MA in Textile Design - a mature student's journey

First week at Uni done, yippee! But first, news on my travels. I've just come back from visiting my sister and her family in the States. They live in Utah, which means flying into Vegas and driving straight out to St George in Utah, about 2 hours away. Below are photos of Kolob Canyon and one of my sister's dogs, Eddie, trying to catch a bubble. As we trekked along I wondered if I could be inspired to design if I lived here, I suppose you adapt to your own surroundings and your surroundings become reflected in your work. I could never live there though - too hot!!!   A rather embarrassing moment happened on my way at the airport. I had a small pair of scissors in my carry on, I told the people by security and I thought I'm ok because the scissors are under 6cm in length and so are allowed. Anyway, my bag was taking a long time to go through the scanner until a lovely lady said to me "you do know you've got a massive pair of scissors in your bag". I want...

So, this week I turned 40, eek! My husband and I spent a few days away near Lincoln. I loved Lincoln and would happily go back there again. Such a great town, with small independent shops, a great castle and an amazing Cathedral. I've got a passion at the moment about the smaller details you see when you visit a historic site. Here's some of the inside of Lincoln Cathedral.  I also took lots when we visited the Houses of Parliament recently. Again I recommend this as a place to visit if you are ever nearby. I'm slowly making my way through my Illustrator course online, Bonnie Christie on Creative Live is a real great teacher.  She uses a Wacom tablet to create and as luck would have that was what I got from my husband for my 40th! Well that at a 3kg bag of my favourite sweets Rhubarb and Custard mmmmmm.  For those of you who don't know a Wacom tablet allows you to draw on the tablet and the image appears on the screen. So if you have a great drawing you can trace ...