Silver Clay/ Yorkshire Weekend Catch up

I'm feeling sad today as I miss my DD2 and gorgeous little grandee who have been staying with us but went back to Germany yesterday. It was wonderful to have them here and spend precious time together. The little one is growing so beautiful and bright .... it was such fun.
Catch up time now with my crafting and blogging to brighten me up and take my mind off missing them so much.
The weekend before they arrived we spent in Yorkshire where I took the Silver Clay course, which I had won at the Aintree Show. We stayed for 4 days and had a great time..... great hotel, food and lots of interesting places.
The course was so good and Tracey is an excellent teacher and with only 7 in the class we had plenty of attention from her. We made 3 pieces of jewellery, covering silver clay, paste and liquid,  learning enough basic techniques and skills to continue at home. However I will certainly take an advance course as soon as I can as I enjoyed it soooo much.
The flower shaped piece used stamping to create texture onto the clay and the tiny flower was cut out and inserted into the larger one.
The leaf pendant was made from a real leaf using the silver paste.
The heart was made by syringing a more "liquidy' paste.

Craftworx Studio is on a farm in an idyllic country setting and there were quite a few other artists' studios on site. 

The village pond with lots of ducks

We visited an old working windmill at nearby Skidby and bought flour made that day to make bread at home.

The local restaurant had a wonderful cake of the windmill

The beautiful Beverley Minster was only 10 minutes away.

The weather was wonderfully warm and sunny so we drove to the coast to visit Bridlington. There was an Art Fest on so we visited some exhibitions and also the old town which has the longest Georgian Street in England. There was an amazing craft shop, "Ultima", selling local art, which was once an apothecary and it still had all the old shelves, apothecary jars and chests of drawers with porcelain labels on them. The lovely owner showed us old photographs and told us about it's history.

In Bridlington the seagulls nested on almost every rooftop near the harbour. Amazing but such a mess.

We drove home (straight across East to West from one coast of England to the other) without using motorways, which was so much nicer, and we passed through interesting little towns and villages we wouldn't have seen. Amazingly it didn't take more then a  half hour longer!
Can't wait to go back.