Yesterday I had time to kill before a writers’ conference in Pimlico, so I thought I’d pop into the Tate Britain and share with you some of its inspiration:

Drawing

Endless corridors of loveliness

A Mark Vaux painting

Recognise these?

I left to walk through the sunny streets to the conference. I was wearing my favourite Pendrell blouse.  At the conference I had to make a two-minute presentation to the 90 authors and illustrators in a quavering voice. When I stepped back down from the podium, flushed and shaking, the author Anne Cassidy came up to me. ‘I bet you made that top, didn’t you, Karen? I read your sewing blog.’ I floated through the air for the rest of the day!

The day had been going well from an inspiration perspective. Then I came home and saw this posted by a friend on Facebook:

The Stuff of Nightmares?

My friend, Elizabeth, had captioned her photo ‘Is this the most sinister thing I’ve ever made?’ Woah! Suddenly, Ugly Amnesty was blown out of the water! I’d never imagined that someone could make something and call it SINISTER before. (It is, though, isn’t it?) Elizabeth wore this to a party last night. I hope her crafting didn’t give anyone nightmares. I’m going to start calling Elizabeth The Godmother. She takes ‘making stuff’ to a whole new level. A whole new, evil level…