Fungi Walk at Shorne Wood

I have always be fascinated by Fungi (mushrooms/toadstoals whatever you want to call them, it's really the same thing!). It probably stems a lot from childhood memory. My grandfather Herman was a local mushroom expert, and I have a lot of memories of going on forays with him. Once I was a teenager, of course it became less cool.. and unfortunately he died when I was 15. Now I sooo wish I would have asked him more on his knowledge of fungi, or if I could have a few more chats with him! The other side is that I like being outdoors in the woods (again, probably coming from my childhood memories), and I love autumn. For the past few years, I have resurrected my interests in fungi. My mum still goes collecting every autumn for eating (just for her personal use). I do take some for eating (only the very limited ones I know for sure of course), but mainly I am interested in identifying and just enjoying them the way they are.

So, yesterday I had booked into a 'Fungi Walk at Shorne Wood with a local Fungi expert. It was very interesting, but I've realised that I will need a lot more guidance before I feel myself able to identify fungi - it's such a vast world! I will definitely go again on those walks, maybe at other locations. Shame it can only really be done in autumn, but maybe that's also the pleasure of it.

My birthday and Ally Pally

Ruby and me

Nafees and me

Just me, outside the restaurant

Dan and Imran

Where are the days / weeks / months going? Is it really already October? It was my birthday yesterday, and we went to a lovely Indian restaurant (Green Spice) just outside Dartford. It is always very croweded, and tables need to be booked, and I always struggle to find parking there despite the fact that it is in the countryside. I looooved the meal, and no, there was no counting of WW points on that evening.

The next day Jo and me went to the Knitting and Stitching Exibition at Ally Pally (Alexandra Palace, London). This exibition is not mainly cross stitch, but all kind of fibre arts really. It is a very big place and exibitions, so many stalls. Unfort. there were only about 20 or so stalls with cross stitch, and while I still look around at the other stalls, of course they don't hold that much interest for me. We found one stall which was selling HEAD kits and charts, and Jo bought herself a HEAD chart (Marta Dahling 'Lust'). They didn't really had any charts I wanted, and I wouldn't buy the kits. But a few days earlier I got myself for my birthday one of the soooo cute Lesley Anne Ivory charts from HEAD (Libra Clea and Lily). They are from a series of 'Astrology cats' and I absolutely adore them. I intend to get all the cat charts and will eventually do them by the time I've reached 150 LOL. Seriously, they are so cute, I just love realistic cat designs. I'm not quite sure on what size fabric I should stitch the cats, and I bought samples of 20 ct, 22 ct and 25 ct evenweave. HEAD recommends stitching on 25 ct, but some some with 2 threads it appears to bulky, and with 1 thread it is not fully covered, so I will try it out and see what suits me best.

Cross stitch update

Here an update on the projects I've worked on in the last 2 weeks. Firstly, there is the Clematis picture (a DMC kit). The cross stitch is almost done (apart from a little bit in the right lower corner), and than it is on to a massive lot of backstitching. And I really mean a lot - literally every flower/flowerstem is outlined by backstitch. I think in this case, the backstitch is going to add to the appeal of the picture. I've got 3 pictures in the same series lined up...

And here is Tuthankamun (is this spelled correctly?) - Sorry for the quality of the picture, it was taken on the Iphone.