wonderful wonderful aurifil...

 i am a big fan of Aurifil are you?

if so read on as there may be a little giveaway at the end of this post...

Aurifil 50wt (the orange one) has been my go to thread of choice ever since i was first introduced to it...particularly number 2600...the perfect shade of grey that goes with everything. 

i hadn't tried the other wts but was lucky enough to be sent a few recently to try.

now it would be fair to say that i am a little swayed by how things look. i like to be surrounded by pretty things...what's wrong with that? but they do need to have something to back up the looks and aurifil ticks all those boxes.

first of all not only are the coloured bobbins so bright and fun but they are indeed practical too...easy to grab what you are after without having small print to contend with and believe me at my age, being visually challenged, that is a huge plus.

on testing, 40wt - the green one - proved to be equally delightful and i particularly like the effect of how the slightly heavier thread shows up in quilting stitches.

the grey 28wt is a lovely thread to use for hand piecing. i am a bit heavy handed with hand piecing but no worries about snapping the thread with this one. it also works beautifully for machine quilting, a lovely bold finish.

then there are the threads for sashiko and hand embroidery...

12 wt - the red one - has a lovely feel and pretty sheen (you can see the stitches i did at the top).

and then of course the aurifloss, a 6 strand embroidery floss. 

this is one of those times that you can't ignore the prettiness...have you seen the wooden bobbins they are wound on??

but they do stitch like a dream too...

5 different types of thread, over 250 colours, they are the kona of the thread world. you really need to give them a try if you haven't already.

and to help one of you on your way i am giving away this set below of the 4 main threads and i will throw in one of the aurifloss too because they are way too pretty not to share and i am nice like that.

just leave a comment to be with a chance of winning. if you use aurifil already just tell me what your favourite colour is, which weight you prefer or something about it that you like. if you have never tried it just tell me that!

please leave an email where i can contact you if you are a no reply commmenter, should you win.

Good Luck!

I'm back!

I was really knocked for 6 following Top Drawer and it's taken me until now to be able to get moving again. I don't think that was helped by the fact that we had a rapid turn around and were back in London this weekend for a friend's Bar Mitzvah. Boy did it take all remaining energy last week to get us all packed up for that!

How was it I suppose you want to know...

It was fantastic!

I have several new exciting stockists including one in Australia...watch out, Brisbane, here I come! I also had interest from several other countries far and wide, so who knows where my things will be heading off to!

I have to say, one of the best things about the show was seeing and meeting all those wonderful Twitter peeps that I 'hang out' with.

I had a lovely visit and reorder from Stephanie over at Hawthorn Gallery. It was lovely to see Stephanie (and her Mum!) and to know my things are going well in her beautiful Gallery.

It was just wonderful to see Vanessa, Becky, Katie, Charlotte, Gabrielle, Caroline and Jane and also had a visit from the fabulous Phiona who was visiting. I'm not sure how people coped doing big fairs like Top Drawer before the invention of Twitter...so lonely!

Christmas was busy, Top drawer was crazy, so I am now looking forward to steadily getting into a calmer, but still busy, routine. I'm not sure life will ever be quiet, but with all these full-on events being over (oh and my tax almost done...) I'm very excited about what's in store.

I wonder where I get it from...

Grandma recently moved into a care home. She absolutely hated being on her own after Grandad died earlier this year. She didn't need or want any of her possessions with her and so sent us all round to give everything good homes.

Not only was there a beautiful old oak chest of drawers for our bedroom, but I laid claim to some of Grandma's threads.

My sister caught site of the boxes and immediately we recognised where we both get our sewing and storing addictions from.

Unfortunately because she is as addicted as I am (even if not as productive - she has a 'proper' job) I did agree to split the collection...

...I did manage to procure the yellows and greys however ;-)

We came back yesterday from a holiday of a lifetime. It was my Father-in-law's 80th, so he took all 17 of us, his sons, their wives and their children on a Baltic cruise. It really was a holiday of a lifetime.

Despite the fact that we are essentially holiday anti-socialites, preferring out of the way gites to busy, noisy hotels, we managed. Well, what's not to manage? Being taken to some of the most beautiful countries in Europe. Spoilt thoroughly by 24 hour attentive service. Oh and did I mention the all day and evening kids clubs?

