Holiday Party Mode

It's with great joy that I can say I'm finally on holiday. After a nice weekend celebrating with family for a special event, it's time for me to unwind and to have a spot of r'n'r. 

I will be back blogging in September!

Boston Adventures

Last year you might recall, around the same time, that I went off to Washington DC this was my ultimate must do trip on my own. I loved it even if it was a little daunting at times and a little dull (only so many times you can say awesome out loud to yourself.) This year I had the opportunity to go to Boston, this has been on my list of places to go for about as long as I wanted to go to DC.

Old State House

This time round though I didn't go alone. I went with my mum. It was great, thoroughly enjoy my mum's company. So for five whole days we walked all over Boston from all the way down South Station all the way up to Cambridge, we boarded trains out of Boston to Providence and to Salem. We ate some great food (Boston City Diner - AWESOME) and some very bad food. Meet and spoke to some lovely folks (especially one lady in Salem) and got thoroughly annoyed with people's lack of manners. We came, we saw, we got tired.

It was a really good trip, but Boston for me, really was a case of being able to strike it off a list of places I want to see, it's not a destination say like Washington that I want to go back too. Not that it wasn't great, it was more the case I saw what I wanted and...that was enough. It certainly has made me want to venture out and away from the big cities to go further into New England and I will. I also really want to have a chill out break in Cape Cod (when bank account allows me).

Yay, Halloween

I got the bug for wanting to get away from doing city holiday's from when we went to Salem. This was my trip more than my mum's I wanted to do it, mainly for a bit of a laugh, after all we are on the run up to Halloween and partly because it seemed nice from what I did from my research. It really is very pretty town, folks are really lovely (and the food is good). I even found a Bead shop and needle point store, I can sniff them out at fifty paces.

Pretty easy to get to from Boston, 30 minute train ride away from North Station. It's also, like Boston, dead easy (see what I did there..), to navigate and most of what you want to go to is easily done in an afternoon. Though I think I might have liked to have spent more time wandering around. As we didn't actually hit the Peabody Museum which is in top museums in the USA, and no it's not about witches. It's an arts museum but we weren't quite up for walking around for a couple of hours as we had gotten up really early that day owing to jet lag. So I wouldn't mind hitting Salem again but perhaps coming from a different place, not Boston.

Burn the witches...technically they only hung theirs,
it was just Europe that liked to burn them.

We did, as I said, do another excursion to Providence. This time was my mum's choice and I'll gloss over it. Wasn't a great day trip the weather turned pretty darned sour the very moment we arrived. Horizontal rain and ice cold wind. Not quite prepared to traipse round in the weather we stayed long enough to have something eat. Believe me by that point moods were sour, we are both the sort to get very grumpy very quickly, when we are cold, wet and hungry. We had our fill and off we trotted back to Boston for more walking.

Scary baby heads out the back...

I should point out that during this trip we probably stopped for tea, around 20 odd times, if not more, and I drank more versions of Earl Grey than I care to count. I think I can only count 2 times that I actually liked what I drank and one of them was actually at a coffee place. I am such a Earl Grey snob.

The remainder of the time when we weren't heading out of Boston was spent meandering around. We tried to avoid the main tourist traps of the Freedom Trail, as it's not our thing but you can't really escape all of it. Eventually we did give in but not until the Sunday. Other key highlight of the trip was the Museum of Fine Arts. Quite expensive to get into about $20 it did surprise me that you did have to pay given all the museums (most) and galleries are free to get into in DC and New York but I think that solely comes down to funding. Not sure. Anyway, it's beautifully laid out and it was nice to see a Edward Hopper (fave artist) in the mix, the modern art was actually not that bad even though I'll admit I am simply not a fan of it. I would say it certainly made me want to take some time to go to the National, British and V&A when I get back and oh, Tate Britain for the Turners.

In all, I thoroughly had a good time, even though I had dodgy shoulder all the way through it which made for a miserable flight home. But I didn't let it get in the way, and mum did what she could to help. Plenty of hugs. Even at 28 you can't beat a hug from your mum.

I forgot to mention about the flight over, my dad knows a lot of folks through his business and one of them happens to be a pilot and whilst he wasn't flying the plane we were on he made sure that during our flight we had a nice treat. This came in the form of champagne and chocolate. It was great! It certainly kicked off the trip. 

Thus concluding my mini adventure in Boston. I feel like I missed something out, a nugget of information or ancedote like me getting the fit of the giggles stepping off the plane when we landed back in the UK. Nearly wet myself from the unexplained bout of crying laughter, I blame the chewing gum....

Yay, the start of the famous Fall. Apparently it has to be really cold for the leaves to turn, any wet and you can forget it.

