to europe and back

Kind Dog and I have just returned from a wonderful odyssey to the UK and Italy.  We went over to spend Christmas with Kind Dog's lovely mother and to have our third wedding, in the form of a church blessing in an ancient stone church (photos to follow in a separate post)

We spent a week in London absolutely flat out seeing wondrous things from the Tate's Pre-Raphaelite exhibition to Mark Rylance and Stephen Fry in Twelfth Night to renewing last year's acquaintance with the British Museum and the V&A and a boat trip down the Thames to Greenwich.

 We stumbled upon the Wallace Collection which was one splendid room after another filled with precious, beautiful things.

We also went to a candlelit performance of the Messiah at St Martin in the Field's, which was one of the highlights of the trip.  I loved the simplicity of this statue in the porch 

There are some incredible embroideries in the V&A

 I liked these socks very much

 And we found the Tristan quilt - a mediaeval treasure which deserves its own blog post.

 Then a more relaxing week on the Isle of Wight with the Kind Dog clan and our church blessing.

 Then back to London for New Year

 - where we fell foul of a ghastly flu virus that kept us doleful company for the rest of the holiday. While we were very glad it wasn't the dreaded norovirus, being ill meant we didn't enjoy Paris and the train trip to Venice as much as we had hoped.

We did manage a couple of hours in the Louvre and saw the Mona Lisa, some wonderful Veroneses and the amazing Nike.

Then it was over the Alps in the Bernina Express,

 coughing and feverish but still relatively cheerful - here we are looking wan in the train to Milan

 And then Venice - a wonderful, disconcerting place: looking as though it's about to pitch into the lagoon, and full of treasures.

 

a day of sloth

just when I though I couldn't be any more slothful... we had a day of pure and applied sloth. Kind Dog threw a shoe and twisted a giblet in his Achilles tendon and is being extremely careful with it. So we decided he would Stay Upstairs All Day and I would provide the necessary nourishment and do any running up and down stairs.

So we have lolled in bed, with some desultory chatting, surfing of the Intertubes and some knitting. Luckily thanks to the lovely LibraryGirl I have discovered the wondrous blog of Antonia Cornwell and have been reading the back catalogue assiduously.

We also played with the new camera

tis the season

to be hot and grumpy, I'm afraid. 37 degrees here today and blowing a gale - I took A and his girlfriend to work this afternoon and the car was rocking in the wind.  If there's one thing I hate it's the hot north wind.... However this time next week we will be rugged up against the cold of an English winter and possibly some snow :)

I leave you with young W's version of Bat Santa

 

into the studio

I decided to take a day off from study (hopes supervisor isn't reading...) and spent the morning in sloth and ta da! the afternoon in the studio...

It has been ages since I just pottered around not feeling doleful about my lack of productivity. I played around with some paint (fabric paint on rice paper, silk and stitched dupion)

and some stitching (perle 8 on folded onion skin paper)

gessoed some more sketchbook pages

 and finished sewing the lace edgings on my swaddling band.

tree's up!

 

father pteranodon christmas

damn - just gone midnight but for me this is still Friday night, so still meeting my self-imposed discipline of posting every day... I was adjusting the size of various photos and lost track of time...

but the Christmas decorating has begun!

Thursday

This blogging every day stuff is not easy - I clearly need more filler photos.  Today was full of activity but no photos were taken: you will have to make do with this one, of our preaching pteranodon.

It was a vilely hot 39 degrees here but I had a very cheerful lunch with my ex inlaws, now friends who have been unfailingly kind to me in the 26 years that I have known them. My mum and auntie joined us in a local cafe and much chatting and reconnecting was had.

Then it was a meeting with my lovely supervisor who gave me the glad tidings that the presentation I was going to give next Tuesday has been postponed until February next year - calloo callay!! Hopefully by then I will know some more about the subject (even if I don't feel that I do).

Now back to hip and shoulder some cats away from the air conditioner where they are sucking up all available coolth.