Such a long time since I looked at a blog let alone wrote something on mine! Hopefully the worst is over, work wise, and I can concentrate on being more creative for (at least) the rest of the year.

The picture on the left is a close up of a piece I finished recently based on landscapes which are increasingly fascinating me. I walk a lot around the fields locally when I take my dog out each morning and love looking at the fields and trees and how everything changes over the course of the year.

I've been invited to take part in Oxfordshire Arts Week again (did I say?) - this time in a nearby village with a potter and a ceramic sculptor. It should be a good mix and we're only going to open for 3 days (instead of this year's 9!) which is more manageable, and hopefully a lot less tiring.

After that we have a Guild Branch exhibition next October at Wantage museum, which is a lovely little venue. We've decided to keep all exhibits to a uniform size which should work well within a small space.

The other week I took part in a fabulous workshop with Jacky Russell. Jacky did the Diploma at Windsor and Maidenhead with Jan and Jean, finishing a couple of years ago. She 'specialised' in lutradur which is a product I have heard of but never used. This workshop was all about lutradur and we had a great day. We painted it and printed on it, burnt it, sewed with it, put gesso on - the list was endless. The great thing is that if you put acrilyic paints on or gesso (either splashed on or carefully printed on with a stamp) this acts as a resist so that you can then get out your heat gun and burn away as much as you like around the resist. The picture above shows some of the samples I came home with. The small dots you can see were made with a fine soldering iron (on my Christmas list!). The picture further above is a close up of one of my favourite samples done with gesso and then machined and painted with silk paints after I used the heat gun.

Am having problems these days finding time for anything creative, so I've decided to make myself do 30 minutes a day - that shouldn't be too hard! Anything where I'm looking at colour, texture, shape etc, which means most things are happening in my sketchbook but it's good background for something - eventually!

I have been following Maggie Grey's online lessons at http://www.d4daisy.com/maggiete.htm as I bought her latest book at the Knitting and Stitching Show. Here you can see my part-finished 'book'. I loved making the squirly design using a foam stencil and water soluble paper which was layered and dampened and then left overnight on top of the boiler before I could peel it off and stick it on the pelmet vilene. The lovely purply mauve colour came from gesso being put on the vilene quite thickly with salt sprinkled over and then painted with watered down Quink ink. Fantastic - I'd never have thought of it. Maggie comes up with some great tips.

Here's a close up (bit fuzzy, sorry).

I don't seem to get any time to sew at the moment - very busy at work. However, I was thrilled to see on the Twisted Thread website that my offering for the Embroiderers' Guild auction has been receiving bids!! How cool is that? (as my children would say) I do hope the auction does well, the Guild needs every penny it can get at the moment.

Still I have been keeping up to date with my swaps on various forums, but forgot to take pictures!

Looking forward to next week's Knitting and Stitching Show at Ally Pally. I'm going with three friends and already have a shopping list (must haves!) as long as my arm.

We have had some reasonable weather recently so, as well as doing some fabric dyeing, I've been out painting papers (and the grass!). I've also been doing some gardening and found loads of poppy seed heads which I've cut down and put in a vase.

The shapes fascinate me so I've been filling pages in my sketchbook with poppy heads in all different media. I'm a great fan of Cloth Paper Scissors and, although I find some of the articles, rather 'American' in their sameness I enjoy the different techniques. One of which I used for the double spread - drawing the poppy head outlines then filling some of the areas in with pasted pieces of newspaper before painting over. I'm quite pleased with how it worked out, for a first attempt, although I have to say it looks better in the sketchbook than in the photo! C'est la vie!

I just don't seem to get the time to sew at the moment. 'Real' work is taking over and of course it's the summer holidays although the children are being brilliant with the fact that I have to spend so much time at the computer rather than entertaining them. I think the 15 year old is quite content but my (nearly) 10 year old needs her mum around still.

Anyway, one thing I did with her yesterday was fabric dyeing. I've been meaning to do this for ages after the great weekend I did with Ruth Issett some months ago. It was a reasonable day so we did outside (and dyed some grass in the process). I had completely forgotten how some fabrics take dyes better than others so we had a range of tones of colour, mainly in my favourite reds, pinks, oranges. They looked like flags on the washing line drying later!

I'm also pleased to see that the Embroiderers' Guild Auction is now up on the Twisted Thread website ready for the Knitting and Stitching shows (still saving up!). This is a great opportunity, not just to refill the Guild's coffers, but also to buy some lovely embroidery!

Very very busy at the moment but had another 'high' yesterday. Remember the commission I got as a result of Oxfordshire Art Weeks? I really didn't know what Jane wanted, her tastes, etc, all I had was a colour scheme. So I produced five pieces for her to look at and - guess what - she wanted three of them!!

This was one (sorry about the flash), which I had been quite pleased with. My usual mixture of fabric and paper.

I was using Jane's curtains for the basis of the colour scheme - cream with turquoise, baby pink, orange and red. My tendency was to miss out the cream and go for the other colours but I was aware that perhaps she wanted something more 'airy' to reflect the curtains. However, not at all - she wanted 'wow' factor; something to catch the eye as you walk into the kitchen. This one on the right was the 'airy' one which I was pleased with - it was machine embroidered onto layers of clear plastic, doesn't show too well in the photo unfortunately.

I was also really thrilled to be invited to join a group exhibiting at the West Ox Arts group in spring 2010 (not 2009 as I originally thought). Seems quite a long way away at the moment, but I know it will come along quickly.

What miserable weather! My son announced this morning that 'summer was boring'. I know what he means.

However, at least I don't have feelings of guilt when I'm in my workroom rather than gardening. I watched the Quilting Arts DVD again the other day and had a play at Beryl Taylor's 'fabric paper'. It went well and machines beautifully, so I made a small piece which I'm quite pleased with. Even my sister, who is not a fan of my type of art, thought it was 'quite nice'. That was praise!

I see the Embroiderers' Guild is asking for members to donate pieces of work to display at the Knitting and Stitching shows. These will then be auctioned to go towards filling the coffers after the Manchester debacle. I might put this one in.

Still very behind with Dale's course. Lesson 6 arrived this morning and I still haven't finished Lesson 2. Anyway I've printed it off so I can go back to it at some point.