As you know from my last post, we were away from home all last week. I took all my stitching gear with me, and unfortunately it just sat by the bed in our hotel the whole damn time. I was so knackered after shifting heavy boxes and counting things all day that I just didn't have the energy. Also it seemed to take us about 2 hours every time to have dinner. Must have been all that cheese! Since we've been home I've been doing some more work on my project for the Feeling Stitchy August Stitchalong. They were really sweet and featured my pictures in their blog twice! So now the pressure is on, I have to do some really good work before the end of the month. I've been following the work of the others and I have to say I'm not sure my work will stand up to theirs. Well I am just a beginner, really! Still, I'm quite pleased with my progress so far. Above is a sneak peek!
Way Out West (ish)
Last week we packed up the car and headed down to the Welsh/English border for a week working with our distributor there.
Last month just me and Him Indoors went down, but this time we took some reinforcements in the form of Billie and Tony. Our mission was to supervise the movement of our "deep stock" into our UK distribution partner, Forte's, new space. We drove down on Sunday so we'd be able to get an early start Monday morning.
We stayed in Clearwell, right on the edge of the Forest of Dean. Clearwell didn't even have a corner shop, it was that small! We ventured into the nearest town, Coleford, for a look around on Sunday and saw this lovely old shop, completely caught in a time warp. Check out the great advertising signs for Players, Star and Capstan.
We ate a lot of lovely food. Mostly cheese.
Forte's new warehouse is in this tiny little industrial park located in a gorgeous valley, next to a deer park. It's unbelievably beautiful.
Billie was really excited about going for country walks.
Billie got treated to sausages (not just one! two!) for breakfast one morning by the lovely Elaine at The Wyndham Arms.
It was a really tough week of work and we ended up having to stay a day later than we meant to, but we got so much done. With the help of everyone at Forte we ingested 32 pallets of stock in four days. Something like a miracle, really. On the way home we stopped off to pick up some goodies from Trealy Farm, which you can read about over on The Gannet.
August Stitchalong progress
I've made my decision for the August Feeling Stitchy Stitchalong. Thanks to a bit of encouragement from some folks on Flickr, I am going with the zoo animals print. I've made an initial selection of thread colours. The fabric has so many colours in it that I'm sure I'll change my mind a few times before I'm done. I want to use some complimentary colours and also some contrasting ones, but I don't want it to look to colour mentalist. What do you think of my choices?
Check out some of the fabrics chosen by other participants. I'm really looking forward to seeing everyone's results.