Stocking up for winter!

I had a parcel from Rainbow Silks yesterday, and among run-of-the-mill but useful stuff like calico, muslin and Bondaweb which I didn't bother to photograph, were these lovely machine embroidery threads. Nice to know that some of the products The Thread Studio sells are available here in the UK.

Also yesterday, I downloaded Module 2 of my coursework, so I shall be kept fully occupied for the next two or three months.

I bought this book a few weeks back and Lynda now offers free online courses for those who have it. I downloaded the first one today. More hours in each day please!She is very generous in explaining her techniques, and there are several ways of achieving wonderful results, so sure to be something for everyone.

When we were out on Thursday I came upon these gorgeous paints at such a good price I went a bit mad. I think the shop must have been clearing it's stock of them as in the past I have paid far more.

Some of the colours look a bit garish here but in fact are gorgeous and all intermixable. They are manufactured especially for use on fabric but seem to work on many more surfaces and go a long way.

In the same shop I found this little packet of wood slices - they are about an inch and a half long and quite thin. I think that two of them may well find their way onto a couple of my book pages.

We chose the perfect job for the coldest day of the year so far, and had to anchor one of the pond plants which I had repotted. It had been in a special floating pot but went missing until we found that it had sunk and was at the bottom of the pond! It definitely wasn't the morning for messing about in ice-cold water trying to fix things with frozen fingers. All seems to be well and our fixings will be hidden once the plants start putting on growth.