" I must go seek some dewdrops here,
And hang a pearl in every cowslip's ear"
A different Sunday Salon post today, books feature eventually and that was the only quote I could find on cowslips so it will have to do. There's nothing like catching up with a good friend and heading off to Cowslip Workshops over at Launceston for lunch and a browse in what has to be...yes I'm going to say it the best and most idyllic patchwork shop in The Entire UK...no, let's not mess about, say The World.
Now that a beautiful restaurant has been added the visit can take all day once you've had coffee, browsed the shop, had lunch and a debate about projects then gone back into the shop and firmed up the fabric choices and indeed we took a long four hours over it 
all on Friday.
Cowslip is set on a working organic farm so we drove around the boxes of leeks just harvested, past the newborn lambs, parked up and let the inspiration begin to flow and there is no doubt it always does. I had put a ridiculous embargo on all fabric purchasing and starting of new projects pending a bottleneck of unfinished wall-hangings and quilts waiting to be quilted. Add to that enough fabric in the stash to carpet the earth twice over with some left for most of the moon including double-lining all craters and there was absolutely no need for me to buy anything.
Except all quilting and no planning or piecing makes dgr a dull seamstress and so needs must.
Books and reading always inspire my needlework and 
it was obvious that with my current Thomas Hardy phase in full bloom the sight of these fabrics would bring on a relapse over the embargo. Doesn't that bookish writing plus oak leaf and acorn and the brown bark fabric just firmly declare Under the Greenwood Tree meets Gabriel Oak?
Well it did to me in a flash too. This also takes me quite a way outside my colour comfort zone of teal / yellow ochre / deep burgundy. I am a complete stranger to the brown and green corner at Cowslip but my stalwart friend edged me over there and saved me from myself when I panicked a bit and had added in something a bit too bright and garish.
I haven't a clue what I'll be making but I expect a week off work will allow my creativity to surface from the depths and make itself known. It always twitters away in the background but a good long run of freedom and it rushes forth like a mad torrent. There'll be steam coming off the Bernina e'er long.
I'm also planning a little piece of Celtic hand-applique and quilting to celebrate my reading of John O'Donohue's Anam Cara but more of that (with explanation for those who think Celtic quilting is about football) in another post, though you'll be delighted to know I thought ahead and stocked up for that project too...and one or two others.
Lest there be any doubt as to the benefits
"Useful and ornamental needlework, knitting and netting are capable of being made, not only sources of personal gratification, but of high moral benefit, and the means of developing in surpassing loveliness and grace, some of the highest and noblest feelings of the soul."
Author unknown, from The Ladies' WorkTable Book, 1845
So that's alright then.
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