Textile Treasury

HELLO! I'm back! Big shout out to Connie my lovely American fellow-blogger who has been nagging and cajoling me for over a year to get my finger out and get posting. So here it is. This will be a somewhat truncated post I'm afraid, as I'm just getting a quick one out there, just a couple of garden photos and that's your lot - I need to sit down and think about what I want to say, so much has happened, things change, the blog may not look the same. However, it's always been a bit of a mix and match blog, hasn't it!

I did no stitching last year AT ALL. In September I discovered knitting again after about 40 years, and that became my obsessive activity for months - it's calmed down now and of course the warmer weather means fewer knitted things required anyway. A chance remark by a friend - Amanda of Mangle Prints, a brilliant little business selling hand made lino-prints - asked me if I'd like to share a table with her at a new venture in town, a monthly craft fair in one of the market places. (we have two, but sadly no markets any more! ) This has galvanised me into checking out what textiles/stitcheries I have to sell, and what more I need to get working on. So last week I began to feverishly get designing and stitching, and next week will be even more frenetic, the craft fair is next Saturday! So I'm having lots of fun and making lots of mess!

I promise I'll upload some knitting and stitching photos next time...and I'll try and make that soon!

We dug up the small and not very exciting lawn, and I designed a gravel garden - Jim was not convinced for ages but now he loves it! The plants I put in round the edges are spreading out and softening the line between gravel and border. And we had some branches lopped off the big old beech tree in the field next door (with permission of course!) and the change to the garden has been incredible! We have so much more light and SUNSHINE at last! We really noticed the difference this year.

I can't remember whether the summer house was up and running last time I posted, but here it is with the lovely clematis rambling across the roof-line. We sit here often, especially when it is bright but a little too chilly to sit in the garden. And it's wonderful for me to have somewhere light to read and stitch - the cottage is lovely, but very dark.

So there you are. I'm looking forward to catching up on all the blogs I haven't been reading this last 18 months! And many thanks to those of you who I know will come and read this despite the long hiatus! Oh! And apparently there have been changes on Blogger so there are no 'open' comments or something like that, you have to log in to comment. Huh! Nothing like making life easy, is there!

Until next time - with more textile talk and photos, and I hope it won't be too long!