What the rabbit saw.......

This little man peaked over the fence and to his delight he saw a row of carrots and ...........(to be continued)

My very Best Wishes to you for a Happy and Peaceful New Year.

More books.....

I went to say thank you to Susan for her comment and she had found this.


Bucharbeiten / Book-Art from Wolfgang Schroeter on Vimeo.

As you know I have difficulty with neatness and accuracy, I can only marvel at these wonderful artists.

Christmas thanks.....

Thanks to my son (who cooked the dinner)  and daughter  and husband for a wonderful, fun Christmas.  Thanks to my husband for my Wii Fitness Centre (what is he telling me?). To all those people who sent good wishes via their blogs and who left messages throughout the year on mine.

A special thanks for the delightful suprise from Britt of Stitchety Grub, we had a lovely real meeting at the V&A earlier this year. This is what she sent...

the little ATC is no 2 of a limited edition of 6.  It is so clever I love it.

with the card came these little gifts

and inside the little thread keeper were these little treasures

I WILL learn to do Tatting one of these days!

and a final thanks to my fried Annie for this lovely ceramic dove

How I hope it could be a sign of a year of love and peace for us all.

Happy Christmas

It's a funny thing........

 one of the all time favourite songs is "I'm dreaming of a White Christmas" and then when we get one all we do is moan......Here it is anyway.

Cold...

This was my garden this morning,

Now it would be fun if they cam to play.

C'mere give me a hug!

Thanks to Damn Cool Pics for these beauties.

Old and new old.........

In my meanderings this morning I found these two pieces. The first in a link from Sue Lawty on the conservation  of  an egyptian tunic , there is a short video here. The second is on Thistle Threads The Embroiderers Story where you can follow  the making of this stunning replica of a 17th century jacket.
It has taken three years!


I was lucky enough to visit the Plimoth Plantation  when we were in America.It is an fascinating replica of one of the first settlements, the role players were excellent.

More London

You will have gatthered by now that wandering round London is one of my delights, a few more from Saturday.

I think the sculpture by Anish Kapoor at the Royal Academy was definitely Chistmassy.  "Did they use glue?" I heard a little girl ask.

Great fun to play with!

Anyone for chocolate?

This magnificant beast was in Covent Garden.

and so was this one.

and this one was in Trafalgar Suqare for a short while, global warming being aided by lots of little hands.

Inside a "polar bear"

and a final look at the square.

This may be next years Christmas card.

Christmas Shopping.......

Well a Santa outfit wasn't obligatory but there did seem to be a lot of them about when i was in London on Saturday.

I'm not sure what they were doing but they were having great fun, wish I'd worn mine.

I found the window display's a little disappointing this year.

Selfridges were very camp pantomime themes.

Me and friend in Bond Street

Fortnum and Mason had Matthew Bournes Swan Lake

 

   Very clever but not very Christmassy.

December card

http://www.textiletales.blogspot.com/

This was the Calendar Girls inspiration for December chosen by Neki.  My first thought was the embellisher but I only have heavy duty needles at the moment and I found that I lost the floating illusion which I so liked so in the end I simply layed the fibres onto the felt and then coverd them with black chiffon.

It is for Carol. I hope she likes it.The end of another year it has been fun.

It never rains......

well it rarely stops at the moment.  It's been a very up and down couple of weeks, low points, daughter trapped her finger in car door and then hurt her shoulder, son had to have his beautiful cat Shadow put to sleep because of a tumour and I lost a pendant that  I loved because  my daughter brought it back from Denmark for me and it was one of those very useful pieces. Yuk.

High points, son became a householder, there was no lasting damage to daughter and last night son and I went to the National to see Mark Ravenhill's  adaptation of Terry Pratchett's book Nation. We enjoyed the performance and then had the added bonus of meeting Sir Terry who had been sitting close by. Great stuff.

I was riveted by another performance during the interval of two young women sitting in the audience putting on their make up.  They had obviously come straight from the office and were "going on" after the play but it was fascinating because it wasn't just a quick dab with a powder puff , oh no, they laid out an array of pots and brushes which they wielded with great skill. I meant to check at the end to see if they had changed their clothes at some point during the second Act.

I can't remember the name of the shop, they sell clothes, but they must have cornered the market in old sewing machines.  I took tthese on my mobile phone so they are a bit grainy but I thought they would be fun to play with.

Here are some basic plays.

Have fun.

HEN

I had an exciting e-mail this morning ot tell me that the first edition of the Hand Embroidery Network magazine NEEDLE is now on line.  I have only had time to skim through but it looks very impressive.

This is the cover

Early Christmas....

Because we don't meet in December the Sevenoaks branch of the Embroiderers Guild had our Christmas celebration on Saturday.  Lee Ault brought some of her wonderful collection of antique and vintage dresses, which also included exquisite baby garments and handkerchieves which were definitely just for show.  The most amazing part was that she allowed us to handle the pieces, a rare priviledge.  While we relaxed , after  our huge shared lunch, Lee showed us how a dress should be packed. with layers of tissue paper in each fold and "doughnuts" of tissue packing the sleeves, it can take two hours to pack a dress properly, as Lee and her husband were off to New Zealand the next day I hoped their packing was done. Unfortunately Lee doesn't have a web site but if you ever have the chance to listen to her grab it.This is Lee in a vintage gold embroidered coat which she wore over a black dress.

Some of the lace and beaded pieces, click on them to see the detail and imagine yourself doing work this fine day in day out.

and imagine yourself doing the Charleston in this

this had a matching jacket, gorgeous!

For a bit of extra fun we had a dress the doll competition,remember those days with paper and crayons designing, colouring cutting out.  How many times did you accidentally cut off the tabs?  Queen Elizabeth won.

a few of the others

A little trip....

Yesterday I journeyed right across south London to the Landmark Arts Centre in Teddington. The venue, a former church, was fascinating in itself. The purpose of the visit was an exhibition called Sparkle and one of the main reasons for the visit was to see the work of  Jackie Cardy of Dog Daisy Chains who hails from the north west like me. This is my little memento

She loves to work with tweed and velvet and her bags were delicious.

While speaking to Jackie I discovered that another exhbitor was from my home town.  Karen A Ruane has a beautiful blog called Contemporary Embroidery.

Another little treat to myself was this box of cards by Mary Thorp

Beautiful.

Couldn't be so close and not go and look at the river at the narrow end....

 

and of course I had to play

A good day.