I've been doing stuff - honest

Hello all. Hope you're all well. 

Sorry I haven't posted (again). Here are the excuses: I had a really busy week at work after my last post and then was booked on a 5 day residential course last week. So the weekend (when I should have gone to Rocheberie Schoolhouse Quilters) was spent sorting out lots of 'stuff' rather than having more fun.

But in spite of this I did manage to scan in a picture I'd found in a magazine and then print it onto Lutrador and craft vilene (as you can see below). The printer (HP Photosmart C7280 All-In-One) was an absolute dream and just took the different media and printed. I know this is how it's meant to work - but I'm sure many of you will agree how it often doesn't.

Not too sure what I'm going to do with them - but I'm sure my next class will give me lots of ideas.

Thought you might like to see Flo - in her favourite position - on our bed asleep. Can you see the tail is starting to swish - she really doen't like to have her photo taken. 

And I was so happy to come home to my copy of Selvedge. Oh it's such a delight to read and look at the pictures and the ads. The next issue is about quilts - I'm sure it'll have lots of news about the forthcoming exhibition at the V&A. I know sine the sad demise of Borders it's not as easy for everyone to get a copy of Selvedge off the shelf - I think Waterstones might be tsrting to try to fill this gap - so do try to have a look at a copy and see what you think.

Anyway - I'm off now to do all those jobs I haven't been here to do for a week. Have a great weekend.

Exciting weekend

Hello All,

I'm so glad the snow has at long last gone. We have a really big snowfall on Wednesday and I get sent home form work as they were starting to cancel the trains. Bit annoyed as I'd struggled to get in and really had to drag myself out of bed.

Well, as you can see from the photos I've been cooking again. I'm trying to reduce what we throw away and so I had to find a couple of recipes to use up some left over cranberries and some bananas that were a little over ripe. So the result is a fruity tea bread and a banana and walnut loaf. The fruit looks very moist. I've been very good, cut them in half and put them in the freezer - so at the next quilting meeting I host I can offer some very nice home baked cakes.

And the next exciting thing I've been up to is to re-join one of Bren's classes at the Bramble Patch. It was great to be back there doing this class. She is so good at setting challenges and getting you to use your brain. I hope you like the display below of the small collages we made in the afternoon. The idea was to reflect and represent the photos we'd brought in. So now I've got a nice list of things to do for homework - one of which is stocktaking the books I have related to arts and crafts.... oh that could take some time.

Take care.
'The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity'
Dorothy Parker

Snow snow and more snow

Hello again.

I thought you might like to see some views - you may notice a little snow. It just hasn't shifted at all in the last week and it's snowing again.
And here are the poor duck and geese on the frozen lake.

Luckily they seem to have a little bit of water to have a swim in.

And, of course, we had to feed them - here is DH trying to make sure they all had a bit (didn't really work - but we did try).

Hope you're all able to get out and about.

I think I'll curl up now with some hand quilting.

A belated Happy New Year

Hello all.

Hope you're all well and not struggling too much with the snow, cold and ice. It's a great excuse to sit by the fire and hand quilt - not that many of us need an excuse.

Apologies for disappearing - like many of you I was rather busy with the festive season. I must say I had a great Christmas an New Year and booked some extra leave so I only went back to work today. How nice a short week.

Well I've been thinking about what to write - so here we go:

• I must tell you about the forthcoming exhibition at the V & A - Quilts 1700 - 2010 It looks like it's going to be a great exhibition. I've also found the curators blog - well worth a look at.
• Also, as it's new year, I have been thinking about 2009 and how It went and also looking froward to 2010 and what opportunities there are. Alyson B Stanfield makes the great suggestion - 'decide what your year will look like'. Decide that each day will be a good day and that you'll be in a good mood. What a great idea. Life is certainly a lot nicer when you're having a good day. If you haven't listened to Alyson's podcast yet - please do take the time to listen as it's really useful.

