WOYWW - Woolfest!

Hello all! Welcome to my blog, where I share a sneak peek of my desk to mark 'Whats on your Workdesk Wednesday'.

So here's my workdesk this morning...

It's a busy old desk this week as I'm trying to fulfil a growing order book while also trying to fit in a dabble with the fabulous new fibres I picked up at Woolfest this weekend.

"What's Woolfest?" I hear you say. Well, it's the nickname for Wonderwool Wales, a festival of Welsh wool and fibres held annually in Builth Wells. Mum and I took Ben along on Sunday and a brilliant day was had indeed. Three halls full of wool, silk, felt and fuzz provided a great opportunity to spend my birthday pennies and was a feast for a textile artist's eyes! Benjamin enjoyed his first encounter with rare breed sheep - Black Wensleydale and Blue Leicester I'm reliably informed - and some lovely angora rabbits.

Here are all the goodies I brought back...

I'm very pleased with my haul and am looking forward to being able to find time to try out some new designs to incorporate some of it.

Also this week I squeezed in another photography session, this time to turn some of my latest work into prints. Here are the ones I chose...

Well that's all for today folks, hope you've enjoyed hearing all about my week.

Happy crafting,

Max x

WOYWW -

Hello lovely reader, welcome to my 'What's on your Workdesk Wednesday' blog post - a place where I share with you a piccie of my workdesk and a recap of what I've been up to in my world of textile art.

Here it is; the desk today...

There's a few bits for a commissioned piece I'm working on, a couple of finished pieces ready to mount and then loads of part-finished hand-embroidered bookmarks. I think I might need a finishing day! I also have a growing pile called 'not sure this idea worked' - attempts at new ideas which I really don't love. Does anyone else suffer with this when trying new ideas?

My desk hasn't seen any action today, however, as it's my birthday and I was determined to get out there and enjoy the sunshine with my little man. We had lunch with mum (Twiglet) and when 'im indoors' got home from work we went out for tea at our favourite tapas place. There...no room for needlefelting today!

But I have been a busy bee this week so can spare myself a day off. This week I've had a photo shoot for my pansy brooch project, which I am making into a step-by-step guide for my courses and an article for an online publication later in the year. I produced the brooch in real time while my in-house photographer  (a.k.a Dad) took some brilliant close-up photos of each stage of the process.

The shoot set up

My snap of the finished brooch

Right, that's all from me today. There's a pile of birthday brownies with my name on it!

Thanks for stopping by.

Happy crafting,

Max x

WOYWW - working on new designs

Hello dear reader!

Apologies for my absence last week, I was snowed under. More about that later. You're here to see my workdesk aren't you. Here you go then...

Among all the clobber on the desk you can see my nice pieces of wet felting from a few weeks ago and some linen with little needlefelted landscapes.

I've been slowly working my way through the pieces of wet felting to create new designs. I'm guilty of being a bit hooked on the same designs, so for the last fortnight I've been trying out a few new ideas. Still within my comfort zone of fields, gardens and hedgerows but a bit different. Whadda ya think?

Delphinium

Bluebells and daisies 

This said, I've also had to step up production of my existing sheepy and floral designs by popular demand. My work is now in four shops and galleries and three of these contacted me last week to say my work was going...going...gone and could they have some more?! Chuffed to bits, I started dumfing away and this was how I spent most of last week. Here's the collection I pulled together...

After all the hard work, Ben and I had a well-earned day off to see my friend and her lambs at the farm in mid Wales which was the original inspiration for my sheepy landscapes. We had a fab day!

That's all for this week, thanks for reading. I hope to stop by a few desks later. If you're visiting here for the first time, hop on over to Julia's Stamping Ground to meet lots of other lovely artists and crafters!

Happy crafting

Max x