Belstead Weekend

It's ages since my last post,The Material Girls had a meeting last week. I was really pleased when Chris and Grace announced that we have been offered the chance to exhibit next year in the Harbour Gallery, during the Jersey Textile Showcase, BRILLIANT!!!!! What a good excuse to go back again.
I've started working on my samples, we need to get the work more or less completed by this summer. Not sure about this one(see picture), I need to try something else. This was a lot of work, maybe I'll forget the hand stitching and see how I get on with machine embroidery. I do like to do machine embroidery but always steer towards hand stitching, why?


I visit Mum every day, she's getting tired very quickly. Last week her arm was very swollen and after a visit to the hospital it was discovered that she has a blood clot in her arm, this is being treated, but remains very swollen. She is always in very good spirits, we are really lucky to have such a large supportive family and very good friends. Some days Mum has 10 visitors, not all at the same time but spread out through the day. This I think makes her tired, but she says 'they only sit and chat', who am I to say that they shouldn't visit, when she wants to see them all.
At the weekend I'm off with a group of ladies from Romford Embroiderers Guild, we also have two members from Basildon branch and I've got some of my friends from Chelmsford branch joining us. One of my friends lives in Spain she emailed at the beginning of the week, it was doubtful she would be able to get here. Yesterday she managed to get a flight and is here, hooray! Sadly one of the members Mum lives in San Fransisco and always flys over to join us, she hasn't managed to get here. All these problems caused by the volcanic eruption in Iceland. I'm looking forward to the weekend, I'm booked into a class with Yvonne Brown. The other tutor is Ruth Smith and she will be doing folded books with stitched covers. Belstead is a great place for a weekend of good food and stitching from morning till night, hopefully I'll come back rested.
It is unbelievable to think that so much disruption has been caused by the volcanic dust. We have reconsidered our holiday plans and have today cancelled our holiday in Lanzarote. We will now have a few days away in this country. I'm thinking maybe the Gower Peninsula, Lanzarote will be there another time. There is no way I would have relaxed, the thought that I couldn't just jump in the car and get home in a few hours was just not on. If the situation with my Mum was different we would have gone, but as things are I think we've made the right decision.