they got to the square where the final performance was held there was a very large crane and the singing group appeared suspended from it and performed a couple of numbers while swinging above the crowd.
Then there was an excellent fireworks display – I do love big fireworks!
A lot of bright lights from the flares!The suspended performers in front of the railway stationFireworks - very near to the performers!Lots of big bangs and pretty lights!
We then went for a lovely meal on Sat to our friends Taru and Bob’s where Jake and I had excellent food, excellent company and excellent wine (in my case not Jake’s!)
Sunday I spent most of the day decorating the house for Xmas – a little bit earlier than usual but I do love Xmas decs and the poor things have been in a cold garage for long enough – they need to be out to be admired. I have posted pics of the main decs before and not much has changed in the layout but I do have a few special new bought things to show you.
Every year I like to buy something special and a couple of years ago at Disneyland in Florida I bought this very cute Minnie and Mickey for the tree.
Minnie and Mickey from the good old USA
We are big Disney fans and love visiting Disneyland and you may remember that we went this year in March for Ellie’s 18th where I chose this lovely sparkly decoration …
Golden Minne and Mickey from France
Ellie wanted to buy a decoration and she chose this very cute Tinkerbell inside a bell that rings.
Tinkerbell for my Disney Princess Ellie
Last year I also bought these lovely little ornies – they are supposed to hang from a tree but I think they look better on the hearth.
A trio of Santas
All my hand-made decs are all over the house now and I think I may have to make some more for next year as there are just never enough baubles in some places! I will leave you with a nice pic of the tree all lit up.
Thanks to Jake for helping with all the decs - he always reckons I have too many but I do not do minimalism at Xmas!
Hope you have fun preparing for Xmas – now back to the stitching! Thank you for visiting.
I still have a lot more to post about the show from last week so thought I would share some more with you now. The theme for this post is quilting and some of these pics come from my good friend Anita who kindly downloaded all her pics onto my PC when we met up this last weekend. She has a much better camera than me with all sorts of settings – I have a very simple point and click one not being technologically minded and being very prone to drowning cameras!
These quilts were all winners in various categories – I forgot to note down what the competition was but there was some wonderful work in both traditional and contemporary styles.
This was my favourite piece the overall effect was amazingDetail of the above quilt A more traditional quilt with applique and patched sectionsDetail of the applique sectionAmazing quilting on one of the wholecloth background areasOne of the art quilts - a portrait Detail of the quilting around the face
The level of workmanship in these quilts is amazing and I am sorry that I don’t have details of who made them to give these very talented people credit. If you recognise your work please leave me a comment so that I can credit you. I have only just started doing the most simple patchwork and quilting (you have seen my tree!) and am in awe of the level of skill and dedication in these pieces.
I also bought a lovely book at the show which I read within a week and have now passed on to Anita. It was called ‘The Quilt that Walked to Golden’ and had been on my Xmas wish list but I bought it as a treat for me. It was a wonderful book with the stories of women who made quilts in Colorado from the time of the pioneers up to the present-day with extracts from their life histories and diaries and lots of pictures of both historic and new quilts. I loved this book (Little House on the Prairie gone live!) and now want to follow it up and read some of the biographies of the women listed in the book and the other books about this topic .
I have also added another one to the ‘places I want to visit’ on my ever-increasing list with Colorado and in particular the Rocky Mountain Quilt Museum which is in Golden, Colorado. I have wanted to visit the Rockies for a long time ever since discovering Mary Kathryn’s brilliant blog – every week she posts her Rocky Mountain Wednesdays photos of where she lives – I love Yorkshire and think it is very beautiful but she has some amazing scenery (and lots of quilt shops!)
I have also been very busy working on my Xmas stitching, knitting and quilting – why is that however early you start you have never finished all those projects you wanted to do for people? Oh well at least I have lots of ideas for birthday gifts for next year!
I have had a lovely weekend away at Centerparks in Sherwood Forest with my very special friends. There were 8 of us that went away – all women I originally met about 17 years ago at the local toddler group. We left behind 21 children between us (though technically 4 of those have already left us – being already at University!) and headed off for our now annual girlie weekend away.
We started this tradition about 13 years ago with a trip to Filey where we stayed in Belinda’s Auntie Brenda’s caravan. A couple of years later we graduated to Centerparks and have spent many a happy weekend at both the Cumbria and Sherwood ones. This weekend away was a very special one as it was Belinda’s 50th birthday celebration so we treated ourselves to a very nice luxury lodge complete with en-suite bathrooms, games room with pool table and private sauna! Here are a few pics of the luxury.
The lounge with one of the 6 TVs in the lodge - one in each room as well as widescreen with PS2 in the games room!the other end of the lounge - private patio leading to sauna - this also had a fab bar-b-que which sadly we did not useMine and Maggie's luxury bedroom with complimentary towels and ensuite with power showerThe lodge we stayed in is in the middle of this picWe didn't actually watch any of the 6 tvs - watching these guys and the pigeons feeding on the sunflower seeds we put out was much more entertaining
We did not do loads of activities as we spent lots of time reading magazines. eating lovely food, drinking wine and laughing but we did manage a couple of saunas, walks in the woods, swims, visits to the jacuzzi , feeding the ducks and swans and a little (and quite muddy!) bike ride. The place was all decorated for Xmas and here are some of the girls visiting Santa’s reindeer.
