one of the stunning floral displays in Murcia Are you bored yet? I am so enjoying looking back on our week in Spain but I do have a lot of images - I hope the amount of information is not too much for you all, I appreciate you can have too much of a good thing. I am now going to accost you with even more images . . .  from the left - Jill W, Jill G, Lee, Jane Sadgrove, Jane Bolsover (keeping us in order), me, the lovely waitress, Pauline and Marion   one of the beautiful buildings overlooking the square where we had our lunch Thursday afternoon saw us being collected from the studios and taken into Murcia for our tapas lunch and tour of the Real Casino, Museo Santa Clara and the Cathedral of Murcia. Lunch was great fun with everyone in high spirits - nothing to do with the wine flowing. The food was delicious and just when you thought all the dishes had been brought out, more were served. Then the paella arrived, piles of luscious seafood in fragrant rice - gorgeous. After the p

  the mandarin tree outside the studio There are 2 studios at the Castanea villa one upstairs inside the villa and one out in the garden. My group and I were working in the garden studio, One of the greatest pleasures of the week (and there were many) was picking mandarins from the tree right out side the studio. MMMmmm!  I can taste them now - delicious. The very lovely Claire Muir, who is featured in this months Stitch magazine, was teaching at Castanea last month and her students very kindly left us some fruit in the middle of the tree . . . ! This is just a selection of the work that was produced last week and in no particular order. painted Bondaweb on black cotton with heat transfer foil   painted Bondaweb decorated with with snips of polyester organza and gold flake painted Bondaweb on dyed newspaper . layers of painted 75gm Tyvek and polyester organza machine stitched together and then zapped with a heat gun. The sample above was also attacked with  soldering iron faux

  this stunning Houseleek/Sempervivum graces the front terrace of the villa Because of worries about the threatened Spanish air traffic control strike and illness we were a small and exclusive group. This meant we could get through a lot more work, it was a great luxury. It is unlikely to ever happen again so we all made the most of it. The timetable was -  Monday am - Market Monday pm - Studio Tuesday - Studio Wednesday - Studio Thursday am - Studio Thursday pm - Tapas lunch in Murcia than a guided tour and shopping! Friday - Final day in studio and 'show and tell'. Working in the studio during the week - As with all of my workshops we had to paint all the products before we could use them. Of course being in Spain that was no hardship, everything dried in record time. We painted up the Bondaweb and Tyvek with Colourful Thoughts paints from Cratynotions www.craftynotions.com These are high metallic paints that stay really bright even when you need to water them down to pai

  This is going to be a mammoth blog so do keep checking back - I will be posting more over the next few days. one of the beautiful trees in the garden I may have mentioned once or twice . . . how much I was looking forward to teaching in Spain last week - well it was even better than I could have hoped. We had fabulous weather, great students who all got on very well with each other and the food - Oh!! I have put on 1.5 kilos!!!!!!! Oh! and the students produced some fabulous work as well . . . but more of that tomorrow. The villa and two studios are set in luscious gardens in the village of Venta De Los Pinos, Canadas de San Pedro, just 18 kilometres from the ancient city Murcia There were 2 courses running, 'Beads Amore' with Jane Sadgrove and 'Extreme Surfaces to stitch - or not' with myself. Jane Sadgove has a beautiful shop in Sevenoaks called Beads Amore and runs workshops from there 4 times a week, www.beadsamore.co.uk Jane Bolsover and one of her wonderful lu

  book cover created by melting plastic shopping bags together between baking parchment   Wow!!! What wonderful weather! I hope most of you in the U.K have managed to get out in the sun - if only for a few minutes. It is not until it gets quite warm that you realise just how dark and cold it has been. From my window I can see the early sun on the white blossom of the Hawthorn tree at the bottom of the garden against the bright pale blue sky - beautiful. One of my jobs to catch up with this week is to write a few workshops for the VERY patient Kathy Troup of Stitch magazine, Kathy has only been waiting for 2 years. While going through my images to decide which ones to use I came across some I had put somewhere very safe - and then couldn't find them!!!!!  Early this year Laura Manning sent me these fabulous images of book covers and small bags created using melted plastic bags. I met Laura at the Design and Technology show last November and she told me that she had been running

 part of the courtyard garden at La Verderie I have this week to catch up with myself and write a few new workshops ready for next year. I know many of you out there in blog land are interested in many crafts and skills, not just my kind of madness. I was chatting with my good friend Sue Culligan who lives in France yesterday. Sue is the owner of the knitwear mail order company Kangaroo . I am nipping over to see her and her husband John for a few days in May to work out some dates for me to teach over there - but more of that later. While we were chatting it struck me that some of you may interested in the workshops Sue runs in France. Sue has been running workshops at the local Chateau for the last few years with great success and has now decided to open up her home in France for more intimate creative retreats for up to five students at a time.    free form crochet  learn to work with different colours The new residential  'Back to Basics' workshop (dates below) will be