Hadn't realised it had been so long

Since I last blogged.  Time just seems to have got away from me.  Must be the sun.   We've been walking quite a lot, mainly in Teesdale and the garden has demanded a lot of our attention so by the time I've settled down for the night I've just been dropping off to sleep.  Been to the Embroiderers Guild today so I'm not so tired.   Carol Coleman gave the talk and showed us quite a lot of her very creative jewellry made with solvy products and fme.  

Teesdale has been absolutely beautiful this year and the famous haymeadows are awash with colour.  Although having said that my camera hasn't done them justice, I think the light was just too bright and has taken away a lot of colour.  I understand the best time for photography is early morning and just before dusk was the light values are at their best. 

The day this was taken poor Buster got so hot he found a large oak tree and flopped down under it and refused to go any further.   We'd taken a water bowl with us and gave him a drink and poured some of the water over his head and ears.   Once he'd got his second wind we headed for the River Tees so he could play in the water for a while.  It was lovely sitting by the river eating our lunch while Buster covered us with water.

I've been to see my friend Jenny this week who lost her husband a few weeks back.  She's coming to terms with her loss but didn't feel like restarting her tutorials.   She did however give me some homework!!!

Jenny designs beading and hardhanger projects for magazines, this is the scissor keeper from a sewing set she designed.   I've got all the surface embroidery done on mine, just got the woven bar bits to do and then the beading.   I've also finished the first postcard swap this year.  It was a create your own challenge swap on Art4Mail group.  We had to chose five numbers between 1 and 50 when adding our name to the database.  When the deadline had been reached we were emailed with the technique or word relating to the numbers we had chosen.  Mine were: pieced, stripe, colour a doodle, organic and glitter.

This is what I did, pieced triangles, striped border, doodled designs on an applique hand then coloured the doodle using Copic pens, the organic bit was a small feather in the middle of a glittery hand.  Phew Ireally had no idea what I was going to do with that selection of words but I'm pleased I managed to think of something.

Three more atc's arrived from the Surface Design 'Technique' swap the top one is from Dotti Cullen who's technique was sun printing.  Its really a very pretty purply-blue than shown in the photo, my scanner is giving off blue shadows and I can't seem to get rid of them.   The middle one is from Gale Wrigley who uas used solvy and slashed fabrics and the bottom one is from Susan McIntyre.  Susan has used fabric paper to create a patchwork background and fibres and machine stitching.

Keith and I are off tomorrow to a woodturning club he's heard is being held in Thirsk.  I hope he finds it as interesting and as entertaining as I do the EG.