Walks, woad and books

I have been a little bit neglectful of this blog recently. I must admit that I have been keeping Fenland Textile Studios page on facebook more up to date.  If you want to follow me this way you can find me by clicking here

 Things have been very busy and I took time off to take May for a long walk and to collect my thoughts. I live in the flat Fens and near to The Haven River. This river flows out into the North Sea and you can follow it all the way out until the land gives way to sea and marsh. I feature sky a lot in my work and walks like this let me study the sky. About an hour  into the walk though we picked up a little dog. No owner, no collar just a little face looking up at us. He followed us for another 30 minutes until I turned round and then stayed with us until the car some ninety minutes later. I ended up putting him into the back of the car and driving to my local vet. I called this morning and the dog was microchipped. He had been missing for four weeks and was waiting for his owners to collect him. A good deed done!

On Monday I used a woad vat that had been simmering for a few days. I have some commissions to do and needed to dye some fabrics, especially white on white patterns for some workshop kits. For the past two weeks I have had an extremely good work experience student with me so we have made up kits for Festival of Quilts and the Autumn Knit and Stitch shows. I now need to put them in a safe place!

 It is not very clear but the drips are falling onto some rag paper which I think I will use in card making or book making.

Last weekend I was at Olympia in London for The Spring Knit and Stitch Show.  It was lovely to meet lots of new people in my workshops and around the show. The book below was made by a little girl who did it all by herself, we only helped with the iron bit. A definite start of the future!