It’s twent past four now as I write this post and today has been a bit hit and miss so far.  Carmen was meant to be coming over at lunchtime for an afternoon felting but has been delayed by several hours.  In the morning I finished one of her Christmas presents, a nuno felted neck wrap in (as I thought!) a beautiful black silk with a light grey merino.  The silk was one of the fabulous sari loom ends that I get from Susan at Essential Textile Art but for some reason the black lost quite a bit of colour during the felting process and now it is a combination of inky black, inky blue and a sort of purply grey, a bit strange to say the least!  Anyway, Carmen likes subtle colours so possibly (a big possibly) she will think that I always intended the colours to be this way, whatever the intention I think that she will use the wrap.

My next creation this morning was a fresh squid stew, always a challenge when cooking for any Spanish friends!  This turned out very well even if I say so myself, fresh squid, red onions, red pepper, garlic, chopped tomatos, oozo, red wine and fresh thyme, a great combination.  The only problem is that now the rice and baked potatos (to go with roast rabbit, nothing by halves here) are well overdone but I guess Carmen will just be happy to get any food at all!

On to my next disaster.  Sigrid Bannier had a beautiful punched cord necklace and I had decided to try and make a variation on her theme.  My first problem was that although I am now quite competent at making cords after my very shaky beginnings I still have somewhat of a mental block in this department.  Because the cord will be punched with the Draper hollow punches that I have recently bought it needs to be both round, firm and tough.  What you are looking for is a big thick cord, not the easiest to get really hard.  Anyway, I managed to make the cord, punched it and was not a bit happy with the result.  Did I mention that when rolling it I used the car mat for a minute and actually gave it rubber skid marks, not the best on a lime, white and grey cord?!  It lies dejected on my felting table waiting for inspiration to transform it into something other than a sad holey cord.