You know it's cold when...

Its still very definitely winter in Cape Town despite the days getting noticeably longer. Toast and Marmite are friends but it's not that often that they curl up together. You know it's cold when...

Work is progressing slowly on the Jenny McWhinney cloth book that I am embroidering. The book appeared in Inspirations magazine in 2003 and is a needle painting project.

I think it really is useful to have some artistic or painterly skill when doing needle painting.  The nice thing about this project is that the colour photos give you a good idea of where the colours should go and how they should blend. That's a great help if, like me, you don't have a natural feel for colour.

This is the latest page that I have 'completed'. You may notice that I haven't done the bee yet. Each page has a bullion knot bee somewhere in the scene. I find it takes a while to practise and get my bullions nice and smooth so I'm going to leave all the bees to the end. That way they will look better and should be more efficient and quicker to complete.

The one nice thing about the cold weather that we are still having is that its nice to sit next to the heater, keep warm, and stitch...