Never Ever

   

I think I may have said, "Never, ever…" a few times this week. I left Fergus in charge of a slow baked rice pudding but he forgot to tell my husband that it was in the oven and 4 hours later it was welded to the dish and had dried to a brown paste. I made again the next day, leaving one of the girls in charge which was far more successful.

My other cooking foray this week was trying to replicate a 1950's style sweetcorn-relish. The recipe I found tasted pretty good after I added some chillies but the liquid was too runny whereas I wanted something more jammy. Everyone complained that the house smelled of boiling vinegar so I wondered if there is a way of making a corn relish conserve and adding the vinegar later. Perhaps I should have trained to be a Home Economics teacher. I am thinking adding some arrowroot to stop this batch of sweetcorn-relish falling off my sandwiches. Maybe if it was a stiffer mix I could stuff it into home-made ravioli?

One of my friends has suggested that I keep deviating into culinary experiments to avoid doing the work that I am really meant to be doing. However, I spent almost the entire week working on a double-wedding-ring quilt and swore that I would never, ever do one again with such a tiny background fill. After stitching traditional pumpkin seeds around all of the rings then surrounding them all with stitch-in-the-ditch quilting, I stood and quilted tiny plumes and swirls for 25 hours! I know this is what the customer really wanted but it was rather frustrating that it took so long when I have 4 other customer quilts and a myriad of other projects that need to be done within the next month. I didn't even waste time day-dreaming about my linen project even though some vintage strawberry printed fabric arrived in the post from Singapore;)

I took an afternoon off to make up a Northern Lights cushion so I could check the quantities and take step-by-step photos for The Book. I felt that it was done in rather a hurry but I am pretty pleased with the finished project. It will not be a class for slackers as I was hard pushed to complete the project by teatime. 

I hand-sewed a few beads onto the leather skins in my "spare" time but realised that I still did not have enough so I ordered even more from Ebay. It has been suggested by another of my friends that I use the random left-over beads to fill up one of my fancy empty gin bottles…

Beads and Pirate Ships

    

http://www.bonniemccaffery.com/vidcasts/092.html

(link above to vidcast)

Contrary to my decision to concentrate on quilting, I was in school for two days again. One day I was the visiting Science "expert", ad-libbing lessons on the human circulatory system, magnets and the senses. Two days later I was muddling along in an infant class, reading pirate stories. 

Freya successfully applied for a tall-ship expedition from Amsterdam to Aberdeen with deaf and hearing teenagers from UK, France, Germany and The Netherlands. Since the trip is only a month away, there has been a flurry of sourcing sailing gear and making travel arrangements. I decided that I will fly out with her and visit a few museums in Amsterdam before waving her off on her adventure. 

We visited the Great Tapestry of Scotland at the Art Gallery in Aberdeen after shopping for Freya's thermals and were very impressed by the interpretation of the drawings and skilled stitching. There were many other enthusiastic visitors and it would be well worth a second visit to notice more of the clever details. 

I spent much of the rest of my time quilting a large, modern customer quilt and getting the a large double-wedding-ring ready to start next week. I am getting a steady stream of quilts in at the moment without even doing any advertising. I could probably give up school-teaching altogether but it just seems a prudent idea to keep my teaching skills up to date.

I decided that I would need to sew beads onto the leather skins that I have quilted in odd gaps of time that I have. Some of the tiny stone chips take around an hour to sew onto relatively small circles!

Bonnie McCaffrey posted a link to a video-cast interview of me that she filmed at FOQ last year. I actually thought that she may have forgotten about it… I come across as quite bonkers, to be honest. My accent is a peculiar mix of posh Radio 4 with the odd very Scots word. 

A Facebook friend posted a picture of the front cover of Generation Q Magazine which mentions the article about "The Quilt Quine's Hoose". I hope that they send me a copy because this magazine is not available in a digital format and it is not currently on sale in the UK. 

I tried to crack on with my E-Book on Friday but I felt a bit like a headless chicken, having not looked at it properly for some time. I will try to do far more with it this week although I have an additional project to squeeze in for a ruby wedding table runner and I am being tempted by some very funky Japanese linen that I want to use in a quick and simple "just because" quilt. Although I have seen a very clever square-in-a-square layout online that creates a secondary star pattern, with no instructions or dimensions, of course;)

Northern Lights

Despite promising to concentrate on quilting, I ended up teaching for two days of the week but as it was for two nice, local schools, it was not too much of a hardship;) 

I managed to find time quilt a lovely, simple strip quilt for a customer’s grand-daughter and get the quilting done on the green leather skin. I have started hand-sewing some beads on which is when it really starts to look exotic. I dyed the plain linen pieces for the background of the leather clad columns - I’m sure it was sheer coincidence that the little-used workshop loo overflowed with magenta water when the washing machine did its final spin.

