Gulp! No blog posts for 7 weeks! Where have I been? What have I been doing? Well I can promise you that I haven't been idle, but things have been a bit hectic just recently, so I'm afraid the blog had to have a little rest. I've been busy behind the scenes, working on new ideas, writing patterns, judging contests, getting involved in challenges and discussing some exciting new teaching plans. Hopefully I will be able to blog a bit more regularly again now and keep you up to date with what's happening. So let's start by telling you that I have just finished writing my second tutorial 'Poppy' and it is now available to purchase via my website.
I had a very similar pattern to this one published in Bead magazine at the beginning of 2009, but the back issue is no longer available and several people have recently asked me if I could write my own instructions for it. I had a group of wonderful 'testers' help me to fine-tune this pattern and so we think we have most of the wrinkles ironed out. It's amazing how people can interpret things in completely different ways and I learnt a lot about writing patterns from this experience - thank you guys! The tutorial is now 14 pages long and although it is written in English, there are lots of diagrams and photos to make things easier, and there are also instructions for optional leaves included. I made the poppy above in traditional red and black, but take a look at the 'Readers' Gallery' page on my website (under Poppy) as there are lots of pictures there that people have kindly sent me, showing poppies in all sorts of colours with some fantastic inspirational design ideas - poppies definitely don't have to be red!
