Thursday 29 October 2015

Long time no see....

I'm ashamed to admit that it has been over a year since I wrote on here.  I have no excuses to offer although I should explain that I have not been idling my time away.  Life has a rhythm to it here in beautiful mid-Wales. Working on Mondays and Tuesdays. My sewing group every Wednesday. Once a month, my felting group, WI and lunch out with my friends.  Also a monthly visit with my husband to our daughter's to be grandma-and-grandpa-in charge for a couple of days - a time we treasure beyond all things!


Llyn Clywedog - a few miles from us.  Beautiful!!

My facebook feed informed me this morning that there are only eight Mondays until Christmas!! Where did that time go? We've had a couple of weddings (our son and niece's), our granddaughter's 1st birthday, a trip to France to stay with our Town Twinning friends and some French visitors in return.  I've spent the afternoon cutting out the fabric for a table runner, 6 place mats, 3 tote bags and a Christmas stocking.  All I have to do now is sew them up.  Which may take some time.....

After that I did some work on some posters I'm designing for my sewing group's 2016 exhibition. We are called the Welsh Heritage Quilters and have an exhibition of our work every two years.  I am Mrs Average but there are some seriously talented ladies in the group.  I'll post more details later, but for your diaries the dates are 26th March - 10th April.

At the moment it's half term - time for catching up on those jobs that never seem to get done ordinarily. Although on Tuesday I had one of my regular knee injections which help to ease the pain of osteoarthritis in my knee.  The bonus is that I have to rest up for a couple of days so I have spent quite a bit of time reading.  I'm halfway through re-reading the Brother Cadfael books by Ellis Peters which I love because they are set in Shropshire, my home county.  I especially love the little sketch maps at the front of each volume which are useful for following the story but also remind me of my childhood years. In between, I've caught up on the last two books in the alphabet crime series by Sue Grafton - W is for Wasted and X.  I like these novels set in California about a female private investigator although I gather the author now regrets saying she'd write one for each letter of the alphabet.  She's almost done now though!  I've also just read the new Phillipa Gregory, The Taming of The Queen.  I've read so many novel set in Tudor times now that they're beginning to merge into one narrative, but her descriptions of Henry VIII and his treatment of Katherine Parr are fascinating.  Except for his ulcerated leg - thank goodness the books don't have added smells.  I also have the first book in Bernard Cornwell's series about Uhtred of Bebbanburg - The Last Kingdom - to re-read.  I was hoping to do this before the TV series began but failed as it started last week.  

Pam, who is the unofficial leader of my felting group, says that we don't push ourselves out of our comfort zones enough, so I have resolved to be a bit more imaginative.  Last time I did some nuno felting, using apricot coloured merino and orange prefelt topped with black chiffon.  I was interested in a technique I'd seen where you free motion stitch over the chiffon and then cut away the chiffon from areas enclosed by the stitching to reveal the felt underneath.  I was reasonably pleased with my experiment but want to do more of this.  The picture below is not exactly clear but I think you'll get the idea.


I'm retiring at Christmas.  And this time I really mean it.  So hopefully I'll have more time to write about what's on my mind.

Thanks for reading.

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