I tentatively used the mended Kitchenaid to mix a sponge for a version of apple and bramble Eve’s pudding then really put it through its paces on a large batch of sourdough bread followed by Toulouse sausages made from a joint of pork!

Midweek, I decided on the spur of the moment to ask my hairdresser to give me a new look and asked for a cut in the style of a Japanese manga-cartoon character. She was not at all phased by this request which was really for a very jagged, rough cut. Obviously,without a hairdryer and styling product, I will be unable to keep my hair looking trendy but I at least I don’t even have to comb it any more.

When I drove Fenella back from Girl Guides one evening we just happened to spot a fantastic show of the Aurora Borealis. They were not intense for very long but there were distinct pink and green flashes in a navy sky. The stars were really sparkling and I was delighted to see that local photographer, Vhairi Walker, posted some super pictures onto Facebook since we did not manage to capture any images on camera. It was really exciting to witness this rare sight which is the inspiration for my Northern Lights quilt project. 

I drove to Perth on Saturday to show the Coracle off at the QGBI Region 16 meeting. I enjoyed catching up with Scottish quilters, bought a book I didn’t really need and listened to an inspiring talk by the artist who designed the Tapestry of Scotland which I hope to visit at the Aberdeen Art Gallery next weekend. I ended the weekend ordering a selection of bright pink linen prints online, having spontaneously decided to make a quilt for the daybed in the music room instead of dutifully sewing on more beads…

Fish n Sheep

  

 

To add to the stress of a mid-term holiday, I also had to contend with new dog-owning neighbours, a flock of sheep in the field that was empty last week and a ban on walking down by the river since it is now the salmon fishing season. Wellington has never been terribly interested in dog biscuit bribes for coming back promptly and the increasingly geriatric Mabel gets lost in the undergrowth if we explore anywhere new. 

I knew that a planned quilting schedule was out of the question but nevertheless, I completed some useful tasks. I am mightily impressed to report that my business spreadsheet is up to date and I finally got around to adding some more photos to my Flickr photostream. I'm sure there are hundreds more photos hiding in my my computer somewhere but at least my Flickr page is a little more organised than it was;)

I worked on a log-cabin star medallion quilt for a customer who wanted me to "keep things simple" - it may look simple but stitch-in-the-ditch on a long arm is far from easy and Because I forgot to use invisible thread, I had to be extra careful not to wobble off-course. 

Rather than put away the leftover Drunkard's Path blocks in a drawer never to be seen again, I sewed them together, added some strips, quilted it with freehand lines and rustled up a quick cushion. Because I didn't bother with piping it was ridiculously easy and I wondered why I don't make cushions more often.

Fergus and I installed the Apple TV gadget without too much trouble then Fenella had great fun interrupting repeats of "Top Gear" with Youtube video clips of fluffy animal from her Ipad in a different room. Just to keep me grounded, I dutifully waited in the school car-park for Freya  to finish one of her mock-exams for half an hour before I realised that I had not read the clock correctly and had arrived over an hour too soon.

I spent an entire day and evening quilting the dark pink leather skin for one of the summer totems. The edges would not lie flat and where bulky wrinkles formed and I broke 3 industrial needles. I had to trim off the offending sides in the end and will just re-cut an approximate sheep outline when I am ready to bind it. Now I just have to patiently wait until all of the gems and crystals arrive in the post before I start sewing them all on with my bendy beading needle. 

Since my husband still had not got around to fixing my broken Kitchenaid mixer, I decided that I should just try and do it myself. The instructions were excellent except that they failed to mention how much brute strength and forceful hammering would be involved to take the body apart. It took me several hours to replace the chewed worm gear, repack it with grease and get the awkward little pin back in its correct place but I got there in the end and felt triumphant. It seems to work again but the true test will be kneading bread dough. I think if it goes wrong again I will simply order a new one!

