The Classes are Ready

 The free classes that come with my Dissolvable Delights book are ready. You will find them on the d4daisy site www.d4daisy.com  Just follow the links from the online classes button.



Instead of a yahoo group I'm going for a blog as a means of contact. If smallish pics are sent to me I will post them and the comments will be used for general course chat. The blog can be found at www.d4daisychains.blogspot.com

I have put up two lessons at once - one on mixed media and one on design and stitch. There is a pic from the design and stitch one on the right and one from the mixed media on the left. Hope you will all join me.






Yesterday we treated ourselves to a day out on an art crawl (like a pub crawl but without the booze). It is the first week of Dorset Art Weeks and we had a great time.

Yes, a lot of eating was done. The scones were devoured at Poundbury, near Dorchester - the new-ish village built on Prince Charles' land, according to his, rather traditional, tastes. It is a mix of styles from small artisan terraces to posh Georgian town houses. Even Waitrose has an entrance with pediments and columns! I think it looks a bit of a hotchpotch and it has a strangely deserted air - as though an alien abduction had taken place. I think new communities have to grow rather than be planted. Anyone else have any views?

Lunch was rather more to my taste. Armed with sarnies from the aforementioned Waitrose we took off for the wonderful coast road that runs above Chessil beach. You can just see the sea behind the sandwich (who says my priorities are skewed).

We sat on a bench, serenaded by a couple of Robins.The grub was good, the sun was warm, the view was heavenly - what bliss.

Before lunch we had made a visit to the studio of quilter Kate Dowty - see below. She has written workshops for us and I love her work. The detail on the right is from a larger piece entitled Cliff Textures.

At the bottom is a detail from a lovely stitched concertina book. All Kate's work is so beautifully finished - this is something that I am not good at. Must try harder.

The next venue, also near Dorchester, was the Allsorts exhibition by a varied group of artists. In a barn, it had a unique approach with a fence lined with bras.

It was a lovely, varied exhibition with quilters (great stuff from Hilary Gooding in particular. I was also very taken with Joy Frampton's felting - see right.

Joy had a piece of work in my Embellish and Stitch book but I had not seen her larger pieces and garments, which were lovely - see right.

We had some disappointments as we hadn't checked that a couple of venues were closed. in fact the one I really wanted to see, in Abbotsbury, only opened at weekends. One wonders why they bothered!

All was not lost, however, as we had time to visit the wonderful Abbotsbury gardens - see below.


















 In the pic on the right, you can see a little dot in the middle, through the trees. This is Saint Katherine's chapel and the view has been engineered so you sit on a bench and see it framed by trees.

Needless to say we had an ice cream and today I am on starvation rations. Must have put on pounds!