It's been too long!

Hello again, sorry if you thought I'd deserted you all - not so - just that life has been throwing a few brickbats of late!

Well, when I last blogged, we were about to kick off our Open Studios event. Well there's a lesson in how to keep a house pristine for 10 days!!! None of the usual garlicky, spicy smells associated with our love of cooking, a duster permanently attached to my person and a constant need to straighten pictures! We did meet some lovely people though.

Devastatingly, I lost my lifelong friend to cancer towards the end of Open Studios, she'd only been ill a short while.  She lived in France and we chatted frequently through Facebook about life in general and stuff that our grown up children were up to. We had been best friends since the age of 11 and she had a wicked sense of humour and so a photo of us together has gone up in my studio so we can still natter and she can have a giggle at me every time I get something wrong! This and visitors is the reason that I've been absent for a few weeks.

So what else has been happening?

Well, exhibitions seems to be the key word for me at the moment! I know that I'd already mentioned the 'By Hand' exhibition at Ordsall Hall in Salford which takes place from mid October until January and I've just found out that I've been selected to take part in 'Past, Present and Future' Drawn To The Valley exhibition at Mount Edgcumbe Country Park from 19th - 27th October. I've also been asked to be part of 'By Invitation' at The Beetroot Tree Gallery in Derbyshire which takes place from the end of November.  This is the first year that I've been asked to exhibit outside Devon so it's pretty exciting!

I'm also going to be starting another blog which will be more pictorial and will be part of my website.  It will centre on what inspires me to make jewellery.  This blog will continue in it's current form and will continue to be linked to my website, but I hope that some of you will want to come and check out the other blog too!

As all of the work I've done since Open Studios has all been for submissions I thought I'd show you instead a couple of the designs that have been dyed and which are ready to be cut out and made up into new pieces. The photos are not brilliant because it's quite hard not to get my own reflection in when they're in flat sheet form. The top photo is called Batik, the bottom design is called Seaspray and the middle pic is of a new range (Sqiggles) of dyed aluminium rod which I've forged into shape. I'd love to hear what you think of them.

Ok then, I'll be back next week hopefully!