The long awaited Microsoft Windows 10 has recently been launched and I stupidly downloaded it, only to find that the easy access page for my email and calendar no longer worked and no attachments would come through either. I was informed that I had a month to go back to Windows 8 and so I did, hoping that all my problems would be sorted. You can guess ............... they weren't. Oh well, I can still access my email via another route and I still have my trusty desk diary.
We went to Wales towards the end of July and the weather was good to us, raining only 2 days out of 5 - not bad really considering and we were travelling home on one of those wet days anyway. I have taken loads of photos because I thought the landscape was lovely, here are just a few.
I have wanted an easel for some time now and managed to get one on holiday, which was being sold at half the usual retail price. How could I resist and so once home I started to make use of it. It's really useful to be able to stand back and view your efforts, which I must say do need improvement, but it's early days and I do intend to practise as much as I can.
I wanted a lot of texture, the sort we can achieve in quilting and machine embroidery, but whilst I like the bottom of the picture, the grooves at the top I've made with gel medium just don't work. I think it would look better cropped.
I've used real hydrangea leaves on this one. This method has potential I think and I love the colourway.
More variety in the form of a recycled wooden bowl, which I've painted with indigo dye I found in my shed, which has to be over 12 months' old. Once dry, I've given it a coat of acrylic wax. I'm not sure my mum would have approved, it was her sewing 'basket', where I found all sorts of bits and pieces, including a suspender! She never did take to wearing tights.
More variety in this last week was in the form of Festival of Quilts. I went with my friend Joan, who is no more restrained than I am when it comes to buying fabric. We now have enough to sink a ship, but our excuse is that it is only once a year, which believe me is just as well. We rounded the day with joining some of our 15 x 15 quilting group members in Weatherspoons bar. We both thoroughly enjoyed meeting up with them, finally putting faces to the email addresses we know so well, that being the means of our communications throughout the year. Lovely ladies who share the same passion and we discussed our upcoming exhibitions in Maastricht, Taiwan and now Beaujolais again. We have exhibited there once before and have been asked to exhibit again next spring.
Just one more photo which beautifully captures the vibrant poppies in our garden. I am hoping to feature them in my next quilt for our 15 x 15 group, that has the theme of 'happy'. We'll see.
Enjoy whatever you are up to, bye for now.
Margaret