And this year I've got a few things to 'assist' with my creativity.

1. I'll be attending the monthly class with Bren Boardman at The Bramble Patch
2. I've also decided to keep a 'Creativity Diary' - this is where I'll note what I do EVERY DAY that's creative - it might be reading a book, investigating submitting to a quilt to an exhibition or actually doing some quilting. LOL.
3. I'm also starting a course with the OU on Digital Photography (paid with Tesco vouchers) as I'd like to improve the skills I have in relation to my digital camera and how to use the software.

So what are you all up to this year? I'd love to hear from you.

A lovely day sewing...

I've had a lovely day today sewing with the Rocheberie Schoolhouse Quilters. It's always nice to catch up with such lovely quilters and bloggers:

Sew create it

The Contented Quilter

Quilting in Chaos

Master of Patience

There was a great speaker as well - Gail Lawther. She described the influence her visits to New Zealand had had on her and also showed us the great work she'd produced. As you can see I just had to buy the book.

We were also very lucky as we got a Christmas pressie too - a charm pack of lovely fabrics. I'm afraid the cake we had didn't last long enough for me to take a photo of - but I can assure you it was very very nice (and a very generous slice it was too).

So all in all a great day. As you can see from the photos below there were lots of us there.

A great book

Thought I'd let you know about a great book that Radio 4 will be having as their book for Bookclub. The programme format is the audience will have the book and the author, John Irving, is there to answer them. I can't begin to tell you what a great book it is. I've always found that John Irving books always make me laugh, when I know I shouldn't and always have surprises in them. This one is so funny in places but so moving in others. If you do get time to read it - please do. I can promise it will stay with you.

I have finally got round to making some things for Christmas - but I'm sure you'll appreciate that I won't be able to share these with you until Christmas.

Luckily I've got a sewing day tomorrow in a neighbouring village hall - so I've got a list of things I want to crack on with.

If you're in the UK take care this weekend as it sounds like we're going to have some rather bad weather.

Take care.

A class and stressed Flo

I had a great day yesterday playing. I had a great class with Mikki - who I originally met at Bren's class at Bramble Patch. It was a really good day and I'll show you in more detail how I'm going to use the techniques I've learnt. I've certainly got a much better idea about how to use some of the stuff I've acquired over the years. Watch this space... And now to Flo - the strangest cat we've ever had in our life - and she's number 6. Well we took her to the vets to make sure there was nothing wrong - but after a very thorough examination she said she was physically fine - but it was more likely to be stress. Yes stress.
So now she's a very spoilt cat who gets her own way all the time and gets to sleep on our bed every night. And she's a delight - enjoys fuss, comes when you call her and she hasn't gone for either of us once. So there you go.
Here she is sitting in the bath waiting for the tap to be run.
Anyway - must go now for the ceremony we have in the village at our war memorial for Remembrance Sunday.

sewing and cooking

Hello.

Well here's some fabric I bought this morning at Kisko (The Fabric Guild) for a project we're going to do next Saturday at a neighbouring village's hall. I shan't spoil the surprise but I'm sure we'll have a range of colours used with the same pattern.

Now I'm rather proud of this - it's my very first large fruit cake I've ever made - it's for Christmas. It's actually a Fig and honey Christmas Cake from the November issue of the BBC Good Food magazine. I do love looking at cookery books and magazines - but I'm not an overly confident cooking. I think one of the issues is that when there are only 2 of you if you make a big anything - you have to eat it for ever and it kind of spoils it. But I'm really going to try to be a bit more adventurous with my cooking as I enjoy it.

Lets hope it tastes as good as it looks by the time Christmas comes. I think, as it's a bit on the large size, I'll cut it at the start of December - so be warned if you're coming round you've been warned - every cuppa will have a slice of cake with it.
QUESTIONS
A couple of questions for you out there:
Do you have any ideas about food you can make for people for Christmas?
And
Have any of you done the OU course on Digital Photography? (And if any of you consider it don't forget you can use Tesco vouchers to pay and for each £10 of vouchers you get £40 worth of OU course)
Hope you're all enjoying the glorious autumn day today. Cold but very very sunny.

