A Northern Queensland vacation

I returned to Sydney last night after 5 days/4 nights in tropical Palm Cove not far from Cairns. 6 of my husband's workmates and their partners joined us for a retreat to do a little work, socialize and plan the next 12 months. We ladies were pampered in the day spa, we ate delicious food every meal, and we cruised out to the Great Barrier Reef for a day of snorkeling and relaxation. The surroundings were very luxurious, and the lap pool in the photo was the view during alfresco lunches. Visit my personal blog at http://missmuffettwo.blogspot.com/
for more photos. I could have stayed on another week quite easily, it was a real wrench to have to leave such a lovely part of Australia.
Christine, aka Missmuffett and Lady Jane.

Needlework photos from England

Hi all, I'm home.
I just had to share these photos with somebody, but for copyright reasons, I prefer not to put them on my regular blog. But since I'm just sharing with a few special friends, here are some pieces from the Victoria &Albert Museum.

On the day we went the Textile collection was closed and I was very upset. The worst thing was, I thought I'd missed Martha Edlin's casket. http://www.vam.ac.uk/collections/textiles/video_casket/index.html

But then we started looking through the museum and in the English 1500-1760 section I found the casket and more.

This piece is only about 5x5 and wonderful, although my photo is a bit blurry.

This is maybe about 3x6 and they call it a pincushion.

The next two are small purses.

It was all wondeful. I'll write some more on my regular blog this week, but I had to share these photos with you.

Margaret

Margaret's Band RR.

This is Margaret's Band Robin. She stitched the gorgeous tulips you can see at the top of this piece. I have added the piece underneath.

The design is based on some wonderful Amaryllis I had flowering on my kitchen windowsill during December and January this year.


After putting in the outlines of the flowers and leaves, I have filled in the shapes with patterns based on blackwork designs. The whole piece is stitched in YLI silk thread. The close-up below shows details of the stitching and beading I have used. The colours on this photo are more yellow than in life. The colours are portrayed more accurately on the top photograph.