NEW! Curated Glide Collection - Mermaid and Little Cayman Glide Thread Club Feature

Our Blog Post focuses on the first of our new curated Glide thread Collections - Mermaid.

My friend Sharon's daughter is called Meg and is nicknamed the Mermaid. Sharon made her the most amazing mermaid tail. Sharon is a complete water baby too and is a talented sailor.

For me the water just felt like where I needed to be. At the age of three I walked into a pool and just kept walking! I did get hauled out eventually when all my parents could see was my hair floating on the surface.

I always wanted to go out beyond my depth into the waves and it never had a fear for me.

Although I lived in the middle of England I  felt more comfortable in the water than out of it, so in my final summer after University searched every course I could to learn about sailing and canoeing. I took part in Ocean Youth Club, which was celebrating its 25th Anniversary in 1985. We sailed from Liverpool to the Isle of Man, Belfast and up the west coast of Scotland to Oban. I will never forget the Captain letting me take the helm of the 72' ketch out of the River Mersey past the Liverpool Garden Festival. It felt amazing. 

White water-canoeing at Aviemore down the Grand Tully and more sailing with Outward Bound were other highlights.  I also qualified as a Day Skipper and got my RYA Yachtmaster theory. But it was scuba diving that really drew me in.

Diving Bloody Bay Wall on Little Cayman (that's me with my camera)

In 1986 I learnt to dive in New Zealand on Operation Raleigh where, in Milford Sound and with the backdrop of Mitre Peak,  I caught fresh scallops, swam with blue cod and saw black coral, dived in the Clutha River with river trout and surveyed for non-indigenous lake weed in Lake Wanaka while being towed behind a motor boat! I felt like a mermaid for sure.

It wasn't long before my Open Water certification led to Advanced, then Rescue Diver whilst in Australia.  A few years later I packed in my job with IBM, flew to Florida and became a Master Scuba Diver Trainer - then on to a job on Little Cayman in the Caribbean. That was 1992 and I worked in the Cayman Islands as a Scuba Diving Instructor, Boat Captain and Assistant Manager at Southern Cross Club on Little Cayman then Surfside and finally Sunset House on Grand Cayman. I spent 6 out of every 7 days in the water. Bliss! My morning boat checks meant swimming out to the boat usually with a single breath hold. 

Three days of every week I hand-fed stingrays. It was a nice job.

Mermaid.

So for all those that consider themselves Mermaids, for your children or for your grandchildren who are mermaids like me let's celebrate the Mermaids among us with our gorgeous collection - comprising the colours Mermaid, Ocean, Midnight Storm, Marine, Pale Mist, Sea Green, Sand, Sand Dune and Captain Navy. A beautiful collection of colours and shades from light to medium and dark, representing the sand and the sea.

Sharon's grand-daughter certainly loved the quilt that she made with Meg as the inspiration in this quilt from their trip to the Barrier Reef in Australia. 

Visit our website at www.handiquilter.co.uk for our Mermaid Glide Thread Pack in the NEW category entitled Curated Thread Collections. 

Save 20% off the regular individual Glide Thread price by purchasing threads in this way as part of our Curated Thread Selection.

Mermaid is the first of our Curated collections which gives you the opportunity to collect different colour themes or selections of threads - but note that the colours do feature in other thread packs in our Glide Thread Club collections.

(Our Glide Thread Club collections are a way of acquiring all the Glide Thread colours without repeating them, but with no obligation - pick and choose as you wish!) One of these is featured below...

'Little Cayman' Glide Thread Club Collection

We just had to also feature our lovely collection of Little Cayman inspired colours.  Shot on location on Little Cayman as the sun was rising on a beautiful morning overlooking the South Sound and Owen Island. 

These colours are reminiscent of the Caribbean. A typical way for clapboard houses to be painted would be to take the base colour and add white. This is referred to as a tint. The decoration of the clapboard houses here is called gingerbread such as decorative architrave around the eaves or under the roof boards. There is a beautiful house in Blossom Village on Little Cayman where my friends Wayne and Gail used to live and where I stayed when I visited in the 1990s. It is one of the oldest houses in the island. Very small, just cooled by fans and the sea breeze. It often features in the pictures of the island.

Artist: Lois Brezinski

So it is that the Little Cayman collection of threads is based on the colours of the houses here - tints of greens, of blues and peaches. 

You can purchase the Little Cayman collection here.