April at last!

Its finally April but the winter is hard to shake off, morning frosts and bitter winds mean spring is further delayed. Hard when I really need to get gardening again to boost my batteries.

I didnt post the follow-up on some of my zippered pouches that will precede the more formal clutches in my shop but the pace is slow as I find myself busy beyond my abilities just keeping up with the stock I have already, especially the larger ornate patterns. Already I have a repetitive strain injury to my right shoulder muscle (the arm that lifts the massive wooden wallpaper blocks as I print) which has slowed me down even further.
But here  are some of the zippered fold over clutches in progress...

I also cleaned up my new large vintage French wallpaper block  (notice the amount of damage to surface)

and printed it in red (completely changing my mind about the colour just as I was about to start printing in deep green) on ecru linen.

I only inked three quarters of the block up as I wanted to interject one of my bird tjaps as it was such a lush foliage scene, plus the damage to the block on one corner had practically eroded the original relief printing surface so best to leave it out.

After a few hiccups with choosing the wrong type of bird block (scale and pattern density was all wrong) I finally chose the larger bird tjap.
The finished panels laying out to dry.

And finally a really big thank you to the lovely Aki of the Etsy shop Oktak who featured my shop in her Japanese blog here :  http://oktak.exblog.jp/18454967/

And now some coffee and cake...and of course Easter chocolate, of which we now have so much of it has become hard to shut our pantry door.