Crafty Things

 Now i'm feeling settled in to the newly organised studio because i've actually done some work in it...until i produce something creative in my new room (or new house if we move) it always feels a bit unfamiliar...

 ....new  crafty projects this week included some delicious ribbons and some shiny alpha beads....

 and a very exciting new crafty aquisition has come my way from across the pond....when i saw the gorgeous dotty crochet hook made by the lovely Robin at my nest of yarn and buttons i just had to order one...

 ...and it arrived with an extra treat...this lovely little drawstring project bag and sewing up needle...what a lovely surprise and such a great idea to include with the crochet hook...you can order them from Robin's new etsy shop called Robin's Nest here.....

 ....i'm doing lots of my crochet blanket at the moment during the evenings....in the day i'm in my studio most of the time despite the glorious weather as i have some projects to finish for a deadline...

 ...these little bears are keeping me company as they appeared from the bottom of  a cardboard box after the grand sort out...they were book and magazine project bears from a few years ago....

...some autumn flowers to draw, picked from my very summery autumn garden this week...i love to paint a few fresh flowers and berries when the seasons change each year...this is the best Indian summer i can remember, and how wonderful to go for walks and see the trees changing colour and the berries glowing in such warm and sunny blue sky conditions....marvellous!
Hope you're having a great week wherever you are. Thank you so much for dropping in to see me and for the very sweet comments on my last post about my studio. I've got lots more crafty things coming up to show you....back soon. xxxxx

In My Studio

Finally there is an air of calm here after the muddle of the last couple of weeks...taking everything out of my studio for the new floor to be put down was the only way i would have got round to moving out so much paperwork, magazines and boxes and baskets stuffed with art and crafts materials...now it has all been sorted, lots disposed of or stored up in the attic ...

                       ...the things i use regularly are to hand on the shelves, or in the big white basket...

           ...and the bits and bobs i'm so fond of are stored perfectly in these faux french spice drawers....

 ...here is the studio clock (brought back once from a seaside trip), a rosy pincushion, the contents of one of those little spice drawers, and coloured chalks for message writing.....

 ...a few glimpses around the room.....the little keep calm picture my daughter made me, two of the pictures I enjoy having around me (there are other prints too, and a pinboard with commissions listed on, and another with postcards and cards pinned on but i haven't found places for those yet)....the little fireplace is filled with hydrangeas at the moment as you can see...

 ...one of the two work tables i use, this is the one where i draw, paint and make stitchy projects, the other is where i make cards and papercraft projects....i used to have an actual drawing board but now i prefer working on a flat surface so i removed it to give me more space....

...bunnies and books, garden snippets and sketch pads, the big cupboard which is now TiDy and all the toppling piles of old magazines have gone to other homes so i can store lots of materials in there again....the wooden chair is my computer chair (it belonged to Mr P's granny and i've painted it several times already)..so there it is, a quick view of my workplace, where i do all my writing and designing, creating and blogging...hope you enjoyed a peek at it!
The next magazine craft project has already begun in my new tidy studio, and it's not looking quite so neat as it was... more normal again...but after that bit of life laundry it all feels much nicer now. Thank you so much for dropping by and for your sweet comments and emails. Have a happy weekend, everyone. Back soon xxxx

Sorting Things Out

 That's what I've been doing every spare moment over the last few days...sorting out the contents of the studio....the new grey floor was put down on Monday surprisingly quickly, and we were able to put the work tables and the computer back in so Mr P could get it re connected for me to work again....

....I found so many things buried in boxes and baskets...like the little sketchpads above that I began keeping as a page-a-day visual journal a few years ago, the idea being that you work on one page a day until you are happy with it...

...they were fun to do and did encourage me to think creatively and in a different way from the design work I was engaged in at the time....

 ...a treasure trove of old fashioned stationery supplies, lovely to use for scrapbooking (now that was a hobby which led to the most tremendous amount of hoarding of small objects and ephemera that could one day be extremely useful)...