Divertissement

Nobody will be surprised to be told that although I started the week with a plan, I only stuck to it on Monday. I set aside the entire day to make and photograph the Northern Lights project. I soon discovered that it was beyond my capabilities to talk, sew, press record while remembering to turn off the radio and washing machine in order to make a video clip. Taking a photo after every single step is really time consuming and somehow the project was more convoluted than it need to be. It took me the whole day to draw that conclusion but I won’t count it as a wasted day. I decided that the strip-set looked too fancy and also took too long to be feasible for a half day class. I am pleased with the final piece but the class and book chapter needs to be simplified. Northern Lights will have to become an ordinary square cushion and the bolster cushion can be made from the metallic whole cloth project instead. 

The rest of the week became a bit interrupted because I had not really thought about picking Freya up in the middle of the day after her mock exams and the mid-term break started on Thursday. 

She persuaded me to take the double wedding ring customer quilt off the frame after I had done the background so that I could finish Sam’s quilt in time for Valentine’s Day. The 120 large drunkard’s path blocks went together quickly after a while and we had fun arranging them into different combinations of whole and partial circles. After we got home from the entertaining Lego Movie, I raced to get the binding on just before we experienced thunder, lightning, snow and a powercut. He was delighted with the funky pattern and novelty fabrics that included guitars, lizards, Pokemon and cats. 

Trixie’s Golden Double Wedding Ring quilt got finished off in the end. I had been asked to “keep it simple” so it had piano key and wishbone borders, plumes in the background and pumpkin seeds around the rings. The navy reverse looks nice too as I used a gold thread in the bobbin. 

I have a couple of other customer quilts to do but I am being tempted by the gorgeous, soft leather skins that arrived by post this week. They are much more supple than the original white leather goatskin that I used for the Imbolc totem. Hopefully this might be easier to sew all of the beads and gems on! 

Squelch!

I am going to blame the rain for scuppering my book projects this week. It seems to have been raining non-stop all year so far. I am fortunate to live on high ground and am not at any risk of flooding but there has been a lot of water draining off the surrounding fields, seeping into the walls of my workshop and leaking its way under the door. I had been soaking the puddles up using hessian sacks but after a wet Wednesday when I was in school all day, not checking my workshop, I discovered that my carpets were soggy and some boxes that were stored underneath my quilt frame were very damp indeed. The Landy smells “foosty" since it leaks dreadfully and every time I went out I had to get a cloth to dry off the terrible condensation inside the windows and the switches on the dashboard. I bought an old fashioned mop to tackle the puddles and I decided to order a VAX to try and get the rest of the water out of the carpets before I end up with a serious mould problem.

Obviously there were other distractions but I did get some useful jobs done in between. I ordered a new batch of business cards so I can scatter them at quilt shops with the intention of undertaking more customer quilting. The leather skins and a selection of beads has been ordered online so I can keep up with the next 3 totems and I decided to crack on   with piecing and quilting the seasonal stripsets. They are looking really colourful and I like the simplicity of the quilted straight lines. 

I went to Rainbow Fabrics in Inverurie to buy some fabric for a project that I hope may tempt Freya back into quilting. Even though some of it was on special offer, I was surprised at how expensive it has become to purchase fabric for an entire quilt. I am using my Go Cutter large drunkard’s path die and she has agreed to help with the layout and she will sew some of the completed squares together. We may use the computer to quilt it with specific motifs but she has already hinted that she prefers my hand-guided swirls!

My MacBook was driving me mad with unwanted popups that arrived uninvited when I downloaded my patchwork font. I called Mac Support which took forever and they did not even manage to fix the problem. In the end I figured out which app had caused the virus and uninstalled it. 

I did a really stupid thing this week when I excitedly tried out my new pasta-making attachment on my Kitchenaid mixer. For some obscure reason I decided to follow the instructions which advised me to use the beater instead of the dough hook to begin with. I then forgot to switch to the dough hook and caused the mixer to work too hard, shearing a worm gear! Faced with the prospect of spending £150 to send it for repair or over £400 for a new mixer, I ordered spare parts on Ebay and am hopeful that watching a Youtube video will enable me to fix it myself. In the meantime I will have to knead bread by hand or even resort to buying it!

Chavvin' Awa

In this part of the North East of Scotland a common greeting is “Fit Like?”, meaning “How are you doing?” and the standard reply is “Chavvin’ Awa” which means just getting along fine. This was just such a week of chugging along, making generally good progress on my projects. 

