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!

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

Chicken of the woods

It is that time of the year ... the hunt is on for Chicken of the woods. The most equisitely delicious fungus. Mind you I just love all wild mushrooms with a jealous passion. Jealous because I get very territorial when I find a patch that are not quite ready and furtively hide them under leaves for the next visit ... overly excited and heart racing when I discover a new delicious one somewhere unexpected, and I am ashamed to admit that I selfishly devour the lot THEN tell everyone of my conquest. I am not proud of these traits ...
But last week while out in the car I spotted a huge chicken of the woods growing just as it should on a deciduous stump, at the side of the little lane. It was in front of a cottage which was set back off the road. I got very excited and impatient to slice and fry! I decided to go back on my way home and pick it, though I had no knife with me. But on my return journey I spied the huge ditch in front of said stump, too much for me to scale, certainly, it would not be a dignified ascent, so hatched up another plan .... I returned with my 6' 4" son Will with legs as long and strong as you could shake a stick at. It was by then dead of night. We drew up in the car, the fungus glowing in the moonlight ... (actually it was pitch dark but it sounds better), but just as Will leapt from the car, a dog starts up barking like the Hound of the Baskervilles, and so we legged it like a couple of naughty school children. DAMN!
So for plan three .... before breakfast the next morning we were up, salivating voraciously fuelled by our hunger and drove off to the stump again. THIS time there was an old man in the garden of the cottage with his back to us cutting a hedge. But we were two hungry and desperate individuals by now and Will leapt the ditch sliced off the fungus and was back, breathless in the car in seconds, fungus OURS and I sped off with the beautiful aroma filling the car, so mouthwatering we could hardly wait. And in my eagerness I took no photos for you to see. There, told you I was selfish about fungus. I think only with my stomach at times like this. But I sliced it and fried in butter with salt and pepper then made a simple sauce with full milk and flour. I can't now speak of it as there is none left, and I am jealous of myself last week!
In looking up Chicken of the woods on google I found this lovely blog post from Hunger and Sauce and yes, the taste is essence of chicken, so incredibly savoury, and exactly as one remembers chicken as a child, when for me it was a treat on a Sunday, it is denser than chicken, packed with flavour, and quite, quite delicious and worth waiting whole years to find it's golden treasure ...


The hunt is on for another ....

Cooking and consuming Chicken of the woods ... in the wood

 Here is a photo of a previous years bounty, (those are not my hairy arms by the way)cooked in the woods on a little Primus stove.

Tree Bird Embroidery

 

Detail of bird

I have been reworking this embroidery this last week, though time for doing this work has been limited because there have been many orders to fill, thanks to the feature in Country Living. But here it is ... 24 cm x 25 cm ... silk, velvet, with rayon thread embellishment
All enquiries to info@nancynicholson.co.uk
I do love doing these again, but there have been many distractions these last couple of weeks, including my dear youngest boy Will who has been "helping" in the parched and desiccated garden. Having persuaded me to buy a lethal looking strimmer he is now occupied happily annihilating all in his path, but at least it stops him using the other garden tools for things they were not intended ... he needs topping up with food every half hour too, but it is good to hear the thrashing outside as I really have no time at the moment to compete with the growth out there. But love it too all ram shackled.

The next post will feature the newest Radial AND an exciting new venture which has also distracted me somewhat this week ... but wait and see.

Country Living Article SEPTEMBER 2013

Well here it is, more about the cottage than the business but very pretty none the less. This was photographed before I had even had the first prototypes for the kits printed. The Pigeon being started ... then it got put in a cupboard because everything started to get rather busy. But working on it again now, and I think it has found a home before it has even been finished! It does not look like this now, in fact so much has changed, and amazingly I do not live in this sort of lazy idyll at all, mooching about stitching in the garden! whatever next!

It would be great if this feature gives me a bit of a surprise one way or another ... I have already had one come to think of it. Last night my call for a Girl Friday was answered in the shape of Sarah who is coming to help me once a week! I am really excited about having her here and I think it will be great fun and certainly extremely helpful! I hope I can help her too, starting with learning to crochet!