Today I've promised myself a 'me' day, but already it's nearly 12 and so far I've not got near my workroom. I did take lots of photos though when I was talking Tilly, my golden retriever. I'd like to do something with seed heads and have a large pot full of thistles, dried crocosmia, poppyheads, queen anne's lace, etc which I've been drawing and studying. Brought back some more queen anne's lace (much nicer name than cow parsley I think) from the walk to add to the collection. If I do anything worthwhile later I'll post it.

Bag swap

I've just completed a bag swap for Lenna at http://creativelenna.blogspot.com/. I did an eight week workshop with her earlier this year on quilties which was great fun. I'm quite pleased with what I've done, be interesting to see what comes back!

Have also finished a piece which started off as a sketchbook cover. My friend, Jo, and I have both got embellisher machines and we had a get together to play. Then decided we should have a theme so we started sketchbook covers. However, when I laid mine out flat, after quite a bit of work on it, it looked more like a wall hanging so that's where it's at at the moment. However, another embroidery friend pointed out that 'it's not finished yet' so back to the drawing board for the finishing touches. I'm quite pleased with it though.

I'm not sure I've got the hang of this blogging yet, still can't seem to add pictures in the middle of a post or change the layout but I'll persevere.

Met Sue today from the UK Embellisher swap group http://groups.yahoo.com/group/UKEmbellisherSwap/ that I belong to. She came all the way from London, hope she wasn't bored. It's nice to put faces to names.

I've currently got two pieces of work in an exhibition in Abingdon Museum. It's been put up by the Oxford Embroiderers' Workshop, a group I've belonged to since it started about 12 years ago. We meet monthly and spend the day sewing (and chatting!). About once or twice a year we have a visiting tutor but otherwise it's just us. This exhibition was based upon a day we had when we had several still life sessions and spent the day drawing and photographing things, then we've spent about 18 months trying to produce something from it! It does mean there's a certain cohesiveness that it's sometimes difficult to achieve from a group exhibition, but I found it very hard and I'm not terribly pleased with what I did.

It seems rather self-indulgent to start a blog, but several people have suggested it and I can't think of any real reason why not!