'Flax A Natural Beauty' Etsy Treasury

My Ditherington Flax Mill print has been featured in this lovely natural Etsy treasury curated by Bloomsburygroup please click here for more details.

Snowdrop Season

The past few weeks the snowdrops have been slowly coming out here in Shropshire. They are a little late this year because of the cold weather earlier in the year. Snowdrops are one of the most beautiful flowers; the flower heads seem to defy logic as they appear too heavy for the stalk that holds them.

I have hand screenprinted printed my original 'Snowdrops' design onto this Moleskine notebook which can be seen above and it is now for sale in my Etsy shop here.

I have been out and about in Shropshire the last few weeks eagerly awaiting the snowdrops so I can photo them. I was lucky enough to take these few photos in my garden:

For some reason I felt reluctant to cut some of these lovely flowers and bring them inside, although I wanted to use them to photograph closer and also with my printed notebook. I only cut a couple and was amazed at how they started to open when I brought them inside. They revealed little striped 'hearts':

As I was taking photographs in my garden my neighbour's son-in-law came to ask what I was doing and then offered some of his mother-in-laws snowdrops for me to photograph too. These are different again and he told me about some with pink in the middle so I will have to look into these. (I can see a new hobby starting up in searching out different snowdrop varieties!). Here are the ones from their garden:

On Tuesday I was lucky enough to be able to photograph some snowdrops at Wightwick Manor where I am involved in an art project - will post more on this later. There were a few near the bases of trees:

More snowdrops at Wightwick Manor, I am also loving the long shadows at this time of the year:

New printing projects!

I have been meaning to print my Florentine Lilies design onto fabric ever since I took this textile screenprinting course last year. My idea was to print it onto fabric and then make it up into an eco- friendly shopping bag. However, for some reason I have been procrastinating on this little project - maybe because I wasn't sure how the printing onto fabric would turn out, also other projects took precedent. Last week I finally took the plunge and I am really pleased with how it looks above.
Another project that I have been wanting to explore for a while is printing my designs onto notebooks. Again I went ahead last week and printed my Snowdrop design onto this small notebook:

I think the colours work well on the brown background (which I have explored before here) and am going to print up more little notebooks and wrapping paper with some designs that I already have and also some new ones that are in the pipeline.

Florentine Lilies on Etsy Treasury

After waking up to quite a dull cloudy day this morning I received an email from Stacey of Lucky Urchin Vintage to say that she had included my Florentine Lilies card on her Etsy Treasury. This treasury is titled 'Spring Time Florals UK' and looking at this lovely selection I can believe that after all this cold weather we have been having in the UK, Spring will be on its way soon!

You can find my Florentine Lilies card and others for sale if you visit my Etsy shop here.

Christmas Presents!

I think it's lovely to give presents that you have made yourself or someone else has made. This 'Frothy Scarf' is a Rowan pattern I started a while ago and had decided that it should be a gift for my Mum this Christmas. Unfortunately I left it till the last minute to pick up and knit the frothy frill around the outside and was up quite late on Christmas Eve finishing it! (Does anyone else leave their knitting around for a while before finishing it?) It was worth it though as Mum is very pleased with it and teenage daughter has decided she wants me to make her one in a different colour, but cannot quite decide whether she wants a frill on it or not.

Another gift I gave, this time to my daughter, was a brass locket containing an embroidered feather which was made by Melissa Wastney of Tiny Happy Blog. I can highly recommend her blog and also her etsy shop in which I find lovely presents for special occasions:

Her Fearful Symmetry

Last night we met at Darcy's house for our book group and the book chosen to read and for discussion this month was 'Her Fearful Symmetry' by Audrey Niffenegger. As it is nearly Christmas there were quiet a few nice chocolate treats and drinking wine before we got down to discussing the book.

One of the attractions of the book was that the story is centred around Highgate Cemetery in London as one or two people had been there and said that it was a definite 'must do' when visiting London. Jenny brought a book about the cemetery with wonderful photographs which we all had a look at and thought that some of the photos were very reminiscent of Dr Who!

Without spoiling the story it revolves around two sets of twins, one of which inherit their aunt's house close to Highgate cemetery in which they must live for a year, but in which their mother and father cannot step foot in.

Opinion was quite divided about the book some of us really enjoyed it but others found it difficult to enter into the book's divergence from reality.

Personally I really enjoyed the book (more than Audrey Niffenegger's first book 'The Time Traveller's Wife') and felt that it was well written and found the juxtaposing theme of confinement and freedom explored in the book really interesting.

This is a good book to read around Christmas time with it's Gothic, ghostly story and setting.

Two winners........

Apologies for not posting straight away this weekend about the card giveaway but I have been in bed with a horrible cold. Anyway - I decided that since I was starting to feel quite festive (even though the only Christmas decoration I have had the strength to put out at the moment is my little Murano glass Christmas tree!), I would pick out two random winners of the cards. So the first name out was Darcy and the second one out was Kristina. So if you could please send me your address as soon as possible to: jacquidodds(at)yahoo(dot)co(dot)uk I will get them out in the post before the last Christmas posting dates.