A New Star is born

Coincidence or what?  I had been looking at some 5 point Origami stars on someone else's blog and thinking how beautiful they were and that I could not possibly make them, when I discovered in amongst my Christmas presents there were some small sheets of Japanese Origami paper.  I could not resist the challenge so I decided to have a go. They are only 6 cm from point to point and they are crying out to be hung up.

Boxing Day Walk

Managed to get out of the house for a walk this morning and went to Croome.  Weather was lovely and we did a different and longer walk than usual which turned out to be very pleasant.  Managed a cake and coffee before we did our walk and found that there was an interesting exhibition in the house around the subject of plums and poetry ....

Su Blackwell was commissioned to produce this installation of plum saplings growing out of the floor which is about the lives of female relatives lives during World War I. She visited Pershore and produced Jam and dried plum stones from the produce there.

The walls of the room are currently decorated with the words of a poem by Brenda Read Brown (Poet Laureate Gloucestershire) and Heather Wastie (Poet Laureate Worcestershire). There are nicely decorated Christmas trees on the ground level, one of which had copper birds on it made by Art & Design students from Stourbridge College ....

The window ledges in the basement were decorated with more Christmas trees made from paper

A Little Bit of Sunshine

Look what I spotted near the birdfeeders in the front garden earlier this week. First of all I noticed just one or two flowers, but now lots more have opened out.  Yesterday I also noticed that several daffodils are poking their leaves through the soil under the hedge and there are even some coming through in one of my plantpots.

This fine chappie (Melchizedek) features in the south window in St Martin's church near to the Bullring in Birmingham - thought he was very Christmas looking. I understand the window was designed by Sir Edward Burne Jones and produced by the William Morris company.

It's starting to feel like Christmas

I had to go into Worcester this morning to take my little car for it's MOT so took the opportunity to walk down to the Cathedral to see the Christmas Tree exhibition.  The one above was provided by the Worcester branch of the Embroiderers' Guild and is covered in three sided pods decorated in Gold and Red.

There are almost 100 trees sponsored by all kinds of organisations.  It was lovely and worth the walk in the rain.There are lots of photos HERE

I really liked this one which was made from willow hoops and had Project Linus quilts underneath it.
There were lots and lots more ....

This one was made from picture frames and I think was created by NADFAS.

Not so Mellow Yellow

I have now completed the first of the Coptic books stitched using 2 needles. Once I had started it was not as difficult as I had expected. Have now cut out more paper to make signatures for the next version and I could perhaps try using two different colours of thread too ... always full of good ideas I just need to put them into practice!!

A plus yesterday was the beautiful male Sparrowhawk that was sat in the Amelanchier tree in the back garden very close to the bird feeders.  He was magnificent.

Pebble Stencil

I have been busy cutting out paper to make new books this past week and also creating some coloured papers for the covers.  I have had the pebble stencil used below for some time and am not convinced I really like it but it looks okay on this book which is an A5 Secret Belgian Binding.  Going to try a new Coptic book using two needles together over the next week or so as I do not like the effect of the row of kettle stitches at the top and bottom of the spine on the normal Coptic binding method. Fear I may have some problems with the fatness of the signatures at the spine end of the page, but shall see.