My felting workshops are going well. I have good bookings and my students come from all over. I decided that I would like to take the teaching further and so I designed a 10 week felting course that covers all the fundamentals of feltmaking and gives a very good overview of all the techniques. This course starts on May 9th in my Highgate, North London workshop. If any of you reading this are interested please go to my website www.feltbetter.com for details or email me on suepearl@me.com

My workshops are travelling too and on March 25th and 26th I am in Oxford at The Jam Factory running a Beginners and an Improvers workshop. If you are interested look at www.thejamfactoryoxford.com website.

I will also be at the Stitch & Craft Show at Olympia this month from 17th March to 20th March. Maybe I will see some of you there, please come and say hello. My stand is under the banner 'Felt like sisters'.

So now for the felting bit. It seems that a lot has been happening in my felting world as well as family life. I spent seven weeks in Australia over Christmas without being able to do any textile stuff at all and then came home raring to go, but the cold has kept me away from my 10ft by 6ft shed (sorry no metric yet) in the garden. However I have been tempted out there as the snowdrops began to emerge from the frozen ground.

One of the things I disliked was needle felting. I don't know why. Maybe it's the needle stick wounds that my hands are covered with, but I have decided that I have to suffer for my art. The trick is to keep my eyes focused on what I am doing and not be distracted by that sweet little robin singing to me from the tree outside my shed, or the helicopter circling for the third time up above me.

It all started with a mouse, a little mouse in my new kitchen. I thought I had managed to seal up all holes, cracks, crannies etc but I hadn't realised that the plumber had made a whacking great hole in my kitchen wall from my utility room and not filling it in.

The little mouse came in, liked what he saw and decided to stay. How long he had been there is anyone guess but much as I like mice (and I do, I do) I decided that my new kitchen was not the place to make his home. We tried to catch it with tempting peanut butter and cheese but he managed to lick it off and scarpered. The hole was filled in and the mice went or maybe it was the other way around.

This must have set up something in my brain because soon I was hatching out these little guys using the dreaded needle felting technique. And now I'm getting to like it more.

I should be ashamed of myself!

How can I have a blog and not write anything.

In my defence though I can say that a lot of my year has been taken up with new arrivals and refurbishing my home. All that is done and dusted although my newest grandchild is so gorgeous that I have to include a picture of him a couple of weeks old being bathed in the kitchen sink. My mother would never have approved!