Kindness and Care

 I'm lucky to have good friends and good family.  During this strange period in our lives, I am cheered by thoughtful gifts and cards arriving now and then - jewels amongst the mess that life sometimes seems to be.

This 'survival kit' from Benta (thanks Benta!) made me laugh (and enjoy the chocolate that she sent - there were extra chocolate hearts for me to share with the family!).

 These cards and  the beautiful beaded 'wild woman' have arrived from Avril (thanks Avril!).  What wonderful workmanship - something to aspire to!  I feel warmer everytime I look at them.

In addition, we've had neighbours sharing vegetable plants, family sending cards, and friends sharing products from around the world
(I now know and love birch syrup, for example).

Thank you, everyone!  It's all appreciated.

This week I've been working on my kingfisher pin 'habitat'.

It doesn't scream "kingfisher" does it?

Yet this is a composite of what I saw where I was standing when I saw a kingfisher earlier this year!

My photos are shown here....

 I've really struggled to get a sense of the urban built environment with the juxtaposition of the river and the greening of the area by nature.

I've decided to make the stitching quite formal (or at least, that's the intention!) and then will work to put nature in over the top - by adding some leaves to look through, adding green weed to the bike in the river.  In fact, in real life, the bike is hardly visible now, three weeks on, as there is so much weed grown around it.

 The way I'm building up the primary layer isn't a neat process!  I've got all my pale fabrics out and spread about whilst I add small patches of them to the linen type base layer.

Later, stitching and some colouring will follow, before adding the green leaves and so on.

I'm basing my work on the technique shown by Wendy Dolan which I used on a couple of pieces just over three years ago.

I'm still pleased with this image of my house - but it was easier as it was from just one photo so I didn't have to create the design!

I'm happy, working away on my project and setting aside other matters for the time that I am working on it.  Hope that you are finding happiness too, in whatever way you can.