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!??

I had time to kill in Wimbledon on Saturday and went browsing in a bookstore - a favourite habit of mine I always make sure I go check out craft and sewing books and I happened across this book

It’s now high on my wish list!

The author has a blog - yarnstorm which went straight in at number 5 on My List of Sewing Blogs!!

Check out the beautiful photography over at yarnstorm. My lack of photography skills is the reason I still haven’t posted my take it further challenge piece for january .. I’ll get Duncan to give me a couple of lessons with the camera!

In the mean time, I hope you all had a good Pancake day yesterday - we had to get inventive with fillings as we had no lemon for my favourite lemon and sugar(!) Banana, honey and whisky was particularly scrummy!

I’m heading off to a rehearsal for the Man of La Mancha now and have a supply of Valentine’s day cards to sell - stage one of suzical store, sell to friends..