It's poppy season! WOYWW

Good afternoon folks! Thanks for dropping by to catch up with the activities from my work desk this week.

So here's the desk today...

Regular visitors may recall that I love to felt poppies. So you can imagine my delight when I saw was my first little cluster of poppies this year. OK, so it was just on a roundabout on the ring road but it immediately prompted me to pull out the red fluff and needle felt some poppies.

These are a work in progress. I started with a wet felted background onto which I've felted a variety of green wool and other fibres to create a background. Onto this I've felted red blobs then free machine embroidered over the top to create more texture and detail. To this I'll be adding embroidered daisies and beading all the poppies to give them centres.

Shropshire has some beautiful fields full of poppies so I shall be looking for opportunities to photograph them.

On the subject of photos, here's one I took from my lounge window of the summer solstice sunset last night. Whatever was going on behind those trees must have been pretty spectacular - such gorgeous shades of pink, purple and blue.

Visitors to last week's blog post will know I had a 'meet the maker' event planned at Shropshire Hills Discovery Centre on Monday. The centre sells my pictures and the aim was to give visitors an insight into how my work is created. Here's my 'work desk on tour'...

I had a lovely afternoon. Lots of people stopped to look at what I was doing and I had some great feedback about my work. I even did a demo for a group of 15 primary school children who were visiting the centre. Children ask the most interesting questions, don't you find?

"How to you get red sheep wool... do they dye the sheep?"

"How many times have you stabbed yourself with that needle Miss?"

"Do you like my spiderman wellies?"

All good fun and a few enquiries about WI and craft group talks so it was a worthwhile day.

Anyway, that's all my news. I must dash as we've just bought a bicycle seat for Ben to ride on my hubby's bike and we want to take him for a spin before it rains (again!).

Thanks for stopping by, I always really appreciate your comments.

Happy crafting,

Max x

More felted sheep, meet the artist & WOYWW

Hello folks! Welcome to my weekly blog giving you a snapshot from my workdesk.

So here it is...

Most of what you can see is work in progress. My stockists all need more pictures so I've been furiously felting this week - sheep being the order of the day once again.

I'm also preparing for an exciting new development next week. On Monday I'll be holding a 'meet the maker' session at Shropshire Hills Discovery Centre. The centre, in Craven Arms, currently stocks my work and has many visitors each day. Hopefully being able to see how I create the artwork on display will give added interest to the visitors.

Pop back next week to find out how it went!

Finally, eagle-eyed readers may have noticed a little addition to my workdesk. Last week I had a lovely surprise in the post from Diana Velvet Moth, a fellow artist and WOYWWer who I admire a lot. Diana has a real gift for colour, composition and combining media. I'm really chuffed to have a piece of her work to marvel at!

Well that's all for this week, I've lots of little felted sheep to bring to life while a certain toddler naps!

Happy crafting

Max x