Clay & Thread

'Clay And Thread' at the Knit and Stitch show at Harrogate combined 'Talking Matters' showing the work of ceramicist Alex McErlain with embroiderer Alice Kettle. Thrown slipware ceramics by Alex McErlain have been drawn and scratched into by Alice Kettle, while drawings of jugs are stitched.

'Place Settings' exhibits works by Helen Felcey, a ceramicist who works with unglazed bone china , and Alice Kettle, a textile artist familiar for her expressive machine stitched works. The collaboration is a table setting, porcelain spoons and vessels on a stitched cloth. The work brings together two distinct areas of practice and two distinct characters.

In 'New Grounds', the work of textile artist Dionne Swift explores the possibilities of printing onto felt - almost onto the print blanket 'on purpose' and working into the spare black and white images with stitich.

Louise Baldwin's work was also a joy in a very different way

Gloves

I went to a tiny museum in Yeovil yesterday where they once had a glove industry. These are some of the beautiful gloves that they produced. The patterns are lovely things in their own right.

Sewing

There is nothing more comforting on a horrible wet Sunday afternoon than getting down to some sewing. The business of opening a new pattern and cutting out the pieces, then working out how to place them on the fabric is something I never get tired of. Who needs crossword puzzles. This is the first pattern I bought when I was 17, and I made it from brown wool with black frogging on the jacket.

Skia

Mary Christianson's beautiful etchings are a response to the qualities of light and shadow in northern Denmark. Colour is stripped down to grays, blacks and whites. They are showing at Northern Print Gallery until the 21 November. See http://www.northernprint.org.uk/

Blues

As part of Ouseburn Open Studios on the 28the & 29th November - see http://www.ouseburnopenstudios.org/  for further details, Cobalt Studios are inviting artists to show work in every shade of blue. I will be showing a series of prints. Blue is my absolutely favorite colour so I am a bit prone to using it. It works particularly well in glass.