Knitting And Stitching Show 2010 Part One

Finally I am back to blogging. I must first thank everyone who has left comforting words and kind messages about our family's recent loss. Many of you will have guessed that it was my father who passed away. He had become very sick over the final months and was suffering greatly. Mingled with our sense of loss is relief that that suffering is now over and he is at peace. He is hugely missed and has left an enormous hole in our family which is felt very keenly. He was 93 years old. He always wanted to see my latest artwork even though he could barely focus due to macular degeneration. When I am drawing now I often pause and wonder if he is looking over my shoulder. I hope he is and I hope he likes what he sees.

Christmas is fast approaching but I started the 2010 Christmas card design early which is just as well as I ended up doing two. The first one was the sheep drawing below which was rejected in favour of the graphic black hares. Pity as I thought the sheep were really cute. They are for my eldest brother's business Christmas cards which you may remember I do every year. The black hare design is a reworking of an original roundel which I did many years ago but the corn has been replaced by winter umbellifers and snow. Much more seasonal. Which do you prefer?

Well, the sketchbook time is passing quickly and I have a lot more pages to fill in before the sending off date. I had to completely deconstruct the book as the cahier paper was totally unsuitable even for my finest ink nib and as for paint... I rebound it with good quality, thick sketch paper and boy was the resewing fun! However, because I knew I would have difficulty filling so many of the original pages I decided to reduce them by about half. Also being better quality paper the book is probably thicker than the original anyway. I have also cheated a teeny weeny bit by using a lot of two page spreads. Below are two of the first drawings I did. My theme is "if you lived here" and I have interpreted it quite loosley in many cases. What do you think so far?

I fell in love with these wonderful coconut shell buttons at the K&SS this year. They are perfect for crafty projects and can be bought online from The Textile Garden here.

I found some delightful cows to act as models in October.

"Oh I wondered what was digging into me"

"Mmmm...yum - nice hard, dry, crispy twigs to eat"

"Mmm...it tastes even better with the leaves and berries on".

The fabulous Knitting And Stitching Show took place at Alexandra Palace in October. It was as wonderful as always and extremely well attended. I was there for 6 hours and still failed to see everything. I bought a couple of excellent books which I will tell you about in another post. A largish proportion of my time there is spent perusing the extensive book stands where you can leaf through all the latest offerings from the art and craft community. Oh if only I had the money and the space to store them...

Two lovely wall pieces which caught my eye were Jennifer Willis's Looking For The East below

and Elizabeth Brimelow's Machine Stitch Perspectives - a beautiful piece of textile work.

There were lots of well-known brand names exhibiting at the show.

Rowan's gorgeous fabric display was a big draw as always.

I really liked the explosion of colour that was Nel Whatmore's stand. Nel is a very well-known and popular artist and designer from North Yorkshire and has a finger in many creative and artistic pies. You can find more about her beautiful work on her website here and she also has a very colourful blog which you can access from her website.

I was very impressed with the standard of work by the Wessex Textile Artists at the show. Their room was delightfully arranged and very popular with the visitors. Here are three members to illustrate the standard but all the work displayed was fabulous. You can find the Wessex website here and if you click on members details you can see the individual artists.

Brenda Weeks's work was wonderfully vibrant and colourful. Her embroideries reminded me of exquisitely detailed Indian watercolours. She has a lovely website here with lots more images.

Ruby Lever's lovely embroidery hangings were mouthwatering and looked wonderful all displayed in a row. The colours were very subtle and understated and the stitching exquisite.

Aren't these just the most gorgeous embroideries? They are the very talented Maggie Hills Alotment Chickens and were very popular in the Wessex Textile Artists stand.

I have more photos from the show so I will post about it again next week.