But everytime it rains, you're here in my head, like the sun coming out...

Hello dear friends,

thank you for all of your thoughts on who should come away with us to France soon, the jury is still out!

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I have revisited my bird design here and have been screen printing onto fabric, adding Suffolk Puffs and lots of embroidery, as ususal...

 I am happy with the free machine embroidery I used with this...the black stitching picks up the screen printed bird.   I have used hand embroidery too.

 I shall be using this design a little more in the future...I like making it.

 Running the machine over the old, worn patchwork is really pleasing.

Talking of Suffolk Puffs, I bought these from gertie   They are very old, gently faded, with the most lovely prints and I feel so happy to have these...pop over to Gertie if you can...she is the kindest, sweet lady and has just relocated, with her family to Portscatho, Cornwall from Germany, a huge undertaking for them.   It's great having them here.

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 I also had a commission to make recently, for another lovely lady Fee, who celebrated a special birthday, her husband is a 'one of a kind' and I have been very happy to be a small part of the celebrations.   Fee lost her Daddy when she was small and I was asked to incorporate a copy of a photo of him.  Fee also has a 'thang' for shoes.   She has the most beautiful and happy blog, I urge you to pop over when you have a mo.

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 Moving on and a very odd twist of subject.  We are very priviledged to house a maternity roost of Pipistrelle bats every late Spring.   We sometimes have the odd bat fly around a room but normally they do not bother us and we certainly do not bother them.   A few years ago, however, the weather had been dreadful and many of the babies were abandoned and started dropping through the cracks around the loft door...fortunately, I made a very good contact, a local couple who hand rear orphaned bats staffordshirebatsgroup ...a few of the babies were bought back to us a few weeks later and reintroduced to their fellow Bat kind.

Well, the night before last, 10pm to be precise, I heard the current husband announce 'oh spiffing', which was very restrained! I just knew it would be a Bat, as we had counted 90 mums out, watching from the garden, the evening before (90 mums + 90 babies = 200 or so Bats) and I knew we would, at sometime, have an escapee.  Sure enough, there was a baby hanging from the loft door, oh heck.
Below, next morning, when I opened loft hatch,

 three day old Pipistrelle.

I gave 'Hammer' a drink of water from a cotton wool bud...

 I was on the phone to the Bat group before you could say Christopher Lee.  
Thankfully, they were able to take over and took 'Hammer' off my hands.  
Thank heavens for dedicated and passionate Bat loving rearing folk.

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Well, we are off to the beautiful Loire Valley soon and I shall say au revoir. 

Hope to catch up with you very soon.

photo: Pinterest: Erika Riggs 

photo:Pinterest:Szabina Szathmari

ps:   If you haven't joined up with pinterest yet...go on, it's great!

Thanks for stopping by. x