The girls getting stuck in. We have started again - Experimental Textiles 4 has begun. There are 9 students in the group, Trisha, Karen, Caroline, Rosie, Anna, Jackie, Catherine, Joe and Nadia. They are a fabulous group, coming from all areas of the UK, Scotland, Manchester and North Yorkshire as well as the Birmingham area. We had a great time together over the weekend. In the first session we work on design formulae and isolate designs ready to make printing blocks in the next session. We started off by painting 'The Journey'. Building up the shapes and lines. The students are asked to paint a journey, it could be a walk on the moon, through an enchanted forest or taking the children to school. It doesn't have to be representational. The 9 journeys all lined up. Sections taken from the journeys. The next design exercise was one I use called 'Expanded'. And then the next exercise was 'flipping out'. The

  A cake and flowers for my birthday.   . . . and then another cake . . . !!! We are now over halfway through Experimental Textiles, this session was the sixth of nine. I have only ever taught one group at a time before, this year we are running two groups - a Thursday/Friday and a Saturday/Sunday. We will be doing the same next year. It is very interesting teaching the two groups side by side - they are both strong and are producing some excellent work. One thing that I hadn't considered was the air of competition creeping in between the groups. It is light hearted - but very definitely there!!! One of the benefits of having two groups - when the tutor has a birthday - you get two cakes!!!  When we are all settled with coffee (and cake) first thing on day one of the session - we look at what has been done for home work produced to reinforce what did on the session before. On the previous session we had looked at constructed textiles - felt, knit and weave, and how