Birthday celebrations

It's been a busy time with birthdays this last week or two in our house with my husband, my brother & my birthdays all falling within the same 10 days. So I've had a pretty hectic yet fabulous birthday week all in all, kicking off with a trip to London to celebrate with my brother where I managed to catch one of the last opportunities to view the Paul Klee exhibition at the Tate Modern. Klee is described as major figure in 2oth century art, and was a great creative innovator. Most of his artworks were painted on papers, but he experimented a lot with surface textures and colour so is a great inspiration to those working with textiles.

I also had the joy of hubbie returning safely  from his India tour with folk-jazz band Burum in time for my actual birthday and bearing gifts - some beautiful hand made & printed papers and 2 gorgeous scarves.



And then I had this fantastic surprise made by my lovely friend Jane - I've been talking for ages about making myself a decent needle case - well now I don't need to as I have the mother of all personalised needle cases, with every sort of needle you could desire, a fantastic pair of high quality embroidery scissors, a  matching substantial pincushion to boot, and all wrapped up in lovely pink tissue paper which I can keep to use for collage and the like :)


  






The case opens up to no less than 6 felt 'pages' for all different types of needles, each carefully labelled with hand stitching- she is hoping to inject some organisation into my crafting habits methinks - and how can I fail to keep things organised in this beauty :-)

Inside the front cover is a set of pockets designed to hold my machine needles, and inside the back cover a wee pocket to store my lovely new scissors - am I a spoiled stitcher or what??!




Then to top it all, Knit Today magazine have featured my Birdy pattern in this month's issue along with a number of other birdy offerings by other designers. It's always a thrill to see your stuff in print :-)

I hope you've all had a good week too?