I accompanied Nell’s class on a visit to a larger primary school to attend an animation workshop. I found this experience quite frustrating actually since the equipment was not all working properly and I soon found that my IT skills were probably more advanced than the course leader. Mostly I muddle through computer stuff, figuring it out in the end. I am now a fairly confident spreadsheet user and this week I downloaded a simple patchwork font and used a basic painting program to fill it with colourful patches. I wondered whether to use that sort of font for my book chapters but the process was a bit long-winded. I really don’t think I have enough time and patience to design a whole new alphabet with fabric filled patches like on birthday cards…

It rained almost constantly all week and everyone I met wished it would snow instead as that would at least mean that the light would be brighter. It was finally dry enough on Sunday for me to hang my Peppered Solids quilt on the field gate to take an outside photo. I was very glad to have my adhoc photo lights when I spent a day setting up photos for the opening chapters on sewing equipment. I am still not totally sure whether they are exciting enough to use but I have at least made sure that they are all set to 300dpi for printing. I am sure that some publishers must use stylists to fill jam jars casually with pins and ribbons so I hope that a few of mine are passable!

I tackled an enormous customer quilt in aubergines and taupes, free-handing an Amish type of swirl all over it. It was so big that it took a couple of days before it even got rolled on enough to clear the floor! 

The Beltane/Spring totem was pieced this week and I found that it went together faster than the autumn one as I had got back into the routine of alternating the curved joins. I intend to do the berry-coloured Summer one next and see if I can get them all quilted this week.  Considering how long it took to sew the beads onto the Imbolc set of 3, I really need to order the leather skins and some more lamé for the remaining 9 totems!! However, I also need to factor in time to do each of the book projects step by step so they can be photographed. Perhaps I should consider banning myself from the computer for a couple of weeks so I can catch up ;)  

All in a Day's Work!

I must have brewed extra strong coffee on Monday because I managed to piece 2 large quilt backs, make 4 sets of double-fold binding, trim the edges of 3 quilts, and wash, dry and bind the tatty 1930’s quilt and even the fleecy practice one! This was obviously my most productive day of the week because there was quite a bit of faffing after that. I started to fill in a year-planner because I could not quite work out where I was meant to be on the iCloud calendar and I was convinced that I had lost a date or two. 

I spent my birthday teaching at one of my favourite schools which was fine since all of the children behaved nicely and the teachers bought me birthday cakes. I was asked to throw together lessons on Fairtrade cotton and probability so I told them about child labour in India and may have casually mentioned gambling in a fun way when asking them to think of games of chance. A couple of boys were soon accumulating a pile of wooden beads as their winnings. On a more serious note, the children’s internet searches really made me question the ethics of the cotton that I buy for quilting and this is something that I will consider when I buy fabric and wadding from now on!

My husband surprised me by giving me vouchers for a day at River Cottage in Dorset with Freya - we can take a day’s class in bread making or learn how to cure our own bacon. I enjoyed coffee with Tania and Mo - they gave me lovely gifts that included candles, a funky scarf and a bottle of artisan gin. 

I decided to quilt my Peppered Solids quilt before tackling the next huge customer commission. I had intended to keep it simple with wavy lines or baptist fans but I automatically started covering it in plumes and swirls. I was not sure about the silvery thread so I switched to a gold coloured one. There was no way that I intended to unpick the silver so I had to make it look like a design feature and quilt with silver in all 4 corners. I did have a few issues with the bottom border. The main body of the quilt was a bit stretchy because the loose weave fabric had plenty of “give” in it. It was tricky to ensure that the stiffer Cherrywood border did not distort the whole thing and I had to suffer a few nasty little puckers even though I padded it out with extra wadding. It does not really matter as it is not a show quilt but it annoyed me all the same. 

My E-book got some attention too as I edited the projects and made lists of all of the photos that I want to accompany the writing. I hope that I will be able to resize and reuse some that I already have but I will have to make all of the projects from scratch just to ensure that I have all of the step-by-step pictures. 

The autumn totem was yet another project that has been on hold for some time. I had to redo all of the calculations as I had no recollection of what I had originally intended. It looks like I made plenty of strip-sets and will have more than enough to use for the largest column that will be wrapped in a leather skin like the original Imbolc set of three. 

