finished

I am sure you are all kinda sick of seeing this piece- well, never fear; it is finished!

I just wanted to show the last bits of hand stitching I did

It now goes off to the States

oh; and to answer your questions, Susanna; the background is an old cotton sheet

that I have cut.....then a sheet of music that I put a bit of gesso over;

actually, too much gesso as you cannot really see the score

I only knew that it had to have a cardinal in it

so looked on the internet for a nice image -

and use that as a guide to free machine stitch the bird

everything else just sort of happens

I don’t really have a plan

yikes, it is almost 3.30pm.......and what have I done today?

paid bills, filled out a form to get extra pages added to my passport

(I know; weird - but have run out of space for stamps -

the passport control people are getting quite annoyed

every time I come back into the country)

things I haven’t done:

arranged my studio.......I have a new big table and wanted to see if I could rearrange

the furniture in here......haven’t done it so am sitting here with stuff and

boxes and storage containers and piles of paper and piles of magazines and

piles of books and piles of cloth all around me

oh, and a bike I brought back from France

in the middle of the room (long story)

I have two more bird commissions, but they don’t have a pressing deadline -

so before that, I would like to do a few Valentine’s like I did last year

and see if I can put them in the café next door again

I also have a huge pile of magazines I have been collecting but never take the time

to look through them - they all look really inspirational

maybe schedule in an afternoon where I just sit and look through things;

without feeling guilty for "not doing anything" (even tho I know it is actually doing something)

hm.......all jumbley, jumbley, jumbley

__a

Exciting news; all three of the valentine pictures I had in the cafe next door, the Buttercup, have sold!

thank you so much for that

I am new to selling my work and this has been quite a boost. My only slight sadness is that noone seemed interested in my stuffed hearts.

Oh well......

I have added more photos to my slideshow, so please take a minute to check them out and am now planning on a few more bird pictures in the near future, I think

Perhaps this will encourage Spring to hurry up and arrive!

At the beginning of May, S and I have signed up for a Dawn Chorus walk. It will be at Sheffield Park Garden in Sussex. We arrive at 5am and walk through the gardens with a guide until 7am, listening to all the birds singing through the dawn. I have always wanted to do this and am very excited about it.

A special thank you to the people who have signed up to “follow” my blog - I cannot figure out how to reach a couple of you to thank you in person, so hopefully you will see this;

Thank You!

oh, and one more thing - I am, again in the near future, planning to set up an etsy site and make my work more accessible for anyone to buy - so will keep you posted on that too