Rachel's torn, printed and stitched papers I had a great weekend with my ExTex group. I had missed them. I am very much enjoying teaching an ongoing course again. To see the progression of each student is very exciting and rewarding. It reminds me why I trained to be a teacher. The fifth weekend of the course is a mixture of weave, knit and felt. It is always great fun teaching basic processes. When you work with basic, simple processes, your brain has a chance to get involved and excited -  making it's own connections between materials and techniques.  We started the weekend with looking at homework - the group had been asked to stitch into their torn and printed papers. There was some fabulous work.   A detail of Rachel's piece showing her beautiful stitch.       Val's collage . . .    . . . and a detail of some of her very sensitive stitch. Once we had discussed the homework we got on with feltma...

Hot Textiles has been translated into Spanish - Whoo hoo! The journey home from Glasgow on Monday was a bit scary - well the first bit of it was anyway . . . .The M74 was very, very, frightening. One minute there was a reasonable amount of snowfall - The next, there was a whiteout. The traffic ground to a halt and we sat around for a while, an hour or so and then we started to move, slowly. With the ever useful travel information on the radio we were informed of an accident that had closed the motorway several miles ahead. We eventually diverted off the Southbound M74 via Lesmahagow, to return to a much faster moving M74. On the Northbound M74 there was a horrible accident involving two lorries and several cars. The scene certainly made me drive much more sensibly than usual . I delayed my journey home to Brighton as I heard on the travel news that the M23 was blocked with poor drivers stuck in the snow, most of them all night! Luckily my best fri...

One of Gina's beautiful pieces that ended up as a book cover. Only having four students on the course was a great treat for me - I'm not sure how the students felt, as many of you will know, I'm not very good at leaving my students alone to work in peace . . . I don't quite know why there were only four bookings, I have taught in December or January with ten every year so it is a mystery. I know some students worry about the possibility of snow, and it has snowed hard once or twice at this time. Anyway, we had a great time and it was a first for me so that was good. The students worked hard and fast so I had to introduce more than I was expecting to. It's good for me to be 'kept on my toes'. I can get a bit blase if things are too easy. 'Jewelled Surfaces' involved layering newspaper, painted Bondaweb and all kinds of glittery things and then reinforcing them with different iron-on interfacings. It's a tough job, but someone has to do it...