Wednesday 29 September 2010

felted necklace and acorns



Zittle tiny acorns made with some tiny scarps of the most beautifully expensive silk velvet from the cloth house in Soho, are my latest fad! I have crocheted the 1cm diameter cups from different miserable coloured embroidery threads and then wrapped a plastic bead with a small round of velvet and sewn together....they will all be strung on a double loop of velvet ribbon for a bracelet for the etsy shop! The very plain for me felt ball necklace will be uploaded to the shop later...

Tuesday 28 September 2010

beautiful photographs



At my parents this weekend we were looking at some of the wonderful photos that she has of when she was living in Tangiers in the 40s and 50s. The photo on the beach is of (clockwise from bottom left) Tio Manolo, Tia Maria, my mum, my uncle Pepin, my grandmother and my beautiful aunty Fita who sadly died earlier this year, the little boy that she is holding onto very tightly is a little street urchin they adopted. The other photo is of my mum and my auntie Fita with a friend.

Wednesday 22 September 2010

I'm so excited


I'm sooo excited, after watching the etsy site like a maniac for the past couple of days a very kind person called Kcompliment has included one of my braceletes in her treasury! which is a members curated shopping gallery! I think I might be getting obsessed...

Monday 20 September 2010

more felting


Yesterday I picked the last of the apples of my tree and felt very autumnal,-Its the best season by far and I'm really into all those beautiful berry colours- have made some felt and crochet acorns to keep me in the mood which I shall make into a fall necklace for the shop....

Friday 17 September 2010

thank you Meredith


A great many thank yous to all of you have encouraged me to start this wretched etsy shop....I really did need a kick start! it has been painful and certainly not for the faint hearted (!) trying to work out a shop policy was like drawing blood from a stone but at least after months of procrastination I have a banner and a somewhat amateurish shop front....just have to list everything now!
nearly there!

Thank you Di


Hallelulia I'm home! And just look what was waiting for me on my return, but the cutest most perfect bijoux gift! My own little travelling Becassine, where did you get her Di? I love her....shame I cannot look like her when I travel.....

Thursday 9 September 2010

incidents in Indonesia







Here I am in Surabaya this week on the bi annual factory visit which was going very well until we took a trip to the beautiful Shangrila hotel in the centre of town.....a crowded bus failed to stop and managed to write off the car we were travelling in! Within minutes we had attracted quite a crowd of locals, I snapped some pictures of the general chaos that ensued, quite a contrast to the tropical haven of our destination....

islamic tessallated tiles






Seville is also home to the famous Alcazar which is a moorish fortress built in the 10th century, - the moors not only introduced beautiful architecture to the south of Spain and amazing culinary skills, but they also were brilliant mathematicians- the tile work throughout the palace is all based on mathematical tessallations, regular, irregular and star-shaped tiles are juxtaposed to create geometrical patterns that flow over the whole surface,- the individual pieces, called "alĂ­zares", were cut out by blows delivered by a pick and then fired using a limited palette. In 1922 M. C. Escher was so inspired after studying the Moorish use of symmetry in these tiles, that he produced all those intricate works using these regular divisions of the plane.....

Friday 3 September 2010

another bracelet



Very addicted to wrapping lengths of cord...here is the thickest bracelet I have done so far, I think that they look better if they have lots of different coloured cords...

Wednesday 1 September 2010

silky cords






The only thing that I really managed to make successfully while I was away was a bunch of bracelets- made by twisting lots of different coloured embroidery silks around thick cord and then securing 10 - 20 of these coloured cords with a thick wrap of linen, which then had loads of seed beads sewn all over the top- all for the still fictitious etsy shop that is still a figment of my imagination!