These photos were taken during last week’s stormy weather, it’s not often the river looks like this.
But here is a lovely reminder of Summer. it’s the work of my friend Mary Spence that I fell in love with and bought as a treat for myself.
There’s a new post on the SerenTex textile group’s blog which I know you will enjoy.
This post is a thank you to Eugeni Eviskov who was such a great help to both my husband and myself whilst on holiday in Tenerife recently. Many years ago I fell off a stepladder and damaged my back and since them I still suffer long bouts of pain. My husband also suffers from Sciatica and the day before we travelled his Sciatica became much worse and it looked as if we were going to have a very miserable time. Luckily for us, Eugeni has a clinic in the Bitacora Hotel where we stay. People call him, the man with the Healing Hands and very rightly so. We were both treated by him and so were able to enjoy our holiday if not quite as energetically as we normally do.
Eugeni has written a book called ‘Good Health’ full of treatments and exercises from around the World using alternative treatment techniques. I find this book invaluable as I think we all take far too many drugs when there are alternative things we can do that will help. This book has helpful suggestions to help improve your health whatever you suffer from, from arthritis to insomnia.
You will find Eugeni’s website here.
My best wishes for the new year to you all from a stormy North Wales. I know I’ve been very quiet recently and the reason for this is that I only have two speeds – Stop and Go. When I go it’s at top speed and family and friends wonder how I manage to do it and they tell me I should slow down, but I’m afraid slowing down just doesn’t work for me as I don’t know how. When I stop it happens so fast I hit the windscreen, then it takes me ages to restart.
Today I decided enough was enough and I have started making lists with 3 columns – Urgent, Creative and Non-creative and I have now started on the Urgent column. Once the system is working I hope to manage a few from the Non-creative column and at least one from the Creative column every day. I don’t really know where my blog fits into this, but it’s always been a pleasure until recently when it started to become just another chore, but I’m going to add it to the Creative column and hope it will become a pleasure once more.
This photo is of the hotel we stay at in Tenerife and I spent most of my holiday sitting on the balcony here.
I have just posted more work from the North Wales Embroiderers Guild Exhibition of 2011 up on the Croesew blog.
Another dozen hearts finished and also a dozen brooches. Now at last I’ve finished my Christmas orders and can get back to some real creativity.
This is the dress I enjoyed making for Mary in a Nativity play, but I don’t expect anyone would want to see the pair of trousers I altered for SIL? No, I thought you wouldn’t. Don’t you just hate altering things for people? It’s lovely to feel that I can ‘turn my hand to anything’, but it can be such a disadvantage at times can’t it? I’d much rather make something from scratch. I have a few pairs of trousers of my own that could do with shortening 1/2” to stop them dragging in the mud, but they are still waiting and being worn as they are 
I wonder if it’s Prince William flying this helicopter? It’s an air sea rescue helicopter from RAF Valley where he is stationed. I don’t suppose I will ever find out why it was hovering over the river, too far off for me to be be able to see it properly. But if you look at the bottom right hand corner there’s a lifeboat as well, so it must be someone in trouble. Such a pity I don’t recognise the two with the pushchair who had a grandstand view.
To finish, last night’s sunset.
These are photos I took with my camera during the week.
There are also some photos on the SerenTex blog.
This was a 10K Charity Run last Sunday and they just kept coming and coming. It was a wonderful sight.
I’ve been finishing off work I have to make before Christmas, but I still have more to do before I go on holiday.
As some of you know I just love playing with my photos, usually in PSP. I find it very relaxing and sometimes very inspiring.
As always, clicking on any image will give you a larger version.
These used Threshold and Halftone.
These also used Halftone, Twirl and a touch of Enamel. The original is shown below.
I’m keeping myself busy making more hearts!
But I’m sure you will enjoy the photos of the North Wales Embroiderers’ Guild exhibition that have just been posted on our blog Croesew far more. here’s a taster below.
This is the lovely work of Carol McFee of Textile Tales, co-author of the book ‘Stitching the Textured Surface’ with Lynda Monk who has another book coming out soon called Fabulous Surfaces. Check D4Daisy for details.
These are two of the images is I added acrylic paint to. I think there’s an improvement.
I like the first design but felt it needed an additional colour to the background, so I altered it in my PSP using different modes and I think they’re quite interesting, so I will try and paint similar ones using brighter colours.
After trying out the Blogger Dynamic View yesterday, I have gone back to the old style as I was not very happy with it.
Even though it’s been a rather dull and murky day here, there were plenty of photo opportunities. As I’m still recovering from the effects of the flu jab I don’t really feel like doing much, but I have cut out some more hearts and sponged some acrylic on the unsatisfactory design designs I painted.
The Castle shows up well against the pale background here, and the close-up next to it shows the towers. You would think the soldiers of old were still there!
I liked this one, so I played with another photo like it using ‘Threshold’ in PSP.
And another insect posed for me on the outside of the window.
I love to to try anything new, so today it’s Blogger in ‘Dynamic View’. If you just hate it then please let me know and I can change it back, but I think it might be quite useful. You can choose whichever view you like from the top of the post.
I took this photo a while back and had forgotten all about it. Then I found another insect looking in at me.
I had to have a little play with this one.
I love the way all the hills show up in this photo.
I’m still doing some painting practice.
But I’m also playing. I have a new little laptop to take away on holiday and it’s been a very difficult choice between iPad2 and a small laptop. In the end I decide the laptop would be more useful as I can have my favourite programmes to play with whilst on holiday. So today has been spent setting everything up on my new laptop which is an 11.6 HO E2 Vision with a good graphics card. I also bought a Vodaphone Dongle so I can connect to the Internet from my hotel room abroad.
A basket full of hearts that were finished today, but I still have 1/2 an hour to practice my textures before going to bed!
Last night’s sunset.