 I dragged my mum round on a Tourist trip to the USS Constitution, though she was tired and I ended up going around the Museum bit on my own (whistle stop). I have to point out to get to the ship meant I had to walk over a bridge with open grate flooring. I have a uber fear of open grate walkways, and I chickened out the first time. One stiff cup of tea, and holding my mum's hand very tightly (I am my late 20s), I walked across it at quite a pace and on the way back too. 

Paul Revere, I felt like was going to turn to ash or something as a Brit but it was a nice part of the Freedom Trail, very interesting little streets, old (but not that old in my mum's books) houses, church etc. Of course, lot of groups of tourists and school kids. Easy to navigate past. 

I did snap at a school kid for not saying thank you when I held the door open, OR rather I opened it to step into the building and they barged past. The irony that it was in a building next to the church associated with Paul Revere made me chuckle afterwards. 

I have Returned

I have returned from my trip to Boston, a little bushwhacked but settling back into things.

A proper blog post of my adventures in the USA at the weekend.

Etsy store, will be reopening tomorrow.

x

Very Busy Bee

It's a Bank Holiday weekend here in Blighty, and rather than sitting back and chilling out I am up to my eyes in fabric and threads. Most of which I am working on this weekend I can't show you, well I can just not at this moment in time. This is the weekend where I crack through an extremely long list of things to do, and only about an hour ago did I feel that I was getting any head way with it. But at least with my list done I know what it is I have to achieve it's easy to get distracted. As a very dear friend of my mine knows.

I do hope tomorrow or at least by Tuesday have photographed something that I can show you, it's going to be a few very special collars. All I say about them at the moment, because I like to draw things out is, sophisticated bling. I'll do a mid-week blog post about it.

Next weekend I'll be off again, this time down to my Aunt's to work on some costumes with her, which means I spot of late night sewing and chatting. Not done that in an age and I have to say I really do miss working with my aunt. She's uber talented lady and it's always a pleasure to work along side her. The costumes are for a stage production at the Old Vic. Can't wait to see what they look like.

That's about it for this post this Sunday but before I nip off to get dinner, I thought I would leave you with a few shots from my trip to the Peak District (so at least you get some pretty pictures today!)

Pattern, Life, Holiday and more.

Its certainly starting to pick up in terms of my actual paid job and my sideline work as Mason Bee. I love it when I am busy, as I find myself buzzing, no pun intended. Ideas seems to come to me more easily and the enthusiasm to work on prototypes and new projects is readily there.

I have about three private commissions to work on, and I have one and a half designs for those pieces pretty much under my belt. I'm surprised how quickly they come to me. I maybe able to show you the designs, but I will need to seek permission for the lovely ladies I am working them for first.

What else?

Well I am involved in something for &Stitches, which is going to be rather fun as its for their challenge but that's about as much as I can tell you until when it's published. Which is going to be hard for me to keep quiet as I like to take photographs and showing their progress to you all. So I'll have to take the shots and show you at a later date.

I've just finished the embroidery for the sample of the Bee Pattern, which I've been yammering on about for months now. Well the design was finished a couple of weeks back and today I finished the stitching. I've got to work on the pattern it self and make it up into something. The something I've only got a rough idea for but I was thinking a patch for a cushion or a tote. It will be one of those patterns that will allow people to be creative as they want with it. I like giving people free reign to be expressive. So I might make it into appliquéd patch but you might use it to adorn a fabric covered book or whatever.

Hopefully the snippets you see you'll like. This is the first pattern that I will be creating that won't be free, as I want to use it to raise money for the BBKA. So I am really pushing myself to make it so good that people will want to buy it.

What do you think?

I will be able to show you the finished sample within the fortnight.

In non-stitching news, I am off to Boston in the fall! I am uber excited as with Washington it's on my list of places I really wanted to go to. I can't  bloody wait. If you've been would love to know what and where you got up to. Or if you haven't been, where would you like to go if you could? I know on my list I have New Zealand, St. Petersburg, Vienna, Chicago, San Francisco to name but a few.

Oh lordy, I nearly signed off without mentioning one of the most important things that's happened this week?! How remiss of me. I've started to add the new branding around the joint, new blogger banner, Twitter has had a revamp and Etsy shop too. Only the website and Facebook to go! I hope you like it, it was created by my uber talented Uncle, and if you would like to get his contact details to do your branding, then do get in contact.

Now I really well sign off!

Evening Jaunt

An evening jaunt ended up me seeing all the main monuments in the National Mall & Memorial Parks. I hadn't planned on doing that I was only going down to the Washington Memorial before trotting off to grab some food....but, once you do one on that strip you can't help but go down to see the others. The evening was lovely and I was taking advantage of lots of people being around to go and take some more photographs. Here you go:

National World War II Memorial

Vietman Woman's Memorial

Vietman's Veteran's Memorial

Lincoln Memorial

Needless to say I earned that Five Guy's burger!