Its grown quite a bit. I find I can’t wait to shut the computer and set up my lamp, my special specs and start the next section. When I am tired of creating new elements, I return to the leaves in the separate hoop and stitch those. 
I have 3 oak-styled leaves to do now and then two smaller light green leaves.
I don’t know about other writers but sometimes I just need to move into some other area entirely… something creative but far from the word and the rules of wordsmithing. I attend an embroidery group on Fridays and I’ve been watching all the talented ladies put together a beautiful mirror frame designed by Jane Nicholas and surrounded with stumpwork insects and flowers. 
The results are little short of jaw-dropping and I really badly need to stitch one for myself. It’ll take me a year, I think… interspersed with the odd embroidered blanket…
I seem to have been writing and diving into nothing but wordage for months now. But lately I’ve started to notice that a stitch is creeping into my mind. Not the sort of stitch that causes pain, but the threading of a needle with soft, lustred thread and then pulling it through crisp silk fabric.
This is the magnificent design of the eldritch robe from the book The Stumpwork Robe.
Pat Sweet has been itching to design the robe ever since she read the book almost two years ago, claiming that as a former costume designer, it fired her imagination. The woman modelling the gown is Ana, who you would know well from reading the book.
A little while ago, I wrote about the tools of my writing life and how few they were. I mentioned that if we had been talking about embroidery, the whole thing would be different. For a start, there are my threads, scissors, needles, a fraction only of which I have pictured.
My friend Pat from BoPress http://bopressminiaturebooks.com/blog wrote a really interesting blog recently on her studio and then even more recently, on her tools. She’s a miniature book artist and I was in love with the space and the equipment.
I wondered how my writer’s space and my writer’s tools could ever compete. My spaces, of course, are wonderful. At the shack, the table by the window listening to the waves and in town, the family room and the big navy couch, looking out to the Derwent and over shadowed by a complete wall of all my favourite books.
Tools-wise, it’s a whole other story. I have a little white laptop, an iBook G4, a pile of A4 writing pads, a brown and white container full of pens and pencils,
Pens, especially RED ones . . .
a couple of USB’s, and a thoroughly worn out thesaurus that my husband gave me in 2003 to replace my thirty year old one and which is now falling apart.
A worn out thesaurus
I have a few different dictionaries and some special encyclopaedias. As I’m a fantasy writer, my reference books relate to myth, legend, folktale and imaginary lands.
A small selction of reference books . . .
I have a pile of journals that contain notes and inspiration, because my daughter is a bespoke journal maker and graphic designer and keeps me supplied.
My special journals . . .
I have a wireless printer, in fact wireless everything. And I have a friend called Doctor Google. I do have lots of reference files in the office, filed under the title of the book to which they relate. I was a reference librarian for a short term after I left university many years ago and that part of me says I should cross-reference everything in an effort to keep track. But at the moment I can rely on my memory to tell me where things are stashed.
My other tools are two demanding Jack Russells, a pantry filled with camomile tea, a Spode Blue Room coffee mug and the four CD’s of Cary Lewincamp, whose work I adore and which is a quiet and ambient counterpoint to whatever dramas may be going on in my brain. http://www.cary.com.au/sound-1.htm
And that’s it . . . boring, isn’t it? Compared to an artist’s space and an artist’s tools?
Now if it was embroidery, that would be a whole other story . . . and one that I just might write about one day.
Baby rug embroidered for Marcus, newborn son of English writer Simon James Atkinson Turney.
As I continue to write The Shifu Cloth, my share of the blog posts for The Masked Ball, the short story for The Masked Ball miniature book and the edits to Paperweights, I am finding my mind has to compartmentalise. To be frank it isn’t easy and when I return to both Shifu Cloth and Paperweights, I find I have to read a significant amount of the previous chapters to ground myself in the flow of that particular work. Which is probably why I choose to make the story posts I contribute here, fairly light, spoofish and V.V. short. So here we go with my next contribution, with the help of the wicked face of Guy of Gisborne alias Niccolo de Fleury.
Niccolo De Fleury
Well! Having asked to escort me to the Masked Ball and depositing a roll of white beaded silk georgette for my gown on the table, Ser Niccolo de Fleury has disappeared as if he had never been.
I’m still frantic editing Paperweights (again), so I’m leaving my blog in the very capable hands a long-distance friend of mine who is going to be helping me run the Masked Ball. She is a former costumier
My embroidery bag
‘When I’m not writing or tweaking my computer, I do embroidery.’ This remarkably apt quote for my life comes from Lynn Abbey, fantasy writer. I was googling quotes today and this is the one that popped up in respect of embroidery and I figured the Fates had conspired to entice me to write on my stitching.
