All that glitters...

Of course what I needed to make me feel better was a whole day playing and stitching.

And what better than a day with the lovely Ann Parr!

A happy morning playing with heat guns, embossing stampy thingies and blow torches  produced this little lot:

(note to Father Christmas - please may I have a blow torch?  I promise to make crème brulée too and not just colour metal with it...)

A couple of us got bored waiting for the heat guns to warm up, so we went in search of Bigger Flames.  A quick peruse of the village hall kitchen found us a six-ring gas range, and we were in business.  Unfortunately, returning triumphantly to my table with this large piece of fabulously coloured copper in my wooden tongs gave the game away, and then everyone wanted to go play...

 

Then after lunch I finally dug out the machine, and with no preamble, stitched straight into a piece of pewter to make a box lid.  Here it is at the end of the day, before adding beads:

And here it is post-beading.

I can feel ideas coming on, thick and fast.  We're back!

All the decluttering must have been some sort of temporary illness, as my obsessive hoarding of useless pieces of stuff

(or "swarf" as my husband called it, letting slip a rare instance of Man Speak) is unabated.

Quite what has got into the Girl remains to be seen...

She came down to lay the table for dinner and announced that she was a surgeon.  Now if that doesn't scare anyone back to health...