Ally Pally - What a nightmare!

The Friday afternoon drive home that is. It took just over the hour to get there in the morning and 4 hours to get home. Crawling most of the way, there were three ‘incidents’, it was dark and absolutely tipping it down with rain – not a very pleasant journey at all.

Met up with lots of fellow bloggers all of them lovely, lovely people. Its great to be able to put a face and a voice to the blog. Carol and I did a couple of demos on Maggies d4Daisy stand which went well. It all felt very surreal - having been a spectator for the past 15 years and then appearing on the other side of the stand. I also had a terrible head cold coming on which didn’t help – I just hope with all the hugging going on that I didn’t pass too many germs around. It was wonderful to find so many people who are really interested in what you do.

It really was a wonderful time. And then Saturday my cold, nay ‘flu, really came out. I was hoping to perk up a bit so I could go back to AP on Sunday to meet up with a few other blogging friends, but I just felt too ill. I was really disappointed especially as they all came from different parts of the world. Plus I didn't get to see much of the show and spent very little money - most unusual - so it looks like Harrogate is on the calender for the first time this year. :)

And then there was the question of my jacket. Quite an old one, several years old in fact, but a well loved one. One of those items of clothing that seem to grow with you, if you know what I mean. Well, I put it in the cloakroom on Thursday and promptly forgot about it. Decided to collect it on Friday but was back in the car park before I remembered so I just thought I would be able to collect it on Sunday.... Oh well, hopefully all lost property gets passed on to a charity shop and someone will make good use of it. – I’m sure its got a few more years wear in it.

Couple of things I am really excited about . Firstly, these paints. I have wanted to try some of these for ages and managed to acquire some. Jacqueline has used them a lot in her work and it always looks amazing. These colours are gorgeous. I’m going to try them with the Thermofax screens to start with.The website for these paints is here where you can download free techniques and Laura who runs the website also has a blog here – both of them well worth a look.

And secondly, this new exciting product available from Dale. Its called ‘Crash’. I looked it up here so I could tell you more about it. Have you ever seen this website? So much information.Dale has created some gorgeous samples with this Crash already. Look forward to using both these products in the next couple of weeks. Will show my results.

This is a flavour of the samples I was demonstrating on the stand at AP. (More pics on the last blog post)The full technique with lots more info and samples will be available for downloading from the website, Fibre in-Form, sometime later this week when our Webmaster returns to base. Will let you know when it appears.

And how about this (sort of) arty pose? It’s salt that has been used for this technique – just shows how I never throw anything away. :)