Coming...........

.........my favourite time of year. Strictly contestants being announced, NFL pre-season started, nights are drawing in but the days still long enough and the Vuelta has started.  Add to this an interesting online challenge what more could a girl want.
 So far Strictly s the usual collection of "celebrities" I have never heard of but I am sure I will get to love or loathe them.
The Vuelta is going to take me up nicely to the NFL season proper. I treat these cycle races like a holiday. Sit back and enjoy the scenery. The racing is pretty good too.  The Artic Tour of Norway was particularly breath taking and made us wish we were still able to take a real trip to Tromso .
The challenge I am following is ITAC 17 by AALL & Create .  To create in whatever medium you wish an "artwork" to represent a continent.   The first one was Europe and this is my contribution.

  
 Surprise, surprise, a book.
This one is a concertina with five pages and was a nightmare to photograph.

So many words sprang to mind, Renaissance, History, War, Architecture but I finally settled on Antiquity. Something modern was part of the brief so on the back pages I addedmy own personal sadness at Brexit.

This is my favourite page as my drawing skills are pretty below average, I made this little
collection of European icons by copying individual photographs of each building.

The continent this week is Asia.  I know what I want to do...we shall see.

I can't go without a small rant about the truly dire "craft" programme Craft it Yourself on Channel 4. Such a poor format. Given up after one and a half episodes.

Wonderful beasts....

I found these wonderful beasts by Elisabeth Higgins O'Connor on the Textile Arts Center blog

(No copyright breach intended)

There are more pictures on the link.

I love the bird, in the background,  who appears to be sneaking out.  What a great way this would be to reduce my stash.

Hating the everlasting grey and rain, up side is lots of time to sew and watch others give there all at Wimbledon and in the Tour de France.

Making space...

This week the Tour de France has provided a marvellous excuse for lots of stitching and the Big Bang has started to spread into space.

and I have been making "space" . 

My scanner refuses to produce the proper colour and even tweaking in Paintshop Pro didn't work but you will have guessed that it is various shades of indigo. I have even started on the planets but I am trying not to get ahead of myself.  I am loving this process and listening to Jude's thoughts which gently set your own in motion.

And as for the Tour de France, I have marvelled at the incredible stamina of these men and enjoyed the spectacular pictures from the helicopter.  I didn't know there were so many camper vans in the world and it revived  happy memories of  holidays in France in the days when we had our own van.