Spooky and Soggy

Freya and I celebrated Nella’s 20th Birthday with her in Norfolk. As a child, Nella always used to request a different birthday cake every year and this year it was meant to be a pink angel cake (vegan). Like a Bakeoff contestant, I should have practised at home because using egg replacement, an unfamiliar oven with a dodgy thermostat and oddly shallow tins was all a bit much and I ended up having 3 attempts until I had an edible result. The first batch rose, dropped bits all over the oven then when I thought I had switched it off, I had actually turned on the grill so I burnt it!

I wore a frock to take Nella out for dinner but my Dad commented that it was a bit jazzy and was I dressed up as a Vegan?

Freya was busy working remotely most of the week but she had a day off mid-week and we went to a pumpkin farm. 

I had originally planned to drive home in one trip but with more heavy rain forecast, I stayed with Freya overnight in Glasgow. She lives right next to the Botanic Gardens where there is a seasonal event called “Glas-Glow”. Nessie always enjoys a walk around there as she thinks she might catch squirrels. There was a super display of pumpkins there by local school children. I drove the rest of the way home on Sunday but it took ages due to the weather, roadworks and detours. 

I decided to leave my unpacking until Monday morning and after that I had to reorganise my workshop. Even though I had shifted some furniture in case of a flood, Storm Babet caused more water seepage than the last time we had a bad storm. Such events used to be rare but now they seem to be at least an annual event. Fortunately, it had all been mopped up by the time I got home and I just had to have a bit of a tidy-up. 

I have loaded an experimental project onto my quilt frame. I am hoping to make non-slip sofa covers to replace the hideous stretchy nylon ones. I have 2 lovely red leather vintage sofas but keep them covered up so pets can sit on them too;) The “quilt” is red fluffy fabric and rubbery stuff to stop rugs from slipping (no wadding) so it will be interesting to see if that works. 

Storm Chasing

 

I am making myself study Art & Stitch so I know it inside out! Sometimes I find that it is not as co-operative as I would like in that things you think you have done before and learned, don’t always seem to work the same again. 

I planned to make my way to Norfolk on Thursday but there was a storm warning so I decided to set off on Wednesday to try and beat it south. I was not able to leave until after lunch so I only went as far as Glasgow and stayed with Freya. As the weather warnings got more serious, I decided that if I woke up during the night I would just get going. I left Glasgow at 2.00am, not really considering that it would be dark until 7.30am. It was very wet in the north but the roads were pretty empty. I stayed on the west of the UK which took me 2 hours longer than normal but I made it without any difficulties. 

By Friday the storm had spread to parts of England and it was even wet in Norfolk. Freya had booked a train after work as she also wanted to come down for Nella’s birthday week but the train kept stopping for long periods and did not go beyond Peterborough. She had the foresight to book a hotel overnight and continued her journey by bus the next morning. 

Back home in Aberdeenshire the storm kept raging for 3 days straight with a Red, danger of life warning. Roads flooded, trees came down, the power went off, the sea turned foamy. I dread to think how soggy my workshop might be - apparently water is seeping up from under the floor!

Hopefully, the weather will settle down on Sunday and I will take the girls and Nessie to the seaside. I am not sure what else we will get up to this week as Nella has managed to change her Uni course to Textiles and will have a far fuller timetable:) 

A Lot of Stitches

 

After a weekend of torrential rain, the sun finally came back out on Monday and started drying everything out. Luckily, no water flooded into my workshop this time. The river was incredibly high when Nessie and I went for a walk. Instead of being a once in 20 years occurrence, it seems to happen annually now. 

I set myself ups for a busy week, knowing that I am going to Norfolk later this week. I did some online teaching, in person teaching and a couple of customer quilts. 

In a phone conversation with a Bernina Q-matic owner, she mentioned that her 1 year old machine had done 2 million stitches after 16 quilts which I thought sounded pretty high. Out of interest I checked my stitch counter, bearing in mind that I know it has been zeroed in the past and that I actually have another machine. I have had this machine since 2015, when it launched in the UK and it has done more than 51 million stitches! It is probably due for a spa experience;)

I don’t seem to go anywhere interesting most weeks but I did have an “outing” to Asda. I hate Asda because it is so big but it does have a really good “exotic” section of spices and foods from around the world. I stocked up on spices because I wanted to recreate the Art Masala mix that Nadia Hussain made on her latest BBC cooking programme. I made her jalfrezi recipe and it was was superb - almost as good as the fudge doughnuts that a client brought from St Andrews;)

Abandon Ship!

