David Pye bowl, more fungus, cake and thread ...

Sarah winding threads for kits

Field mushrooms and Parasols

Field mushrooms in David Pye bowl

Harvest

Autumn sunshine took Sarah and I outside to wind thread for the kits, drink tea and eat some delicious shop bought custard tarts, the best possible indulgence. As fast as she makes the thread bundles for the kits, they seem to disappear. The Christmas orders are coming in and we are going full pelt. Also a photo of some field mushrooms picked that morning locally, with one or two parasol mushroom thrown in too. They are rather artistically placed in a wonderful hand carved wooden bowl made by David Pye

which he gave to my parents back in RCA days. He was Prof of Furniture Design from 1964-1974 and I remember his collection of moths and butterflies in beautiful museum drawers when we went to visit him at his home in Wadhurst. Loved drawers ever since. The bowl reflects the radiating gills of the mushroom so beautifully ... here is another bowl very similar to it. I treasure this bowl, much loved, much used. The dressing when using it for a hearty salad runs obligingly down the ridges, easy to scoop again for another dousing ...

Special Offer

Please note also that I have a special offer this month. Any Stitch Kit ordered before 30th October will have a FREE Interactive card pack and two postcards included. For every two kits ordered, two FREE packs and two postcards will be sent to you. http://www.nancynicholson.co.uk/

Lovebirds Stitch Kits in assembly line!

NEW POSTERS!

New Poster designs on the website ... yes, these illustrations I did in 2006! but they came back from the printers today and I love them, so they are up on the website now, A3 and the first ones are signed. Hope you like them!

Madonna

Madonna and Child

Detail

Detail of Infant Jesus

This is another of those treasured possessions made by my mother in her student days, so, late 30s/40s and now very fragile, it fades every year even though I keep it out of the light. The thread has just disappeared in places, but her hand is very familiar, in the couching and split stitch used on the hands, very much in the medieval tradition, little scraps she had around, some of which I still have the remains of somewhere. I know this may have been more appropriate to post at Christmas but I am just giving you something lovely for now as I am off to school tomorrow, see here http://www.schoolforcreativestartups.com/

and not sure when I will get time over the next three days which is the first, rather scarily named "BOOT CAMP" which makes me visualise mud and being out of breath and feeling rather awkward in over sized and unflattering khaki ... and which I am hoping is in reality sitting in a lecture theatre and meeting some other entrepreneurs, and learning lots of new stuff about business. But stupidly worried about what to wear and whether my bag is big enough for the "quiet snacks" which are required for the day! Just hope I find a chum quickly ... oh!