It looks as though summer is finally arriving! and what better way to celebrate than to spend a lazy morning reading about two quite different but equally inspiring women!

Firstly, a fantastic piece over on Needle’nThread by Trish Burr, split in to parts 1 and two

Trish is author of one of my very favourite embroidery books Redoute’s finest flowers in embroidery. My mum bought it for me a few Christmases ago and I had to buy her a copy of her own for mother’s day in order to get my copy back!

The article is full of …..

Sorry bit of an interruption there - a big cry from the kitchen, Duncan sliced his finger rather than the cucumber.. I did everything right - wrapped the finger tightly in a clean tea towel - got him to apply pressure and hold it above his heart and then I panicked!! I remember now I’m rubbish in an emergency! However, a couple of plasters and control of the remote for the afternoon and I think he’ll live!

Anyway, sorry for the break - check out the piece on Trish’s book - there are some amazing photos - definitely worth taking a peak! - and she talks about how she became interested in embroidery and how she came to write these amazing books.. I’ll almost certainly be ordering her new book! In fact I’ll probably have to get 2 copies!

The second piece is an interview by the lovely Lisa Lam with the inspiring Amy Butler

Amy talks about how she got started and built up the business and has some great advice for people starting out.. I’ll be rereading and taking notes!! But the essence I think was to start simple and focussed with an etsy or ebay store to feel the market out.. which I guess I know, but I’m still experimenting to find my focus and building up the courage to try! - my wedding in 6 weeks time is a good excuse to procrastinate for now!

By the way if you like the look of Amy’s new crockery line at Mikasa (I know I do!) there are some closer photos here.

Sorry folks - I was away for just a few days and had a technical glitch with the list! A few of the blogs disappeared off the list - thankfully it’s all fixed now, but if you spot any more probs - just drop me a line!

I’m often asked how my list of sewing and craft blogs is generated and what the numbers mean so I thought I would try to shed a little light on the matter. Basically it all boils down to magic! Sorry wasn’t that what you wanted to hear?

Firstly, the list has been generated two ways. I added a lot of the blogs that I read on a daily basis which got the list going. Since then people email me asking to be added to the list. I’ve tried to ensure that all the sites I’ve added are blogs that are updated regularly, relatively non commercial and talk about sewing or crafts. I hope this keeps the quality of the list high, and makes it a valuable resource for you. If you aren’t already on the list of sewing blogs, please feel free to email me with your site, and I’ll get you added.

The numbers that are assigned are taken from technorati. They rank blogs based on the number of links from other blogs. I’ll post in future about how you can increase this number. You can read more about this on the technorati blog.

So, the list is hand generated by me (aren’t I good ) but the score is based on technorati.

If you have any questions please leave a comment. If you are on the list and haven’t already added a sewing badge, I would certainly appreciate you helping me spread the word (and increase my technorati rank ). And if you aren’t already listed on the site, then please drop me a line.

Have a good weekend.

A couple of happy birthdays this week!

On Thursday we went out to celebrate a friend’s birthday - we had fancy cocktails at Pigalle in Picadilly where we saw the fabulous a cappella group The Magnets, so this card seemed fitting

and tomorrow we’re heading over to my sister’s for my niece’s Second birthday - I can’t believe she’s growing up - so much so that I went a bit mad with the number two.. babel fish was very useful for this!

I’ve also had a couple of large additions to my stash recently, we have a raffle each month at my Guild meetings. I was lucky enough to win this large bag of tapestry wools - so expect to see a change in my choice of thread..

I was also lucky enough to spot a notice on the intra-net at work offering this stack of Indian silks. The woman giving them away has had them in her loft for 10 years and couldn’t think what to do with them..

I’m not sure what I’ll use this beautiful material for either yet, so if you have any ideas they’ll be very welcome! There are 4 pieces of 2.5 m and the cream silk is 2 m - not sure of the widths..

I am so behind on this and we’re only 3 months into the challenge! With a wedding in 3 months time, it’s only going to get worse.. but here it is:

February’s Challenge was ‘What are old enough to remember?’

My initial thoughts for this were based on childhood memories of summers by the seaside.. and then something happened, something unexpected.. First of all Barnsley beat Liverpool in the FA Cup - which you may have noticed excited me

Now what I remember is standing in the cold, watching Barnsley and generally going home to defrost and cheer ourselves up! and then we drew Chelsea in the Quarter final.. and beat them as well! In the build up to the Chelsea match I saw this article in the Guardian and it brought back so many memories of past glories and randomly my next thought was that’s what I remember, I should do some thing that’s Barnsley..

and you don’t get more Barnsley than Toby Tyke!

Obviously this isn’t something I’ve drawn myself, but converting a picture to embroidery is challenging in itself! Onwards now onto March.. noticing the small things in life, I have an idea for this - I might go microscopic and use some of the very large bag of tapestry wool which I was lucky enough to win at the Embroiderer’s guild last month!