I will have to keep up this pace if I stand any chance of completing the book projects AND the totems. I have already turned down several days of supply teaching in favour of quilting so I must try to make the most of my time ;)

Unplanned Forays

 I don’t plan to get side-tracked but it just seems to happen anyway! As it turned out, the tasks that I did instead of what I was meant to be doing proved to be useful after all. Maybe I was preoccupied because my great friend, Tania, moved out of the house next door after 8 years of being my neighbour. She has not moved too far so we will still catch up for coffee but we won’t have daily dog-walks to set the world to right. It seemed to rain constantly all week so it is hardly surprising that I was easily distracted like when I collected an undelivered parcel from the post office depot and came home with another set of bargain kitchen chairs. I will soon be able to open a cafe with all of the seating and tables that I have stashed away…

I had slightly forgotten that I had two long-arming pupils in my studio this week but it was really nice to be teaching them one-to-one. It reminded me that I quilt automatically most of the time so I really had to break things down for them and encouragingly point out that they should not expect their quilting to look wonderful after just one lesson.

As soon as a new batch of 80/20 wadding was delivered, I loaded and quilted a lovely quilt for a Church raffle. There were lots of small pieces so it required a reasonably dense amount of freehand quilting to capture all of its seams. Plumes and swirls soon covered the entire quilt and I felt that I was doing some proper quilting at last. Without even advertising, another two customer quilts came in this week, proving that I should be able to manage without my teaching wages as long as I don’t spend too long writing a book and working on ridiculous self-imposed exhibition challenges.

The photos that I took are pretty good because I set up two IKEA floor lamps with massive photographic bulbs. My husband showed me how to adjust the camera tripod and self-timer so I can have a go at setting up some shots for my book projects without relying on a second person and getting frustrated by the lack of sun. 

I thought I would finish off piecing my Peppered Solids blocks and put them away in a box but of course I carried on until I had completed the whole top. I don’t remember planning to make this quilt too large but it ended up at 78” square anyway. I love the colours of this shot-cotton range but because the fabric is a looser Indian weave, it tends to stretch and distort quite easily. I added a border of grey Cherrywood just because that it what I already had and simply made it long enough by adding a few simple strips. 

This directly led to another unplanned foray into robot quilting. I knew that I wanted to quilt this with a very traditional Baptist Fan design and it seemed like a good reason to pluck up courage to use the computerised system for my long arm machine that I bought to do the very traditional or basic customer quilts. As with most software, there would appear to be several ways of achieving the same objective and it did not want to behave the way I thought it should. There was a fair bit of trial and plenty of operator error but I eventually managed to download a digital design, transfer it to the tablet, turn it into a pantograph design, set up the long arm to work remotely, then fumble and fudge the placement onto a mock quilt of fleece. I wanted to be sure that I had it all sussed before committing the design to my Peppered Solids quilt so I had another go with a raggy 1930’s quilt top. I am now optimistic that I know how to fit each line of quilting onto the quilt without crashing the system. Maybe I should go ahead and finish my solids quilt before I forget all of the tricks and shortcuts that I learned over two days by refusing to give up until I got it all working properly?!

I don’t plan to get side-tracked but it just seems to happen anyway! As it turned out, the tasks that I did instead of what I was meant to be doing proved to be useful after all. Maybe I was preoccupied because my great friend, Tania, moved out of the house next door after 8 years of being my neighbour. She has not moved too far so we will still catch up for coffee but we won’t have daily dog-walks to set the world to right. It seemed to rain constantly all week so it is hardly surprising that I was easily distracted like when I collected an undelivered parcel from the post office depot and came home with another set of bargain kitchen chairs. I will soon be able to open a cafe with all of the seating and tables that I have stashed away…

I had slightly forgotten that I had two long-arming pupils in my studio this week but it was really nice to be teaching them one-to-one. It reminded me that I quilt automatically most of the time so I really had to break things down for them and encouragingly point out that they should not expect their quilting to look wonderful after just one lesson.

As soon as a new batch of 80/20 wadding was delivered, I loaded and quilted a lovely quilt for a Church raffle. There were lots of small pieces so it required a reasonably dense amount of freehand quilting to capture all of its seams. Plumes and swirls soon covered the entire quilt and I felt that I was doing some proper quilting at last. Without even advertising, another two customer quilts came in this week, proving that I should be able to manage without my teaching wages as long as I don’t spend too long writing a book and working on ridiculous self-imposed exhibition challenges.

The photos that I took are pretty good because I set up two IKEA floor lamps with massive photographic bulbs. My husband showed me how to adjust the camera tripod and self-timer so I can have a go at setting up some shots for my book projects without relying on a second person and getting frustrated by the lack of sun. 

