A mountain of brightly coloured macaroons. Well, I am now back home, had the parents and my gorgeous sister over for tea and it's time to start revving myself up for a busy week. I wanted to show you some more of my time in France with my good friends Sue and John Culligan. Sue and John live i n an old stone farmhouse in the heart of the Charente-Maritime in t he tiny hamlet of Le Verderie, close to Brizambourg. It's all very rural and lovely. A great place to rest and also to have a great time. Sue and I went to college together many moons ago, so we know each other VERY well. Sue and John run a chambre d'hotes and Sue is the owner of Knitting Holidays in France www.knittingholidaysinfrance.com and is the pattern editor of Knitting Magazine. She is also the author of several books. I have such clever friends. After several days of dog walks and fantastic food (and much lounging about) we all spent the last day in Bordeaux, about two hours South from Le Verd

The Abbaye at St-Jean D'angely Happy New New to you all, I hope you had a relaxing time over the Festive Season??? I expect a lot of you will be returning to work for a rest! I am in the  middle of my annual New Year trip away to visit friends either France or Spain. This year it is France. We arrived in France at Bordeaux airport on New Years Eve and had to wait for a couple of hours for my friends to collect us so we took a train into Bordeaux for a poodle about. We didn't see a lot of the city but what we did see was very beautiful. There were several Art Deco buildings in the street next to the station. The Cafe Du Levant had a very splendid frontage with lots of gold tile work and Art Deco statuary.    A beautiful Art Deco building. We had flown quite early and were getting hungry so we succumbed to an early lunch of Moules et Fritte. Heaven!  Heaven on a dish.   We had a reasonably riotous News Year Eve with my friend John playing in a local band

 Christmas street decorations in Granada 2012. Well the rain has stopped in Brighton - for at least an hour now! Blimey it's been wet. My thoughts are with those of you who are still struggling with having been flooded for the second or even third time. The sun is shining as I write this, it is a treat to write this looking out at a bright blue sky - long may it last!  I am off to France later today to stay with good friends and share New Year with them. Like most of you I have been thinking back over the past year and planning for 2013 . . and 2014 Gulp!  x 2012 Started well for me as I was in Spain staying with my dear friend Brenda Killigrew who runs The Old Needle Works in Redditch where I teach my ExTex course. We visited Granada at New Year and visited the Alhambra. It had been long been a resolution/need of mine to visit the Alhambra and thanks to Brenda we spent a wonderful day there. Cordoba is next on the list. Brenda has a house in Spai

 One of the delicious slip covers ready to be stitched to fit the book. Well that is the last workshop for this year. It was great to back at Foredown Tower , you may have noticed it is now one of my favourite places to teach. I had six fabulous students on the course who worked very hard and were good enough to help with eating the cakes.       One of Claire's lovely samples ready to iron onto the Decovil light. The workshop was 'A New Starti ng Po int'. I have never known a workshop to be so popular, it certai n l y seems to have piqued everyones interest. The idea is to make some gorgeous surfaces by layer ing old newp apers with painted Bo ndaweb and all things spar kly. Gilding flake seems to be the most favoured spa r kle this year. Y ou can get this from www.craftynotions.com     Cla ire tearing up one of her samples ready to iron to the Decovil light.  The pa per layers are then ir oned onto pre-co loured Dec ovil light, the new iron-on interfa