Su Blackwell

Just eating my sandwich casually flicking through the Waitrose Food magazine and nearly choked on it to see these illustrations.

A wow moment.

Made by Su Blackwell

More of her work here

and I completey forgot say thank you to everyone for all your lovely comments about the book project. I appreciate you taking the time.

Lots of lovely warm glow inside from you all.

Thanks.

More blatant self publicity

I have finished my Christmas quilt, I gave you a quick sneaky peak here. I am hugely pleased with it, mainly as I have managed not to cut any corners but actually do it how it is supposed to be done.

The designs for the embroidered panels are available here Its the first issue of the magazine produced by the Hand Embroidery Network led but Sarah Whittle.

You can get a copy of the designs here. I would love to hear from anyone who has a go at it.

I hadn't quite meant to have this post straight after the post about the book!

1st December

Its lovely to see all the wonderful advent calenders out there in blog land. I made mine and use the same each year. I still really like it and enjoy using it.
However the boys had different ideas.
It went a bit like this.
Can we have the Lego advent calender?
no
oh why not?
Because its expensive, we have enough Lego to sink a battle ship and remember last year other people said that on some days you just got one piece of Lego.
It all went quiet at that point.

Don't get me wrong, I like Lego, I am happy that they love their Lego but I am also a scrooge about things like that. I really have an aversion to commercialisation of things like advent. Besides you get lots of gifts at Christmas, why do you need one each day to lead up to it?

but my boys know how to get round me so 50 matchboxes later we now have 2 more advent calenders!

They know that any suggestion of making our own gets me on side and enthusiastically pulling out the glue and christmassy paperThe one was made by my 9 year old and has been filled with lots of random bits of Lego and each day he will add to his model in a challenge to make something..This one was made by the 5 year old who truly believes that the more you add the better it looks. He decided that he wanted chocolate in his. He also decided that he wanted it to be chocolate money but they don't fit in the trays so he then had to make a dispenser from a toothpaste tube. In some drawers there is a little note telling him to take a chocolate from the box. A complicated system but he is a bit like that!

wooohoooooo

ok trying to contain my excitement but its HERE.....
what's that you say?
what has arrived?
well only the best book of the year, well apart from this one! ( well done Ginny)
( which suddenly makes it all rather Bridget Jones)
But the book I have been waiting for, for a year.
Quick lets turn to page 254... isn't that just the best number?
and lets see whats on that page......
ah yes, now that looks interesting,
a pattern for a kite....
and let me see whose pattern it is...
oh yes that would be my kite pattern.
woooohooooooo
Did I tell you I was excited?

Ok, ok so its only one pattern but its my pattern and its in a book!

You can order your here.
Besides the amazing kite pattern, its actually quite good!

Quick the sun's out, take a photo....

I am one of those people who has to just keep making something till I get it out of my system!

This is a quote from The Rubyiat of Omar Khayyam.

I wrote it in the first valentines card I wrote to my husband.

I think his may feel the same but would add

A loaf of bread, a chunk of cheese, a flask of wine and thou!

because cheese is on of the major food groups.........

he is thinking it should be 5 a day!

Mandy Pattullo

On the Julie Arkell workshop were some really interesting people. You never quite know who is going to turn up on these things but as we were sitting stitching there was plenty of opportunity to sit and chat. One of the artists there was Mandy Pattullo. She is based in Newcastle. She had come a very long way for the workshop!

She explained that she generally works in series so has an idea and will work through it in a variety of ways including stitch, artists book, photography and site specific work.

She is currently using old quilts to make artefact's but she has been documenting the fabrics used to make these quilts.

The pictures are of pieces of quilts that she uses in her work. they are old and slowly disintegrating and I know for many people the idea of taking apart an old quilt would horrify them but these quilts are really on the verge of falling apart.

They have such a sense of lost life to them.

I thought they were beautiful in themselves, just as scraps.

They represent something but I find it hard to say what it is.

It will come to me one day.

Well done Chrissie, she guessed it right.

I didn't really mean to hold you all in suspense but the week has seen many a little flopsie poorly bunny sitting on the sofa here. I have a hot water bottle with a duck cover on and it has been well used this week!

( I know... a duck hot water cover but its one of those things I have had a very long time and I am sure I don't need to say anymore about that!)

The workshop was with Julie Arkell. More of her work here.

It was a 2 day workshop but as the nature of the work is all hand sewn it took a long time!

I really enjoyed it and appreciated her thoughts on my own work. I also met another very interesting artist there and I will blog about her another day.

I am just listening to the news on the radio about the floods and my heart goes out to all dealing with it.

I live in a town that is affected every year by seasonal flooding and mostly its just a matter of avoiding certain roads and paths but a couple of years ago we hit the headlines with major floods and loss of life and so to hear of it elsewhere brings it all back.

My thoughts are with them.