I just finished editing the final video of our Africa trip. If you’re interested in following along I created a playlist: African Adventures and you can subscribe to get email notifications whenever a new video is posted. The last video of that trip will post on Saturday.

A couple of fun things are in the works. First I’m interviewing my friend Pat Pauly this Wednesday and should have that interview posted on my Youtube Channel by Thursday.  And speaking of Pat, she hand dyed the most exquisite pieces of linen and has them up on her site.  You can go and purchase by clicking ‘here‘.  Pat’s linen is my favorite linen to use because each piece is utterly unique as she stencils and hand paints each one and also because she uses an excellent quality 100% linen.  I love the hand of it and how easy it is to stitch through.  A word of warning though, last time Pat put a number of these on her site she sold out in less than 24 hours, so if you want one, you better hurry!

I was so inspired by my trip to Africa.  It wasn’t just the animals, but the crafts, the baskets, the textiles, the masks, sculpture, art, all of it was just thrilling to see.  As a result I’ve been incorporating some of these elements in my improvisational stitching  piece that I started a while ago.

Improvisational Piece inspired by African motifs

Obviously I have a LOT more to do on this piece, but I’m liking where this is going. I may even be able to work in a livestream in the next few days if my migraines will cooperate!  And if you haven’t already done so, my Improvisational Stitching Workshop is coming up and there are still some spaces left.  This is the workshop where we discuss design, design elements, free form hand stitching, improvisational stitching, color, techniques, and I will also be talking about how to incorporate things that inspire you into a piece.  We will use either a plain linen background or pieced, and will discuss the different ways to piece and appliqué onto the background before we begin hand stitching. This workshop runs on Saturday and is 5 consecutive Saturdays in a row, giving each person plenty of time to work on their piece before we meet again.  I highly recommend it for anyone interested in branching out and doing your own thing.

in other news, I’m doing my best to take it easy, get used to this new malaise that seems to be part of my life now and not get too upset that my energy level is so much less than what I’m used to.

“This too shall pass” they say and so I remind myself of this all the time.