Despite my Q-matic system being a bit temperamental since it needs a new cable, I managed to keep it going and completed some customer quilts. I had to watch it more closely than usual so I was not able to go away and work on anything else, although I did manage to put a few stitches onto the quilted coat back. I have 2 front pieces still to go, depending on how much embellishment I feel it needs.

I decided to take my caravan on a Last Hurrah for the year to head north to Moray for a Scottie Dog meet up. The weather was not forecast to be great but there were signs that it would improve. I am fine with towing but not happy about stopping. I stupidly missed my turn and ended up making a huge detour via Fraserburgh and lots of coastal villages in some scary high winds. As I approached the camping field where I had booked to stay the road was closed so I went on another mystery tour, finally arriving hours after I had planned. It was raining heavily, rained hard all night and was still raining the next morning. 

By now there was an Amber rain warning and water was starting to run off the fields onto the roads. Nessie and I had a walk on the beach at Nairn where we saw intrepid paddle-boarders and we got soaked. 

The Scottie Dog event was cancelled and the weather was worsening so I decided we might as well head home. The caravan had sunk into the field so I was not able to hitch up and I phoned the farmer in a bit of a panic to be told that everyone was too busy to come to my rescue. Eventually, I realised that I could crank the legs up a bit more to raise the tow hitch and we were able to make our escape! The journey home was uneventful and I am glad that we got out when we did because it just continued to lash with rain. There was quite a lot of flooding in Scotland and at home we had to dig a trench outside my workshop to divert the water running off the field. Nessie has decided that she won’t be going out until it dries up a bit which suits me fine as I will enjoy a cosy, lazy Sunday at home:)

Some Good, Bad and Ugly Stuff

The lingering cold that I had after my Glasgow trip turned out to be Covid. I was not especially unwell but lacking in energy and had no sense of taste. I hunkered down in the workshop and just got on with some quilting. It was not that easy actually, because my machine keeps conking out and giving me error messages which I tell it to ignore before starting again. New wiring has been ordered which should arrive in mid-October so hopefully we will keep limping along. 

I received a letter from Police Scotland informing me that I was caught by a speed camera on the motorway near Stirling. I really have no excuse because the car has cruise control. I hope I don’t receive a huge fine or have to appear in court!

I had to come up with firmer ideas and a list of requirements for the Quilt Retreat that I will be doing at Quilt Direct in Devon next June and it reminded me that I will have to be an absolute Q-Matic expert so I can answer any question that someone might ask. I have set myself the task of going through every single page in the ArtnStitch manual and have bought all of the advanced online classes. I did a couple of classes at Bernina University in 2019 but there is only so much you can learn in short sessions in a large class. I also took a couple of Zoom classes a while back but I confess that I did not really understand them at the time. The answer, just like with free motion quilting is PRACTISE!

Speaking of free motion - when I taught my class in Glasgow I noticed that one participant had a BSR (Bernina stitch regulator). I thought that would be a handy tool to have when I give demos or lessons on domestic quilting so I looked them up online. I was shocked to discover that they are currently priced at £625.00 and even on Ebay they are selling for over £300.00 plus postage from the USA. I spotted one for sale in the UK with no bidders and “won” my auction for considerably less than that:) 

I decided to spend my whole Saturday experimenting with ideas in my workshop. These are not necessarily ideas that will go anywhere but I wanted to see what would happen. As is often the case, gadgets and feet don’t always work as well as they say in their blurb and need some adjustments to be made. My current fascination is ruffles which are usually seen on garments, not quilts. I also wanted to have a go at making fringes and test out the BSR which arrived by post. By the end of the day I had not produced anything impressive but it was worth doing. I often think that is a useful exercise because some ideas turn out not to be good ones, while others need some developing. There was one good thing though - the “bargain" BSR works perfectly!