grown-up gap year

Things have been quiet here for a while, but now I have lots to say. I've taken early retirement from the day job, and I'm having a gap year!

Mr P and I have furnished ourselves with Art Fund cards, which give free or reduced entry to lots of galleries and cultural places around Britain, and we mean to make good use of them.

In April we kicked off with a visit to the wonderful Matisse cutouts exhibition at Tate modern- so inspiring, I felt as though the top of my head was going to fly off!

Then this month we visited the Kaffe Fassett show at the American Museum in Bath. The entrance is like a gaudy hall of mirrors, and the saturated colours hit you straight in the eye. 

Great place for a self portrait...

The lamp posts along the entrance and the big tree outside had all been yarn-bombed too. Definitely a good excuse for a day out in Bath, the show is on until 2nd November- a fabulous explosion of colour.

Carrying on with the creative theme, last Sunday I went to a one-day stump work course at the lovely Weald and Downland Museum. Just look at all these delicious metallic threads!

We each made a dragonfly, and I must say it certainly challenged my usual slapdash approach. Lots of tiny stitches with the thinnest
ultra-fragile thread to turn this unpromising looking cigar thingie,

... into this lovely gilded creature...

Its hard to imagine when looking at old pieces which have faded to a uniform drab colour that they would originally have been bright and often shiny like this. How those Tudor ladies would have loved our modern metallic threads.

While we were sewing we were entertained by these sinister 'stealth' morris dancers outside the window. I'm not a big fan of morris dancing in the normal way of things, but these were morris with attitude- pretty scary looking, and the music was great, driven along by the guy on the drum with the skull face and big boots- excellent!

Next week I hope to settle in to the many projects I've got in my head, like this updated 'stump work' lady, who has been caught in the act of carrying off one of Grayson Perry's vases on her head.....