Sorry - I couldn't resist showing you how beautiful the sky is here in Spain this morning . . . . . I love the pale berries on this tree. x  Murcia Cathedral at dusk Brenda, Keith and I went into Murcia last night to watch The Three Kings Procession. Today is Three Kings Day, a bit like our Christmas Day. We had a great night and I never tire of taking photo's of the Cathedral - it is SO beautiful . . . . .  My images of the procession are not the best as it was dark, but hopefully you can get a flavour of what it was like. There were marching bands and all kinds of floats and most importantly - sweets and toys being thrown  to the children. It was all very exciting. The Spanish certainly know how to put on a good show . . . . . I love sitting outside in the evening and watching the world go by - it is not something that Brenda or I do a lot of when we are back in the U.K. Once we are up - we are at work! I fly home tomorrow night...

  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...

Friday 18th saw me driving along the A27 at an unearthly hour to deliver an 'On The Surface' workshop to the Txstyle 10 group. Txstyle 10 is a group of 10 ladies who all took their C & G qualification with Susan Chapman and have continued to meet and develop their work. 75gm Tyvek, painted, textured with heat and foiled It made a great change for me to be teaching 'On The Surface' as opposed to 'Hot Textiles'. 'On The Surface' is a workshop based around experimenting with Tyvek and painted and decorated Bondaweb. We added Vilene Spunbond to the workshop as the group hadn't had much of a chance to play with that yet. The group spent most of the morning painting the products as it is crucial to learn to paint the products with the correct paints and with the correct thickness of paint. The students learned my 'kiss, stroke and carress' process for texturing Tyvek with heat and the 'welly, wiggle and off' process for foiling the te...

I am a bit late posting this - time run away from me again (such a naughty boy!). The second layouts for the book arrived this week and needed to be checked which lost me 2 days, but it is looking good. It should all be finished and off to the printers in 2 weeks somewhere in the far east. The longest process in all this book writing malarkey is the journey from the printers to the U.K. by tanker. It takes 3 months!!!!!! We are hoping it will be out and ready for the Festival of Quilts in August.       the lovely ladies of the Wey Valley Workshop busily working away The Wey Valley Workshop are a group of ex City and Guilds students that meet up regularly for workshops and lectures. The group is well organised and seems to run like clock work. It was great fun working with them and everything ran smoothly. It was particularly good to see Liz Holford again. Liz was on my Experimental Textiles course for 3 years and I could always rely on her to help with any embroidery st...