Last day

The time had gone so fast and we flew out late that night , so today was our last chance to utilise Jan and Jean to finish off work, and pack up. I was exhausted and decided that I needed to have a slack day and use my last chance to explore the landscape and actually look at what was around the masseria. So with camera in hand I headed off to the no of small stone lane ways that lead away from the masseria. On my adventures I discovered an old truli and wonderful aged doors, as well as multiple images of my favourite aged and twisted tree in the middle of a local field. I spent a lovely few hours walking down lane ways and taking hundreds of photos from landscapes, foliage, fields , trees and rusty wire. Even a mangled old chandelier thrown in the grass.
We spent our last few hours having an early dinner and savouring the last few hours of Mediterranean weather, before heading to the airport , and the dreaded Ryanair, and then on to Stansted airport, London. It was a very late night , and sadly because of the passport control, once I got through to the outer airport everyone had left, so I missed out on saying goodbye. And sadly headed to the Raddison Blue and a nights hopeful rest.

Day 4

Today we spent the day finishing our samples, playing with the embellisher, and free machining using layers of sticky wash away and Romeo to layout threads and create imagery , then hand stitching back into them to create textural effects. We utilised the whole day and well into the night to maximise our time and getting samples finished. Everyone's work was so different. Jan and Jean were very giving in their instruction, happy to help out without overwhelming your creativity but not hesitant to give a critical eye when needed, or advice on work that needed a lift etc.

Day three!

Today we worked in the morning and then we drove to lunch in a local township of Polignano del Mare. On the coastline . It was a nice lunch in a seafood restaurant that I had steak in , to avoid my seafood allergies. Mmmmmm!! First steak in months- not quite Aussie beef but a welcome meal!
Then we had a few hours to wander around the very old township , with the mission of finding ancient crumbling walls, peeling paint and other textures , we could translate into stitch. It is also an interesting place, built on cliffs I that are being slowly eroded by the violent seas , leaving interesting caves and rock walls. This area is renowned for the seafood that is freshly caught daily in the region. Sadly I couldn't eat most of it but it looked and small nice.
This towns architecture looked like its had a much more Spanish influence in the architecture, with Spanish style bell towers everywhere .

Puglia day 2

Today we started playing with translating our sketches into mini art works using ironon transfer mediums, and intense and other pigment based crayons, felt pens and watercolour paints, to create backgrounds. From this we had to work out ways to stitch over them using a twisted chain stitch taught to us by jean. The premise was to get us using only 1 stitch in a no of ways and a no. of different stitching mediums.
Today was also my 50th birthday and the girls surprised me with a mini party at dinner, with balloons and Rosa baked a gluten free cake. It was sweet and a nice end to the day.

Puglia day 1

The first day in Puglia , began with jan and jean giving an outline of the course and then we plunged headlong into the course.
First order of the day was to make viewing squares made from L shaped card. We were given he task of heading out around the masseria to find interesting textures and compositions that we could translate into embroideries. Our task was 10 small sketches with various textures and line forms. After multiple cries of "we can't draw!!! " we headed out. Jan showed ideas to get us started.
After an hour of finding imagery and simple sketching, we headed in for lunch and then spent the afternoon drooling over jan and jeans samples and doing tutorials on assorted techniques. It was a full day.

P day (puglia adventure)

After a few minor disasters such as debit card being suspended, running out of credit on phone while trying to sort it out, and housekeeping barging in early in the morning as they thought I had left, waking me up in a panic, and the stress of ryanair and their horrenous excess baggage charges,but the day got better once my new felt artist friend Yulia arrived to take me to Stansted airport with a drop in to her home and studio on the way. Her friend and also felt artist Sue Pearl popped in , and we went for a pub lunch before heading to the airport. Sue kindly offered to mind my extra luggage while away, and take me to Heathrow on my return.
After I was dropped at Stansted and scraped in underweight by a smidge, I waited to meet up with Jan Beaney and Jean Littlejohn plus the other participants. We found a couple of the ladies and flew to Bari on the northern side of Italy and then a 1/2 hour drive to puglia in the dark , arriving at the Masseria at about 10ish at night. We were greated by Rosa, the housekeeper, and found the other 4 participants for our course awaiting our arrival. There were 12 of us in total including the tutors. I shared a room with a lovely older lady called Joy. We had a supper and intro to the venue and met all the participants - which included Ann from Houston, Elizabeth from Finland, myself and a mixture of girls from all over Britain. The morning light showed how lovely the property is! And how lovely the countryside is and very different from Tuscany in colour, stone and light. It is quite an arid landscape , it can't sustain livestock but does suit fruit trees and olives well.