Not much happening around here!

Hello from my corner of West Yorkshire. I haven't posted much lately as, to be honest, it's a bit quiet around here. I've been pottering around the garden, sewing, going for long autumnal walks and generally not doing anything especially blog-worthy. No exotic foreign holidays or lavish days out to tell you about. But sometimes life's like that. We have lulls. Maybe it's to do with the time of year. Shorter days, colder weather, less money to spend as the central heating's going on and that's got to be paid for!

I've partway through embroidering this fish, which is for a wall hanging that I'm making. It's not looking like much at the moment, but I'm hoping it'll all come together when I've got more stitching done.

I've also been making more of these fabric flowers, and have bought a pack of brooch pins to sew on the back of them.

I added this little heart today. Red felt surrounded by shiny red beads.

Mooching around charity shops yielded this craft punch for a bargain price, and a couple more novels. I remember reading Mary Stewart books decades ago. They're a very easy to digest combination of mystery and a little romance. Josephine Tey isn't an author I've come across before, but I'm happy to give this a try.

I also treated myself to a couple more craft books. Not that I really need any more, but there's a difference between need and want, isn't there?

There are beautiful examples of handmade paper in this book. Lots of gorgeous colour and texture.

The embroidery book, jointly written by Jan Beaney and Jean Littlejohn, is an old one, first published in 1991.

Lots of detailed information and inspiring photographs are crammed inside, and buying older books like this means you can pick them up very cheaply.

Most of my craft books come from the website World of Books, and there's free delivery in the UK if you're spending over £5.00. I think I spent about £7.34 for both. Terrific value.

That's about all for this blog post. Perhaps I'll have done something wildly exciting and fabulous by the next time I blog again ... then again, perhaps not. I think you'll have to go elsewhere if you want high drama!

Thanks for stopping by. x

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Threads of Freedom and charity shop bargains

It's Saturday afternoon, and I haven't done half the things I'd meant to. Partly because I spent most of this morning messing about with paints, stencils and the gell plate. Never mind, everything on today's 'To Do' list will join tomorrow's 'To Do' list ... it's hardly life or death if I don't haul the hoover around the room or pull up weeds in the front garden. I thought I'd show you what I made on Wednesday. I'd gone to my monthly StitchArt group, and this time we did something a little different. There's a project called 'Threads of Freedom' which is working with various community groups across the city. It's about creating little stitched pieces, some of which will be included in a textile panel to go on display at Leeds art gallery. There was lots of fabric we could choose from to sew with, and I picked this vintage tray cloth with the roses embroidery. My own embroidery's not a patch on those flo...

Sari scraps, PVA, a couple of books and a necklace

I'm typing this as snow's falling, and has been steadily all day. It's not settling to any great extent, though I bet by tomorrow morning the paths will be slippery with ice. Which always makes me paranoid about falling over and at the very least looking undignified, but at worst breaking a bone or twisting an ankle. Oh well, it's ideal weather to stay inside and craft, isn't it? I finally got around to listing packs of sari scraps on Etsy this morning. I only made up six bundles as I've no clue whether they'll sell or if I've set a reasonable enough price point. Time will tell. This is a link to the listing, if you're interested. This vaguely pink fabric isn't from one of my Etsy packs. It's from a bit of experimenting I was doing yesterday. I'd seen a post on Instagram showing how a DIY version of batik could be done without using hot wax. The Instagrammer used PVA instead, and I wanted to try this out....

Another week's flown by ...

Saturday's rolled around again, and it's not been the most eventful of days. Cleaning and hoovering, a walk to the shops to buy groceries, an hour on the allotment, then home to do some odd tasks in the garden. The strawberry plants are sending out runners, so I've been dealing with those, plus deadheading the perennial sunflowers, and cutting back the gone-over flowers on the sage and marjoram. I'm sad to see those blooms gone as the bees loved them. This afternoon I spent a few hours finishing 'Dawnlands' by Philippa Gregory. It's a really good book, a page turner where you care about the characters and want to be reassured everything's going to work out well for them. Plus you become enraged about the corruption of the so-called justice system at the time of the Stuart kings and queens, about transportation of prisoners to the West Indies, and about the vile nature of the sugar trade in the 1600s and the vast profits made from it....

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