Anna Pearson's Needlepoint Blog

Until recently I wasn’t familiar with the expression ‘Swishing’ but everyone seems to be doing it with clothes, books and items they no longer want in return for items they do.   I believe the popular Radio 4 BBC programme ‘The Archers; held one recently for their village of Ambridge,    Locally in Primrose Hill there was one for children to first dress as their favourite character and swop books. Great fun so I decided to adapt the idea to needlepoint.   People have long told me how their stash of threads is rapidly resembling a mountain and hate to throw either books or materials out.    I regularly have an ‘Open Day’ to share new designs so bringing their un-loved items to swop was an added attraction - last week was the event.   The attendance was encouraging,    The selection of threads people brought in was exciting and definitely is encouraging me to design even more pieces to expressly use up their own threads.   But...

We have just returned from our very first river cruise; until now we have enjoyed exploring countries – like our recent trip to Myanmar (Burma that was) but that necessitated moving from city to city, beautiful location to fabulous temple – all packing, unpacking and different beds almost every night! On a river cruise such as this one we saw five countries, Romania, Bulgaria, Serbia, Croatia and Hungary all from the comfort of one comfortable cabin, in the space of seven days.   Just for the record we travelled up the Danube, going from Bucharest (close to the mouth of the river into the Black Sea) and up though Belgrade to Budapest.   Also allowed quite some relaxed stitching time!   Crafts have always been popular in Eastern Europe, possibly as they have long cold winters and with their centuries of troubles including the very recent past, staying quiet at home was practical.    Furthermore some of the area have lent towards the Christian church in...