Whilst I am not a convert to this kind of holiday, I certainly made the most of it and enjoyed not having to do any domestic chores of any description for 10 days.

I'll be reporting back, over the next few weeks, on the wonderful places we visited, but since this is essentially a crafting blog, I thought that would be a good place to start.

Our first port of call was Copenhagen. I instantly fell in love with this city. Not only is it beautiful and oozes charm, but it is such a laid back city. And I loved the way the whole city travels around on bicycle. It didn't take long for us to realise that bikes, with their own space on the road, rule the road. In our naivety as we strolled down the street, it soon became clear that you don't walk down the cycle lane as it is just that. The first cross tooting made us quickly evacuate the lane and made sure we never entered one again!

The shop windows in Copenhagen were beautiful. Quite Parisian in feel, I thought. The bead shop above is one such example. I loved the mix of vintage with bright colours. I had to be dragged out of here kicking and screaming.

The knick-knack shop across the road had a real vintage feel. I am quite cross I didn't get my promised return to explore to it's full potential.

This all highlights Frustration Number 1 of cruising...being given the merest glimpse to some wonderful cities. Whilst I feel privileged to have visited some amazing places at all, there were times when less is more really did not apply. Coupled with the fact that we were a party of 17 trawling the streets, with little folk amongst us, a lot of compromising took place.

I did however make the most of the very short time we had in beautiful Tallin. This was a much more compact city, so plenty of opportunity to break off from the group and catch up a bit later. Tallin was full of linens and embroidery work. Whilst some of it wasn't to my taste, I loved the crafting vibe. And I loved even more my find of this bag of embroidery threads. All this for less than £15...definitely worth breaking away from the group for and being a little late for rendez-vous ;-)

I'll be back soon to show you some magazines I picked up on my travels. All have a Country Living/Marie Claire Idees vibe and are going to be a great source of inspiration to my work over the coming months I feel.

This week has not started too well. We have had a great holidays and I really switched off and enjoyed a much needed break. We caught up with some friends. We went on a great walk in the Yorkshire Dales (queue picture on my header). We ate alot. Drank alot. Chilled alot.

I knew I'd relaxed well because towards the end of last week my fingers were starting to twitch. I was beginning to sleep less well as I needed to get active with work again.

My studio had got into it's usual pre-xmas over-worked chaos that needed tackling head on. I had all these plans that required the children to be back at school. A trip to Ikea was in order so that I could sort the chaos. Oh and purchase some more fabric ;-)

Samuel was still off yesterday so that was already a staggered start to the week. Matthew was off too, so a trip to Ikea was order of the day. I'd been planning to get this set of drawers for a while - highly recommended by Madame TFD. Purchase made. Drawers built (by aforementioned off work hubby). Organisation started....

And that's where it's ended. The night's heavy snowfall has scuppered any further plans to regain order up in my studio. The children were off school today and with school closed again tomorrow, I'm not totally sure when I'll manage to venture up there again.

Still, there is something rather mesmerising about that colour coordinated site, don't you think? Or am I just a little more anal than normal?

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(P.S. Thank you for your lovely comments and good wishes about my grandparent's anniversary. We had a fab old time with grandad rather proudly declaring secrets of their courtship - stories we'd never heard before!)

Isn't that a pretty site?

Those of you who follow me on Twitter will know about my mad dash out yesterday to get wadding for my kits. I can't actually believe I ran out of one of my basic components. I really wasn't in the mood to head out...far too much to do at base camp...and with all the Christmas shopper traffic on the roads, it wasn't as straight-forward as it should be.

Needs must so I dropped everything and off I went.

It really wasn't too painful a trip. The traffic was pretty cloggy but not as bad as it could have been. I grabbed the aforementioned wadding (4 large bags) and on my way to the till, happened upon. That's right, happened upon...the above embroidery threads. It would have been rude to walk straight on by, so into my basket it popped and now it's sitting all serenely on my desk waiting for the right moment to have a play.

That moment may be days, weeks away. In the meantime, isn't it a pretty site?