Good morning....

The sun is shining and the birds are singing and I am seated in my freshly painted and carpeted living room in front of my new computer, Hurrah! And it just gets better you can see the carpet in my workroom which I have not been able to see for the last four weeks. I removed eight boxes to be re-cycled at the tip and st the charity shop so I am feeling very smug. Now all I have to do is re-cycle my stash by getting creative again.

Thank you for the messages of sympathy in my self inflicted predicament. They are still working on the files.
One of my losses, if that is what it turns out to be, are the dozens of photographs I took at the Three Emperors Exhibition at the RA. I was reminded of them when I caught the end of the programme on the Forbidden City on BBC2 last night. (Yes, I was watching the Nancy's)

This is from the RA's site, painted on silk....can you imagine?

Last year I did a workshop at the EG with Fay Maxwell based on her work in her book Crewel and Unusual, I have to confess the piece from this workshop became a UFO but I jumped at the chance to take another workshop when she visited us again. Her workshops hardwork because she keeps you at it but great fun. Half the room wanted to do the modern take on Crewel work we did last time and the other half, including me, wanted to do the much freer canvas work.

We had to paint a piece of canvas before hand, having done that Fay then said we could ignore the painting as we were going to cover the canvas to within an inch of it's life. I was just a way of getting over staring at a blank piece of white canvas. I have been fascinated by the rust pieces that Lynda of Purple Missus has been doing, so I pinched her colour scheme of Quinacridone Nickel Azo Gold and Paynes Grey and I added a little Iridescent Gold. I painted the canvas and also a piece of velvet and some threads. I was fascinating to see how the different materials took the paint in different ways. I forgot to take photographs as we went along but this is the piece to far




The lace is only being auditioned at the moment and I want it to look more distressed, loads of work to be done but this is going to be a great "pick up and do a bit piece" for the summer.

Off to enjoy the day just in case this fine weather spell turns out to be "summer".