New Stitch Cards!

Well, here they are, the new stitch cards ... though still excitedly awaiting card samples from the printers. Also working on the packaging. But basically they will be in single design kits with thread and possibly ( a new venture for me) a needle, envelope, and full instructions for stitches. They can be stitched, cut out, coloured some more, hung up sent as gifts, or bought as stocking presents. To start with I am producing 4 bird cards and four christmas decoration cards (photos soon)
They are not on the website yet but will be as soon as I have a finished product, hopefully in the next week or so. What do you think?

Advent Calendar

I am rushing to finish the prototype for the Advent Calendar course which starts on Friday! It is more stitching than you can shake a stick at but it will be lovely. And I have so many other things that need to be done ... I need ten sets of fingers all busy like an articulated automated machine ... but if you live near Tenterden in Kent then get yourself booked in to the course at Hoop or ring Vanessa on 01580 388011 to book your place. Or come along to the next course which is Christmas Decorations which I have designed 6 decs for you to make and embroider. If you can't get along to these then how about an online course? I have been thinking about doing some short projects online with tutorials once a week. Any views on this? 

I will of course post the finished article when I finally get to the end ... sun shining and at least can sit outside to sew ...

Sweet Nostalgia ...

I have been sorting out books on the stairs bookcase and found this old copy of The Faber Book of Comic Verse though I am not sure of the publication date it is at least 1940's. It was a gift from my mother to my father just after the war, on his birthday 27th April 1947. There can't have been even an idea of my brother yet and still they were dreaming of their new life together and all it's possibilities ... My mother, the nurturing earth mother contentedly coping with 16 children all looking like my father with only one daughter! My father lounging around taking it easy smoking his pipe. All photos of him then had a pipe in mouth or hand. Some of the in jokes are forever lost, never to be explained sadly, like the sandwich tree, and the even more mysterious mitre plant ... and "PIP when 306" ?

It is a great treasure this little drawing and good to share with the outside world. Drawing in books? ABSOLUTELY!

Here they are on a picnic before I was born with my brother John and sister Naomi ....

and John and Naomi with my mother.

Stitch Cards

Now ... in advance of our latest range of products I am going to share with you some of my mother's teaching aids. She made these stitch cards to show different embroidery stitches, and how to embellish them further by weaving and stitching into them, and as stitching on counted punched holes makes for certain accuracy, it meant her pupils could not fail. She used thick cotton embroidery threads, in wonderful sixties hot colours. The pricks in the cards were made by a fabulous spiked wheeled tool which could inflict a nasty bite if it slipped. It was one of my jobs when a child to run the wheel along a pencil line on the cards, then she would come along with a special tool she made by ramming a wide eyed needle, eye first into a large rubber, and pushed it through the tiny hole made by the wheel , opening up ready to be stitched.

I had a lovely class in Hythe last week where I had some happy guinea pigs to try the cards! It is very satisfying stitching through cards ... a good noise and perfect stitching every time.

My own stitch cards will be available in a week or to and those of you who receive the Newsletter will be hearing of it via that also. But will post some more as soon as I can!

Crochet project finished

I am not sure why pictures of finished crochet is so satisfying ... I have been working on this blanket for about 3 months, pretty much at every opportunity and now the main section is complete and I am racing around the border in a kind of frantic way ... I am eager, as always to get on with the next one. I am so glad I can be an unashamed crochet lover now after years of secret crocheting I can carry my balls of wool and hooks around with pride. When I was at college and trying to be so deadly serious about my art I used to crochet on the train and hide it in my bag once I got to London ... it just would not even have been funny to be caught out as a crafter then, but now! Well, I find it is quite the opposite now and the serious young thins are waving their hooks about like there is now tomorrow, crocheting their bearded boyfriends waistcoats and the like ...

 Then the next project is another blanket ( pictured below ) but one I have put aside for a while. The original idea was to use all my mothers fine Shetland yarn plus others I had found and added to to make a very large heirloom blanket on her honour. She used these yarns to knit the most wonderful little dollies, tiny little things, also tiny little bird finger puppets. She was doing this still with amazing eyesight for a lady in her eighties. I have the birds hidden away somewhere and will photograph them and the little dollies too so consider this post unfinished!

... I think my camera lens has some jam or greasy fingerprint of some kind smeared on it as every photo I have taken recently has a smudge in the same place. But after a bit of spit and polish here they are ...

Robert Gibbings

Back in May before my op I had a short break in Scotland visiting friends Nick and Margaret who live near Dumfries. Nick took us into town one rainy afternoon and we happily mooched around charity shops and admired the splendid buildings. We also found a book fair in the town hall, which was very exciting. But slightly worrying for me  as I know I am shortly going to be tempted by treasures. It is an addiction for me ... and there were many treasures. Many early Edward Ardizonne children's books which I fondled achingly and went back to many times, thinking I could just go without food for a month and be happy knowing they were safe in my hands. And then Nick spotted this, irresistibly titled A True Tale of Love in Tonga by Robert Gibbings. I have since found that he was the publisher of The Golden Cockerel Press and here you will find a delightful little British Pathe film all about him. The cover was enough for me ... but each page has beautiful engravings by Robert ... it is a wonder. Paul kindly bought it for me as an early birthday present and I actually have it propped up next to the computer as the front image is so inspiring as a piece of beautiful design and the fact that despite not being a lover of yellow, I am reminded that with the right arguement you can be easily swayed to a different view. I am loving this particular shade of yellow ... with inky black is GOOD!

Robert Gibbings