Guinea pigs?

Every Monday morning I buy vegetables at my local supermarket to make soup for 20 people at the community centre at the end of my road. And every Monday morning I talk to the same chirpy lady on the check out. She has a lovely sense of humour and I always pack my shopping away with a smile on my face.

One morning we got chatting about machine embroidery and I showed her one of my designs on a shopping bag. She then started talking about guinea pigs and how interesting they are. She then suggested I embroider some guinea pigs.

Now I’ve never thought of guinea pigs as interesting. There’s not a lot to them really, and not a lot to sketch. But I thought ‘might as well give them a go’. I started of with Martha and then Maurice, and before I knew it there were four more guinea pigs, Milo, Petunia, Gertie and Primrose. I had fallen in love with guinea pigs, and it seemed I was becoming addicted to sketching them! They kind of come alive when I’m stitching them, and what’s more, they’re not at all boring. I found that each one had their own little character as they appeared, stitch by stitch.

Now then, my next task – hedgehogs!