 ... ..little wooden pegs, essential in my studio for pegging things up on display, and pegging things together....

 ...lots of black and white scrapbooking supplies...the badge was from the Tate Gallery a few years ago...

 ...and so the sorting goes on and only certain things are allowed back in to the new TiDy space....I will have finished soon and then I will show you some pictures of how it looks (while it is still tidy)....

...tonight, after the last two evenings of intense sorting (oh those 'keep or throw' decisions are soo taxing) I am going to watch a movie and do some relaxing crochet!!!
Thank you for visiting me here and for your encouraging comments on my last post about the upheaval of this huge sort out...I'm so glad it's almost at an end now. In a day or so it will be time to bring in the pretty things and arrange a few flowers...have a great week everyone...back soon. xxxxx

Here, There and Everywhere...

 The title of my post today refers to the contents of my studio, which are now spread here, there and everywhere round the middle floor of our house as the new flooring will be put down on Monday....

 ...so I decided, when the afternoon brightened up and the sun began to shine with that special autumn brightness that it would be a good idea to pop down to the potting shed....

 ....gathering a few windfall apples on the way as I don't like to see them being wasted, however marked and misshapen they may be....

 ....some of the tiny geraniums I bought in Ambleside in the spring, and a little slate sign for messages given to me by a dear friend (the fact she bought it from the shop at Kew Gardens for me makes it even more special)...do you find your writing goes funny when you use chalk on a blackboard or is it just me?....

 ...sunshiney apples...these are lovely cookers maybe I'll use them for an apple cake this time.....

 ...red berries against the blue sky, something I always love to see, the same way I love blossom in spring....

...a little peek at some studio odds and ends scattered about, some recently discovered....jars and boxes of buttons, (open up a little drawer in a little box and what do you find....some thread, some lace, a starfish and a shell)...a LoT of sorting is required before things go back into the studio again...some old artwork from a folio, shells and feathers was the theme in those days....and containers stuffed with threads, adhesives, and a whole host of bits and bobs.....oh well, after Monday we can begin to make everything orderly again...not long now....

I hope you're having a wonderful weekend and enjoying whatever you are up to....thanks so much for dropping by to my little space, hello to my lovely new followers and to everyone who comments or visits...back soon xxxxxx

Sew Busy

 Autumn flower snippets picked today in the blustery sunshine, between the showers.....between being very busy.....

 ....and the flower sugar nine patch quilt, finally finished over the weekend....I sewed on the binding partly by machine (between a shopping trip and our evening meal) and then slipstitched it down while watching a movie that evening....that's how I work, fitting my crafty projects in with my domestic life like jigsaw pieces...just like most women do.....

                                                       ...here's the new quilt hanging up.....

 and here it is spread out on the table in my almost cleared out studio....that's the main reason why I'm so busy this week.......

 ....clearing out years of papers, art materials, boxes of ephemera, stacks of magazines, folders of artwork, books and more books....everything has to be taken out and the furniture then removed so the new flooring can go in....

 ...I knew it would be a lot of work...but I knew I'd just have to do it and it will be worth it....

 ...in the picture below you can see the empty bookshelves behind the folded quilt...it took a long time to move everything off those shelves....but now everything is out...and the rest of the rooms on that floor are now messed up with the contents of the studio, but gradually I'm sorting out the stuff to keep and the stuff to go....and in a week or two I'm hoping all will be orderly again and much nicer than before....

 ....my crafts materials will be sorted and only the books I really want will be on the shelves (the rest will be in the little book room up on the top floor where I keep masses of reference books).......

....and all will be calm and tidy just as I like it.....but in the meantime I have to be sooo busy sorting and making decisions about keeping or not keeping old letters, scraps of paper, old sketchbooks of ideas....old cards from loved ones, old work documents, and things that might come in handy some day....sooo much stuff.....I hope to get it done quite soon though and look forward to getting all the rooms back to normal...

