Finishing off

The quilt I am making is awaiting wadding to be purchased before I can go any further with it, so I decided to finish off some UFOs:

 

The union jack was started well before the Royal Wedding, but only just now made into a cushion!  The middle cushion with the red border was a project taught by Lynette from The Stitch Witch at a recent Worthing Patchworkers meeting.  It is a technique called shadow quilting, organza overlays the middle, and we all designed our own ‘Baltimore’ pattern.

Behanid the cushions is a blanket I am crotceting, using up all the random bits of wool Mum has given me.  Unfortunately it looks very random!  I now want to buy some wool colours that go together better!

Another recent project that has been on our to-do list for ages, was to print and frame some holiday photos for our lounge.  These photos are of Venice, Rome and Prague.

Finally, here’s a winter wallhanging, started ages ago!  It was almost complete, just waiting to be framed.  But in the end I decided to bind it and I will use it as a table runner perhaps?  I might sew some beads on it – or I might just put it away in the cupboard!

Thanks to my friend Sue, I found a new website with online craft courses!  It’s My Creative Classroom, and I decided to take the Bind-it-all class.  Here’s a peek at what I have made so far:

First off, a little BIA instruction book.  Lots of practice with punching and binding!  It’s a great course with lots of tips along the way.

Secondly, here’s a little 4” x 4” book with some ingenious pocket and fold out pages.

Morning skies

It’s a long time since I took my camera with me on my dog walk.  The sky was interesting this morning, with lots of jet trails streaming across in all directions.  So I took my camera….

I’m taking another photography course with Cheryl Johnson at FeelGoodPhotos.  Here’s some of my practice photos for module 1, ‘Leading Lines’

Cardinal Colours Retreat Part 2

Ok, now to the classes and projects:

I did 2 scrapbook layout classes with SJ, (she blogs at Little Musings)

The background is glazed bazzill, spritzed with chalk ink spray and then wiped off, sort of like a resist method.  Fabby!

The second one is a paper patchwork.  I just love the papers!!  And that heart punch, what a lovely fat heart!  Both of these Los, but especially this second one were interpreted very differently by each and everyone of us.  I like that the best, that we can all have the same inspiration and papers, but still come up with vastly different pages.  I have loads of paper left, and have already made another ‘paper patchwork’ page.

I learnt how to use promarkers!  Linda and Lyn (blogging at Scrapology)  taught a brilliant class using these adorable Faye Whittaker stamps.  I actually bought this stamp as my brother and SIL have this painting in their house!

This fabulous pop up book is one of Karen Burniston’s paper engineering creations.  Thanks to a brilliant teacher (Angie) mine has turned out very well, and I am thrilled with it!  I’ll use it to put photos from this weekend in I think.

There were plenty of wonderful make and takes too.  Here’s my felt Christmas stocking (thanks Perdita), beaded pins (thanks Anita) and owl key ring (thanks Zoe).  So much inspiration, I’ll be trying out more of these!

Thanks so much to Gill and all her team for organising yet another superb weekend!

Cardinal Colours Retreat

Phew!  Back online!  Nicholas has been upgrading our server and I have not been able to get online for a couple of days, EEK!  On the one hand, I love it as I am able to get so much done (sewing and housework this week), but hate it because I miss chatting to all my online friends!

Anyway, I’ve been dying to blog about my fabulous weekend at the Cardinal Colours Retreat in Eastbourne.

I love the seaside town of Eastbourne!  I took the opportunity late on Saturday afternoon to take a little walk with my camera, and just look at these starlings taking off to roost for the night!

This year, Lorna and I persuaded Janet and Sara from our Brighton crop to come along too (not that they needed much persuasion!)

It was lovely to meet with old and new friends:

That’s Sue and Jan, Chris and Debbie, another Debbie and Juliette, and new friends, Ann and Linda.

Come back for part 2 later, where I’ll show you some of the things we made.

Mama’s taking me to the zoo…..

What a beautiful early autumn day it has been!  Sunny, warm, but clear and not a breath of wind or humidity!  So I went to the zoo with Mum.  Marwell Zoo near Southampton to be exact.  I hadn’t been there for years!  last time we went my children were small.  It was nice to go round and focus on the animals and try to take some good pictures!

But the best story of the day was about this little joey and his mother:

We noticed him (or her?) poking out of his mother’s pouch

Look here he comes for some fresh air!

Here he is finding his feet!  He seemed a little wobbly.  Then the keeper arrived round the back of their pen, and made a crashing noise.  All the kangaroos looked startled, we watched as the little joey disappeared back into the pouch!  Completely out of sight.  So sweet!

Stormy Weather

Here’s what it looks like today here on the South Coast of England:

The remains of Hurricane Katia have hit our shores.  It’s not too bad here on the South Coast, worse up north and in Scotland!  But thank goodness it waited until this morning and didn’t disrupt the fantastic concert we went to on Hyde Park yesterday afternoon and evening!  It was organised by BBC Radio 2, a ‘Festival in a Day’.  WOW!  What an amazing experience! 

We arrived in Hyde Park about 4.45pm, and sadly  missed the first 2 acts but managed to see most of  Beverly Knight's set (UK's greatest soul singer) Wow!

 

Next up was Caro Emerald who had never played to such a big audience but did really well.

Will Young had a bit of a sore throat so did a shorter set, but still wowed us! He is such a nice bloke!

Jonathan Jeramiah played over our side of the stage, and he looks so cool with long floppy hair! Love his laid back almost surf dude style.

Next up was Lenny Kravitz, and boy! Did he blow us away!!! I am ashamed to admit that I didn't really know who he was before, but of course knew his big hits. He was fantastic, and really got the audience going.

Imelda May was brilliant, full of energy!

James Blunt was awesome! I don't really like his voice, bit squeaky for me, but his show was absolutely brilliant, very impressive live act.

I love the Pierces! They are from Alabama, USA, and a bit hippy, country, and very beautiful. I already have their CD. They too had not performed to such a big audience (about 40,00).

 

The headline act was due to be Lionel Ritchie, and to be honest it was because of him that I booked the tickets.  So imagine my disappointment when he pulled out due to ill health!  So instead we were treated to Chic, who absolutely blew us away with 'Everybody Dance', 'Le Freak', 'We are Family' and 'Good Times', such great dance numbers! They were on the other side of the stage, so no pics from me I am afraid.  But DH took some fabulous photos with his much longer zoom, so I’ll post some more later.

Finally Gary Barlow wowed us with singing Lionel Ritchie's 'Hello' plus lots of Take That songs.
So although I still feel disappointed that we didn't see Lionel Ritchie, we had a fabulous time!

Each act was introduced by a different DJ from my favourite radio station (I listen throughout the day).  So it was great to see them too!  As you can tell from these pictures, we were pretty close to the stage, only about 6 people back, but over to one side.  Nevertheless it was a good position and as DH said, it was nice to actually ‘see’ the real people! 

Mostly people were having a great time, the atmosphere was brilliant!  But 2 small things that irritated: The number of really drunk people!  This was a Radio 2 concert not Glastonbury!  And the amount of litter people left behind!

The concert finished on the dot at 10pm, with an encore from Gary Barlow.  Unfortunately our train wasn’t leaving until 11.17pm, so we had a bit of a wait, and we didn’t get home until 1.30am!!  EEK!  That’s very late for us!  This morning my legs and feet ache from 7 hours dancing, and my voice is croaky from singing!  Woohoo!