Julie, Maggie, Val and Therese have all been very good this year so are hoping for lots of presents from these guys
We also had a little celebration of Belinda’s birthday – she also has a party with friends and family planned for next weekend which we will all be at – but here she is blowing out the candles on her cake . I made a chocolate fudge cake with pink icing – only to discover the she does not like chocolate cake! Jacob has kindly volunteered to eat what is left!
Happy 50th birthday Belinda!
I managed to get a bit of knitting and stitching done as well and spent quite a bit of time talking to Anita about quilting. She has recently set up her own business doing quilting of other people’s pieced work as she now owns a long armed quilting machine so we spent all of the journey to Centerparks discussing her flourishing business and ideas for my future one. She had also brought along a project – a very unusual applique tree. You really must go and have a look at the designer’s site – is is fab!
Anita's tree quiltThe pattern - a Lilley Pilley design
These women are very, very important to me – I met them all by chance as I knew few people with a baby when Ellie was little so rang the local council to ask about toddler groups in the area, walked up to the local one and met Belinda and Val. I met Maggie, Anita and Judith a couple of years later as they had babies and joined the group and Julie and Therese as they into moved to the area.
We have supported each other through pregnancy and birth, raising toddlers and teenagers, career breaks and career changes , major illnesses and operations of ourselves and loved ones and relationship woes. It was particularly special that Anita was there as 8 years ago she moved to Australia and we have only seen her a few times since. They are a fantastic bunch of people who enrich my life, make me laugh till I cry and will always be there for me – I am very proud to be able to call them my friends.
I will be back later this week with more pics from the Knitting and Stitching Show – thanks for visiting and happy stitching!
Well sorry for the lack of posts recently – been very busy with work and have been away the last two weekends so have not been in regular posting routine. Lots of stitchy goodness to catch up with including the wonderful Knitting and Stitching Show last week at Harrogate.
34 of us went from our Embroiderers’ Guild club on a coach and had a wonderful day out. And yes I did succumb to the lure of Christmas stash even though I do have just a little bit of fabric already!
Who could resist - so pretty!
I also bought some more bits to go on Xmas baubles and some more cute little charms to go on my stitched gifts and exchanges. My justification is that though I have almost finished ornies for this year I have to start next year in about Sept and that is well before the next Harrogate show so I really needed to buy it now!
The two polystyrene cones at the back are a new idea from Sue Schofield of Springwood House designs – the very talented lady who sells the patterns and supplies for the baubles and cones I make. These she turns into Xmas trees using the same ribbon folding technique as for the pine cones. The instructions come from her new book Fun with Ribbons. I may just have time to try these for this year – we shall see. I had a very nice chat with her and told her all about the fundraising for Nepal I had been doing.
In the middle of the pic above are 3 very cute little knitted puds which are covering Ferrero Rocher chocs – I thought these would make a lovely table centre for Xmas lunch.
I am adding these people to my blog roll so that there can be permanent links as I know that lots of people access this blog looking for needlework info and these designers offer fabulous products to get started with historical stitching.
Have loads of other pics of the exhibitions at the show so will save those for another post. They were of course brilliant and once again made me want to give up the day job and be creative full time – or go and do a degree in embroidery and textiles like all those lucky students at the show. One day when the kids are through college maybe!
Also was able to give Barbara her blogaversary giveaway goodies – three ornaments with a holly theme and some Silk Mill threads in flower colours as I know she loves stitching bright flowers.
Barbara's orniesSilk Mill threads in very pretty colours
I really love using Silk Mill threads and despite having loads of Anchor and DMC in my stash I very rarely use anything else these days. They are so smooth to stitch with and so beautiful when finished and in so many colours – go check out their web site! Am just about to go there now to stock up on more greens for ornies as have run out of a particular shade.
I just love the internet! When it was first invented I can remember saying that I didn’t really see the point and didn’t think I would use it – how wrong I was! I just love discovering new blogs and interesting sites and thought that I would share a couple of my new treasures with you today.
I found this first one in an old article from the Guardian Online Life and Style section about the rise of new domesticity – how baking cakes and knitting has become trendy amongst the ‘younger generation’. Personally I have always done these things but then I had a traditional girls only grammar school upbringing and could do five kinds of pastry by the time I was 15 so I think it is great that people are enjoying making and creating things whatever their age.
The blog is called Yarnstorm and is run by a multitalented lady called Jane Brocket who does all manner of household crafts and has some fab pics on the site – lots of lovely garden pics which I really like as well as all the crafts.She has also published a few books and one in particular will have to go on my wish list – Cherry Cake and Ginger Beer – a collection of recipes taken from childrens’ books of the sort I used to love reading . I am currently watching Little House on the Prairie on DVD and am having huge nostalgia moments for all those wonderful books I read – next I will go and find Susannah of the Mounties!
Most of the books I loved as a child were about adventures and people living or visiting quite remote places and I am sure these very heavily influenced me to want to travel.
It was the description of one of her visits to Kew that led me to look at a link she had to a botanical artist – an amazingly talented woman called Susannah Blaxhill. I hope that Susannah will excuse me using one of her pics but I just had to share with you some of her work. In keeping with the unofficial ‘theme of the month’ this is one of Susannah’s illustrations of some pumpkins from her web site. Go and visit and marvel at the detail. These are amazing works of art and I am going to add a book of her illustrations to my wish list.
Susannah Blaxill's amazing pumpkin picture
I have a busy week coming up with work but hope to have finished all of my Xmas ornaments by the end of it. I have done very little the last few days but stitch as have had the tail end of horrible flu so have got loads finished off.