Wishing you all a happy week with lots of sunshine and sweet flowers wherever you are...thank you for dropping in to see me here and for the lovely comments...back to the tidying now...and back here again soon too  xxxxxxx

Sweet September

 September is a special month for me for lots of reasons...it's the month when my twin baby sisters were born, and it's the month when my own first daughter was born too ...on the day after my sisters' birthday though many years apart ;) ...and although it means the end of summer there are often still warm and sunny days to be had in September...lots of plans to make as schools and colleges go back and we look to settling down to  new projects again after the summer holidays...I feel the most nostalgia in September for schooldays and starting college terms...I picked the sweetpeas above this week, we still have plenty flowering but I know they won't be around much longer, especially as the wigwam of canes almost blew over in the blustery rainstorm one day this week....

 ...this is a sweetpea scented candle in a vintage cup, bought from a lovely lady at a craft fair in Devon...I put the candle in my studio but at first the scent was so overpowering it made me sneeze and I had to move it out until it diminished a bit...it's fine now, and I'll look forward to lighting it a little later in the season when the real sweetpeas are over....

 ...sweet treats...the chocolate vintage buttons from Hotel Chocolat I got for my birthday, shared with special friends and made to last...almost too pretty to be eaten really which is why they've lasted so long...

 ...a little last taste of summer...lavender cakes...I just make my usual simple all in one sponge recipe by Delia, but add some lavender flowers to the icing...put them in a tin overnight and the cakes are infused with the lavender oil next day...they smell and taste delicious....

 ...still flowering and bright....the pots outside the back door....this year I mean to bring the geraniums inside to protect them for next year...sometimes I forget to do this until the first frost and then it's too late....

 ...we have been picking loads of beans which we luckily love to eat...I like finding them amongst the leaves...simple pleasures...and picking some of the mass of herbs to dry or freeze for winter use....

 ...crafty wise I found some sweet fabric to use for the binding of my quilt...this green flower sugar is a new one...yes, another flower sugar fabric I've just discovered...here it is on the ironing board about to be ironed and cut into binding strips...the quilt is almost finished and I hope to bind it over the weekend...

 ...and although I haven't mentioned my new crochet love for a post or two I have still been doing some hooky playing around and when my quilt is finished it will be a big hooky project next...

Thank you for dropping by, I love your visits...wishing you a wonderful weekend of peaceful, happy, sunny, cosy, crafty times....back soon xxxxx

A is for Alphabet

 When I first fell in love with antique samplers and began to study them closely, and then to stitch my own samplers, I enjoyed exploring all the different stitched alphabets that I discovered. I also took the letters and made them bigger for more modern cross stitch designs, like the children's cushion shown here.

                                                       ABC cushion for Sew magazine

This sampler is in September's Cross Stitcher magazine, fresh new shades, inspired by lovely old samplers with their rows of alphabets and numbers,  swirly borders, checks and decorative motifs. This one has apples and pears to reflect the season, and a little dream cottage surrounded by apple trees....perhaps I'll live in one like this one day....

 ...a few alphabet things in my studio...the tiny sampler baby's cushion, some of my favourite alphabet rubber stamps, lovely little notebook decorated with letters, and a beautiful antique red and white sampler from France which I was lucky enough to find at a vintage textile market....

 .........children's blocks are often played with here again now that we have grandbabies nearby...they love these bright decorative ones......... and so do I....

.....This little sampler was designed for a child to learn to cross stitch, or it could be stitched for a child as a birthday present....it is featured in the bookzine Irresistable Gifts to Cross Stitch, recently published and available now.......

Thank you to everyone who liked my blue things in the last post, and as so many of you kindly enquired about my new blue china I thought I should mention that it is from the Fay range by Greengate...I have more pieces already written down on my Christmas list too....

Before I go I must also mention that Stephanie at the lovely blog Millefeuilles is having a wonderful giveaway, open until September 11, so if you haven't already entered it do pop over there and do so now!!

Wishing you all a wonderful week of autumn sunshine, bright flowers and crafty treats...back soon xxxxx