My recent technical issues with the lovely PC I am currently working on (got to be polite or it might take offence and crash again!) have meant that I have been going through all of my web sites in Favourites and writing down those that I don’t want to lose if the PC finally bites the dust. Am hoping to be able to get new PC soon so am planning to transfer things over.

This means that all the sites are organised in my little book and I have finally got around to working out where some of the pictures I seen have come from! So I thought I would share some pics and their links with you so that you can go off and have an explore.

The first site Medieval Beads run by Jen Segrest has some amazing examples of beadwork through the ages. I hope she won’t mind if I show you a couple of examples from her wonderful collection.

This very talented lady collected all the pictures on this site and her accompanying Flickr picture collection and also makes wonderful beaded work and pincushions. Jen very kindly shares how to make the pincushions in these photo tutorials on Flickr. Here is an example of one of her cushions which you can buy through her Etsy store.

You can also buy a book of how to make some of her pincushions – this is going to be on my wish list for when I have time (right after I find the blog with the knitting pattern for making extra days in the week!).

The second site is another blog that I found by accident – a bit of late night surfing as you do! The blog is called Extreme Costuming and is run by Laura who makes costumes for her roles in the SCA (Society for Creative Anachronism) in the US and her volunteer work at various history projects. I hope that she won’t mind me showing you this picture from her site (the copyright is  V. Dye, 2006) but it shows the amazing quality of her work.

Not only is the embroidery fantastic but the research is as well – on this page of the blog she details the process and includes photos of original pieces from museums in Kent and  London. I am hugely impressed by everything this woman does!

As well as this jacket she has many other pieces on the blog such as superb coifs. Makes me really wish that I did Elizabethan re-enactment but then I have enough trouble keeping up with making the simpler costumes for our period!

This is what I love about the Internet. I know there are all those debates about whether it is a good thing or not but having access to all these blogs with all this embroidery, knitting and general wonderful stuff on can only be a good thing! It certainly makes me very happy :-).