Well hello!

That was a longer break than expected! Though fear not I have been busy… Here are some of the fruits of my labours:

75 Wedding invitations - a bit of a group effort!

• Designed by Leonie, graphic designer at D’s firm.
• Chopped glued and beribboned by me, Duncan and my mother-in-law-elect.
• Written by my sister, Judith (aided by my brother-in-law watching the kids!).
• Folded, and stuffed into envelopes by me and Duncan
• Then a collective gathering of addresses to send them all out.. the last two are sat waiting to go tomorrow morning..

While I haven’t been blogging, I’ve still been receiving lots of lovely blogs to add to my list of sewing and craft blogs. It currently stands at 205 and is steadily growing. It’s amazing to see the increase in traffic from being mentioned by another blog - I’ve become a bit addicted to Google Analytics!

I’ve gotten further with my knitting:

this is how it was - it now goes all the way around my neck (just!)

I finally did my TIF challenge for February, which will get it’s own post..

But for the most part we’ve been concentrating on the wedding planning, we have one major decision left to make - the first dance! Any suggestions would be very welcome! I’m not sure my dancing skills are up to doing something like this. Make sure you watch until at least 45 seconds.. I promise it is worth it

Don’t forget it’s Mother’s Day here in the UK this Sunday!

My Mum and future Mother-in-law will be getting lovely Paperchase cards this year.. I have 75 more wedding invites to make and a scarf to knit, so am afraid for me it fell by the wayside. My colleague’s Mum and Mum-in-law will be getting Suzical cards, however - Sarah liked the Mole card so much she asked me to make some more..

A hyacinth for her mother-in-law (as her name means Hyacinth in french!)

and a daffodil for Sarah’s mum:

Which I particularly proud of as my drawing is not the best!

We have D’s Mum visiting for the weekend and are all going up to my sister’s for dinner on Sunday - to see my parents and Judith’s in-laws as well. Happy Mother’s Day to all you great Mum’s - hope you’re spoilt this weekend!

I recently finished reading The friday night knitting club for the second time since Christmas - not something I do very often with a book, but I really enjoyed it. Interestingly opinions seem to be divided over at Amazon - so I guess read it and see or wait for the up coming film with Julia Roberts (who knits in real life) playing the lead character Georgia.

I for one was inspired to pick up some needles after 18 years and re-learn to knit:

and I have to say, so far, I’m doing a lot better than the square I knitted when I was in Guides - it was a holey mis-shapen thing, that my family have not let me forget!!

I’m starting simple and making a (quite wide!) scarf in garter stitch.. What do you think so far? Would I be able to hold my head up in a knitting circle??

I just spent the most tense half hour - pressing refresh on the BBC Live text commentary and watching Sky Sports News.

and they did it! Super Reds (Barnsley) beat Liverpool at Anfield to knock them out of the FA Cup! Our new Goal keeper Luke Steele had the most amazing debut and kept Liverpool out and Brian Howard got the winner in the 90th minute!

As you can imagine I’m over the moon! I’m off up to Barnsley tomorrow for some wedding planning and now it looks like general celebration!

I have a big cheesy smile this evening!

Sharon Boggon has started a new challenge for the new year - Take It Further.

January’s challenge was to either use the colour scheme suggested or the concept - for January this was someone you look up to. The colour scheme and the wording immediately sparked circus thoughts - looking up to the trapeze artist (!) - there was a nice deep purpley colour that would work well, but I needed more reds..

So then I moved on to people, I actually look up to - my parents were pretty high up the list. My mum is always telling me to aim high, so when I came across the English bird of prey centre when looking for D’s birthday present - I put the 3 ideas together.. Something you look up to, something inspiring..

You’ll need to click on the image to see it properly

The other part of the challenge I really wanted to explore is the concept of taking it further - while this is only a small piece, it’s my first design using silk shading. I used single strands of DMC cottons to ‘colour in’ the hawk.

The February challenge is of course up and running already and it is ‘what are you old enough to remember?’ At the moment I’m leaning towards something sea related/inspired - if you look at the colour pallette there are blues and sandy colours. As a child we used to take the caravan to the seaside for the full 6 week school holiday - it seemed like forever.. I’ll let you know how it works out!

I went to the opus school of textile art’s 10th anniversary exhibition of textile art today. I was one of those bright early spring days, crisp but sunny that suits London so well. The exhibition was at the Mall Galleries just south of Trafalgar Square - lovely looking cafe if you’re passing, but too busy today for me to find a table for a coffee.

Unfortunately I hadn’t thought to take a camera, but there was some amazing stuff - a real mixture, from felting to little people in boots The only photos I can find online are the flier picture, which has a 3-d mix media piece by Gavin Fry and this blog post from altering thoughts, which shows some experimentation inspired by one of the pieces in the exhbition.

One of the things I noticed was that it was the landscapes that caught my eye the most - I guess that’s one step closer to discovering my own style!??