Sunshine, slipped stitches, big sticks and sweet peas

My children's bag workshop happened on Thursday and my knitting workshop took place today, both went really well and all had a really great time. The children made wonderful bags and were just so excited to take them shopping, that afternoon! The new knitters worked so hard today and all were so thrilled to have learnt a new skill that they can now run with and knit what ever they want. It was just a wonderful day, sitting and chatting, working with yarn and colour and teaching the fabulous art of knitting to lovely people.The sun shone all day and the lemon drizzle cake was very much admired and enjoyed- all very satisfying.
My sweet peas have finally shown an appearance, well three of them any how. I am of course very excited, not only to see the beginning of new plants and growth, but of course to finally be reassured that spring is truly on its way. It seems to have been a very long time in coming.
My little nephews came to stay for the beginning of the week, which was half term. We went out and about every day, and one one of our days visited an ancient yew tree forest which was quite magical. So wonderfully old and mystical. We ate our picnic sitting on the top of a barrow (burial chamber) looking out over Chichester harbour and portsmouth in the distance, what a spectacular view!! and what a picnic too!! we met up with a very dear friend and her two boys and lots of games were played involving very big sticks, which boys always seem to be attracted to.
Tomorrow I am in the studio and shall finish making my picture for one of the projects in the book, I have had a really lovely week and i am now looking forward to making work for myself again.

Lovely sunny day

A lovely sunny day today, and most welcome, although still no sign of my sweetpeas yet.

As usual, the week has just flown by, I've been making a project piece for my book, using bright colours and bold shapes, I've been making sure it will be easy to follow and fun to make. I've also been knitting flowers, which need a little more embellishing before they are presented.

Crafty cake

Shoreline Birds

Little Egret

Bags, bags, bags!

Hamble, home made cake and bags

I've just come back from a lovely refreshing walk along the Hamble with my friend Graham from London who has been staying with us for the weekend. Although the day started out with wonderful sunshine, it soon turned to drizzle, we still managed to have a really great time. We saw lots of shoreline birds, some we recognized and some we did not, which we looked up in the very old but beautifully illustrated bumper bird book, back at home and sitting at the table and stuffing our faces with homemade Victoria sponge cake and drinking tea. My poor husband Michael missed all this as he was at work. we are sure to go together another time soon and have the cobwebs blown away again.
All the bag ideas for the children's workshops we to hold at the studio have been made. They are my samples and I am very pleased with them, I hope the children like them too and feel inspired to sew sew sew! Thank goodness we were all very organised with all the materials sorting out last Sunday as finding all the bits and bobs for the bags was easy peasy.
This coming week I am going to write some more of my book and start liking it into some sort of shape, I want to complete the introduction, or at least give it a firmer direction, sometimes it's easy and sometimes I struggle, it is a great learning curve though.