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

busy students creating fabulous samples Saturday 8th January saw me teaching a group of very capable ladies who were great fun from the Cotswold Embroiderers Guild. The Guild hold their workshops at the The Reddings Community Centre in Cheltenham. It has fantastic facilities with plenty of room, tables and SOCKETS! When working with a variety of heat tools it can be a real pain to have to keep unplugging an iron to use a heat gun. This centre was pure luxury. We were working with Vilene Spunbond and layering it with painted Bondaweb. It was a great day and we covered several tec hniques. It was great fun and as you can see from the samples the ladies worked hard. Vilene Spunbond CS 700 & 800 painted and dyed. Bondaweb ironed to the back and leaf shapes cut with a soldering iron and than ironed onto more CS 800. Detail Right side of sample - Vilene Spunbond CS 800 painted and dyed and then zapped with a heat gun, the 'crunchy' edges were then foiled with heat transfer f