Holiday...

Hello all. Yes - I'm still around - just been away for a bit and I thought you might like to see some of the photos I took. So this is a photo I took from Pontcysyllte Aqueduct across to another one. It was so high and only narrow enough to get one canal boat across - the path next to it wasn't so great either.

What do you think to the artwork below? That was at the entrance.
This is just a great photo DH took - a great shape.

These two photos were taken at Copper Kingdom - some of you may have seen the site shown on the TV programme Coast. It was a great landscape - sort of lunar.

This is Beaumaris Castle - it was a beautiful sunny day as you can see and it's a great castle to look around.

And finally I took some lovely photos when we went to Penmon Priory - the water in the rock pools was so clear - and the seaweed was a great range of bronze colours.

I couldn't resist taking photos of the pebbles....

So - I'm back now and have enjoyed sewing now I've got back. I keep trying to tidy up my sewing room - but it's an uphill battle.

Hope you all have a good weekend.

Books

I thought I'd share some of the books with you that I had for my birthday. The first one is 'How to be an explorer of the world' by Keri Smith. It's a real fun book that aims to make you look more at the things around you.
Here's an example of one of the 'Exploration' exercises. This one encourages you to record everything you consume or purchase in a day or week.

And this one encourages you to look at colours more closely around you. By using the colour chart chips you match them to what you se around you.

It really is a fun book and I'm going to take it on holiday with me. Keri also has a great blog called 'Wish Jar'. She's very generous and you get to share how she develops her ideas into the books she writes. I think it would be great book to share with children - or like me being a big kid just think its great fun.

The next book is 'Secrets of Simplicity' by Mary Carlomagno. A really beautiful book to look at if you look at the Amazon site it has some great photos of the art work.

Besides looking beautiful it does have some good ideas. Mary Carlmagno has a company called Order. It has some interesting insights from well known individuals and looks at things in a more simplistic and positive way - well worth a look.

And finally 'How to have Kick-ass ideas: get curious, get adventurous, get creative' by Chris Barez-Brown.
A really fun book.

I love this idea and I tried it out with how to find time to be more creative. The aim is you write down every idea you can to tackle the issue you have - and there are no wrong ideas - and then you see how realistic the idea is and the more practical for you - the more near the centre of the circle.

One of my ideas to have more time for creativity was to give up work - great idea but then I'd have no money to spend of stuff or food come to think about it.

I then thought about reducing the number of days i work - not such a bad idea - but perhaps in a few years time.

Then - the idea was to make out specific days for creativity and also to try to do a little bit each day. Now that is practical.

Chris Barez-Brown joined the ?What If! The Innovation Company in 1998 and many of the ideas in the book are used by them with larger companies.

I'd love to hear what books you've enjoyed recently.

Have a good weekend and take advantage of the great weather we have at the mo.

Studio envy...

I had a trip out on Sunday afternoon. I decided to visit a friends studio that was open as part of the Northamptonshire Open Studio's event. (If you look at the PDF of their brochure this open studio is no 114)

So the first picture below is inviting you in and...

here you are in the studio. I now have a serious case of 'studio envy'. DH is not pleased. My idea is to get rid of the spare bed and wardrobe in the spare room and make it my studio - rather than the current situation of me working in there and having a bed and a wardrobe in there. Makes perfect sense to me LOL.

As you can see the studio is bright and light and airy.
The artists exhibiting and demonstrating are Mikki Stanswood, Bren Boardman and Fi Bowman. All great artists in their own right, but seeing all three at once is even better.
I had a lovely afternoon browsing the book shelves and having a chat with them all. If you do live in or near Northamptonshire please do try to make some time to visit - it's so interesting see artists studios.