Poppy on Kilkee beach.   I have adopted a rescue dog - and am a tad behind with everything!  Those of you who follow me on Facebook will have seen quite enough of her already. She is great fun and keeping me on my toes. She is 11 weeks old and I have had her for 6 days. We are getting used to each other . . .  What breed is she - Yes! Good question - her mum is a Lurcher - her dad, unknown! She will be a surprise. One of the positive sides to my new friend is that I will be walking more - much more. Poppy enjoying playing with a radish!   Right back to the blog -  I had a stand at The Fashion, Embroidery and Stitch Show last month. It was a great show and I got to see a lot of you. Thank you very much for coming to say hello. Whilst I love living here in Ireland, I still do enjoy doing the the shows in the UK. It helps me keep in touch with what everyone is up to.  The best part of the show for me was the 3 groups of ex Experimental Textiles students who exhi

My house has probably only seen snow 3 or 4 times in its history. It is quite rare for it to snow on the Loop Head Peninsula. Have you all defrosted?? Are you thawed?  We had snow on Loop Head for the first time in 10 years or so. Most of the children living here had never seen snow before. I have never seen so many snowmen and snowball fights - great fun for a couple of days - then it is enough. Fashion, Embroidery ad Stitch next week - March 15th - 18th I had a chance to get on with some work while I was snowed in - I will have some of my new seaweed work on show on my stand at the Fashion, Embroidery and Stitch Show at the NEC next week. A few of my new pieces wrapped in plastic and ready to travel I will be on stand L22 and there will be 3 groups of my ex ExTex students exhibiting in the same area. I will have Paint and Bond for sale again as well some of the interfacings I use, and Tyvek. I will also be running the Vlieseline workshop. Here is a link

 A 'squidgey' print taken from the left over paint from painting the colour wheel. I have just about finished clearing up from filming the 3rd and 4th weekends of Experimental Textiles Online. The 3rd weekend looks at colour and the 4th weekend is the still life. Students will be encouraged to build their own still life - or they can paint and draw from images of mine. I find a large scale still life is less frightening than the usual bowl of fruit. The idea is to look at shapes, lines and positive and negative space. It is not a competition to see who is the best artist. Few of us can paint and draw really well, but we can try, and the more you practice, the better you get.  Jayne has a new clapper board to help her with editing the videos.  We filmed the colour wheel on Saturday and the still life on Sunday.    I use paper plates as palettes.  When I was teaching Experimental Textiles at various colleges I always used a few of the same pieces, the wooden

A detail of one of Fiona's fab prints. The first Look.Draw.Stitch weekend was a great success.  I had met Fiona, Ann and Sidella last August when I was working on the Vlieseline stand at Festival of Quilts, NEC, Birmingham. They stopped to say hello and ask how I was getting on in my new home, here in Ireland. All three ladies are from Dublin and are deeply involved in the Irish Guild of Embroiderers. We had a good chat. They asked if I was doing any teaching in Ireland and I said I was thinking of running weekend workshops from home. We discussed it further and I asked if they thought if anyone would visit the back of beyond where I live in January? And they said Yes!! They would . . . and they did.   Fiona and Ann looking out. Fiona drew some of the landscape lines and Ann drew some of the stone shapes in the dry stone wall. Sidella chose to draw Brachychiton or Bottle tree seeds that I have in a basket in my sitting room. From a simple drawing you can tak