BT to the Rescue

On Wednesday we were without home phone or computers, a branch from a neighbours tree fell on the telephone wire and severed it. This morning BT engineers came promptly at 8 am, we are back online! Good service BT, well done.

The photograph, above, I took in the garden, it's the seed pods of a very unassuming iris (its flowers are brown and purple), but its berries look like strings of shiny orange beads.

On Sunday I went to a craft fair in Welwyn, there I met and had a chat with Shelley Faye Lazar. Shelley had a stall selling some beautiful scarves you can see them here This is Shelley's explanation of her work "I have been painting on silk for years, and the success with this fabric is that it is a wonderful foundation for brilliant, vibrant colours, retaining the intensity and luminosity. Wool, however, absorbs the colours and then diffuses them, as if it has a mind of its own. I can have a design in mind when I start to paint on the wool, but I always have to submit to its will and see what the wool itself has created. I often joke that I leave a piece overnight in my studio, only to discover that the fairies have been down there and played a joke of their own! A bit whimsical, I know, but when you have finished a beautiful design, only to discover it "changed" the next morning, you have to approach the situation with humour! Although, I hasten to add, that what evolves is always an enhancement! I create very colourful and wearable pieces of art! I use acid dyes for painting on silk and wool. Some come in powder form, which I make up to the intensity required, some ready made. All the fabric has to be steam fixed to set the dyes permanently. I would say that to get to the professional level I aspire to does require special skills, a sense of humour and patience." Shelley even has some scarves with pom poms on, a women after my own heart