Long and Short and Grape Sauce

I have now finished 2 ladies on my Knitting guild piece.

 

 

I have also been making grape sauce today. We have a grape vine on our deck which is fantastic, the grapes are lovely to eat but so is grape sauce, really good with chicken and great to dip chips into. Isn't the colour of the grapes fantastic.

 Grapes being washed

Grapes being cooked

Back to embroidery

I am just starting a piece of embroidery for an exhibition in April. It seems a long time since I did long and short, I love it. The exhibition is to commemorate 100 years from the start of WWI. My piece is based on a quote I found from a lady in Auckland about the effort the ladies in New Zealand made to make things for the soldiers.

The quote is " Knitting guilds sprang up like mushrooms. We took socks and balaclava to church and knitted like mad all through the sermon. Two plain, two purl became hopelessly mixed up with the text, and if we did rather lose the thread of the Canon's discourse we at least got out heel turned"

Once complete I will stitch and knitting needle top and bottom with a few rows of knitting on them, the threads from the knitting will become the stitched words.

pixelated face

 

My pixelated face quilt is almost finished. It is made of 2inch squares, stitched together in rows and then the rows stitched together. I am planning on putting a dark border round it to make it look like the face is on a screen. I may still change the lips!

 

 

 

 

Prize winning chutney

Yesterday I won 1st prize and Judges choice for a jar of courgette chutney at the Helensville A & P show. My family had a great day, Kit won two 1st for some photos, and my children got a 1st each.

Back Home

Well I am home from my South Island teaching tour. It was great, lots of lovely ladies and beautiful places to stay. I have taught many ladies over 80 and I just hope I am still as keen to learn new things when I get to that age, fantastic advert for how to grow old. I think all rest homes should hold embroidery classes!

 

This quilt is my Green Man. I made him as an entry for an exhibition in Australia but he has not been selected so I can post a picture of him now. Not really sure I got the greens right but I still like him. I will use him when I am guest artist for the Warkworth Quilt show in April. His copper leaf is Or Nue which looks great against the fabric.

 



Not much space for clothes

I am off on a teaching tour of the South Island for 2 weeks from tomorrow. I am teaching for 4 different embroiderers guilds over 9 days with days to travel from place to place in-between. I am teaching Or Nue which is a type of goldwork, how to start a sketch book and goldwork. Once I had put all the stuff I need for teaching into my suitcase there was not much room for clothes, lets hope its not cold!!