My lounge, full of Lindsey Gibson's beautiful felt wall pieces. It's that time of year - we are all belting around - getting ready for Christmas.  Here in Brighton we have the Christmas Open Houses, we are about to have our second weekend.  This will be my last Open House in Brighton as I will be moving to Redditch in the Spring. The house is full of stunning work, It is worth all the clearing out to show off all this beauty. The website is - www.one2six.me.uk , how to find us is on there too. More of Lindsey's work . . .  and some of Annie's stars and angels . . . We have quite a variety of work . . .  Watercolours by Emily Jolley . . . Jewellery by Fenn and Co. . . . Stunning glass by Annie McMullan . . . .   Textiles for the wall by Sylvia Lynton . . . .   My friend John Culligan from France has sent over some gorgeous turned wood bowls . . . . This is one of John's yarn bowls - you put your ball of wool in the bow

  A beautiful painting by Pamela Slater Sue and John are having an Open House at their home in La Verdrie, France. I am so cross I can't be here to help - I am off home tonight. I would have loved to have stayed to help with the teas and Sue's fabulous cakes - you know how good I am with cake!!!! Everything is looking fabulous . . .  There will be -  Paintings Greetings cards Textiles Hand-woven Kilims Wood-turning Photography  and Furniture Plus teas, coffee and cakes of all shapes and sizes.   There will also be wood-turning, painting and knitting and crochet demonstrations. 16 rue de la Verderie, 17770 Brizambourg 10 - 4 Sundays 18th and 25th August. if any of you have friends in the Charente Maritime region of France, do share this  with them.  If anyone needs directions - just ring  Sue on  0546 9408 53              Do go along if you can - you will be made very welcome. Have a great weekend -

 the stunning country side around Newcastle on Clun After I had eaten my second piece of cake and taken another 100 or so photos I left Bryan's Ground and tootled along further up country to have supper with Bobby and Martin Britnell and Bobby's students who were working in her studio over the weekend.   For those who are not aware of Bobby (there can't be many), she is an amazing tutor, quite inspirational and SUCH good fun. Bobby runs fabulous courses from her studio at Moor Hall in Shropshire. Bobby also runs workshops working along side Ruth Issett, the demi goddess of all things to do with colour, print and design. They make a great team, encouraging students to produce new work and develop new ideas. All workshops and dates can be found on Bobby's website www.bobbybritnell.co.uk/index.htm   Bobby also has an excellent newsletter www.bobbybritnell.co.uk/news.htm I would recommend you subscirbe to it. Moor Hall in the late evening the sunny terrace for coff

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

Hurrah! and lashings of ginger beer! I've finished the book. The first draft has gone winging its way to my editor. Oh the relief!!!!                           The book is about layering textiles and here are three of the images that have inspired me in the past months. I am hoping the book will be published ready for The Festival of Quilts next August, but it will be a tight schedule, so fingers crossed. I have had to remove the heat gun from the nid-noi.com website as it has been discontinued, I am hoping to find a replacement at the trade show in February. I will let you all know when I have found one. A 300 watt versions will work - but they take time, and if you are like me with the attention span of a goldfish, you want your heat gun to work fast! I can now get on with putting my house back together after our best ever Open House. I am looking forward to a weekend off  . . . . . and away . . . . Ho! Ho! Ho!!!  x

 The Textile Studio at Denman I love teaching at Denman College - the home of the W.I.   The teaching studios are well equipped, the food is great and I always have fab students in my group. The workshop ran from the 25th - 27th and a good time was had by all. The word had got round that I like to do stretching exercises to music with my students after lunch every day to help every one stay awake and feel refreshed. I was going to leave this as after all; I was teaching at the W.I. but no, my ladies were expecting it to be part of the course. Oh we did have a laugh! The students were - Jane Bothwell, Helen Dickinson, Sheilah Edgson, Jean Harnaman, Carole Jethwa, Jeanette Lamb, Patricia Richards, Margaret Sargeant, Pauline Walker and Jill Wilson.  The workshop was fast paced to cover all the products everyone wanted to try. The students painted and dyed Tyvek, Bondaweb, Vilene Spunbond and various weights of sew-in and iron-on interfacings. These were then layered up and zapped bac