I thought I would finish off piecing my Peppered Solids blocks and put them away in a box but of course I carried on until I had completed the whole top. I don’t remember planning to make this quilt too large but it ended up at 78” square anyway. I love the colours of this shot-cotton range but because the fabric is a looser Indian weave, it tends to stretch and distort quite easily. I added a border of grey Cherrywood just because that it what I already had and simply made it long enough by adding a few simple strips. 

This directly led to another unplanned foray into robot quilting. I knew that I wanted to quilt this with a very traditional Baptist Fan design and it seemed like a good reason to pluck up courage to use the computerised system for my long arm machine that I bought to do the very traditional or basic customer quilts. As with most software, there would appear to be several ways of achieving the same objective and it did not want to behave the way I thought it should. There was a fair bit of trial and plenty of operator error but I eventually managed to download a digital design, transfer it to the tablet, turn it into a pantograph design, set up the long arm to work remotely, then fumble and fudge the placement onto a mock quilt of fleece. I wanted to be sure that I had it all sussed before committing the design to my Peppered Solids quilt so I had another go with a raggy 1930’s quilt top. I am now optimistic that I know how to fit each line of quilting onto the quilt without crashing the system. Maybe I should go ahead and finish my solids quilt before I forget all of the tricks and shortcuts that I learned over two days by refusing to give up until I got it all working properly?!

Sorting

SORTING

I almost did not know how to get started with the New Year as it felt like there was so much to be done so I just had to make several lists and work my way through. It was a great feeling not to have to get ready to teach in school. I felt like I needed to get all of the boring chores out of the way before I could engross myself in any sewing projects so I gritted my teeth and started with my tax return. This job almost took 3 whole days because I finally plucked up the courage to put it all on a spreadsheet. I have never really understood how they work but after watching Youtube explanations and my husband drawing out a rough layout, I began entering all of my income and expenses and was amazed when the computer added up all of the resulting columns. It was a pretty sobering sight to see what I had really spent my hard-earned cash on! 

Completing the online tax form was frustrating because the format seemed to have changed. It is impossible to get through to any human on the helpline so I just had to muddle through, mucking it up the first time by somehow entering zero into income AND earnings. I was hugely relieved when it was all over for another year and now I can get on top of keeping the expenses up to date electronically. I even remembered to back everything up onto an external hard-drive.

I could not get started on my customer quilt because I was waiting for a delivery of wadding. I had a disaster with wool wadding bearding drastically after washing in some family quilts so I dared not use any more in customer quilts. I may be able to use it up for exhibition items as long as I never intend to wash them. I decided to clear out all of the wadding offcuts and put them into a recycling bag and this whetted my appetite to ruthlessly cull any fabric that I do not intend to use and refold the rest. Just creating a little space in the stash allowed me to move things around so I could store the coracle and totems tidily under the long arm frame. I felt like I needed to get all of this sorting out done before getting into the right frame of mind to start sewing in 2014. 

I spent a day revisiting the progress on my Ebook since it is a while since that got any attention. I cleared out all of the earlier drafts and pictures that won’t be used and generally tried to reacquaint myself with what I thought I was doing before I got distracted by school. Another task off my conscience was to email off some report comments about my class before I forgot all about them. 

I had intended to make new cushions for my scruffy sofa but I saw some perfectly good, inexpensive, ready-made tweed ones that meant I could spend my time on more “worthwhile” activities. I felt rather guilty about this for a while but decided to forgive myself in the end! I did make a cushion for Freya out of a wool jumper that I accidentally felted and it took me a while to remember how to attach the zip and piping. It was not a perfect specimen but she likes it anyway. 

I enjoyed making a new batch of sourdough bread and that seemed to spur me onto spring-cleaning the kitchen cupboards as part of my resolution to do domestic stuff at weekends instead of wishing I was in my workshop. It was mostly a matter of tidying - I did not go so far as pouring away the home-made pear cordial that had a tiny bit of harmless mould floating on top.

There was some fun at the weekend as local band, Victoria Sponge asked me to pose as their fiddler so I may appear for a few fleeting seconds in their new music video. This was good for my musical ego which had been bruised by my first attempt to play with the Seniors at the Banchory Strathspey and Reel Society - I did not do too well at sight-reading more than a dozen brand new tunes at top speed so I will really have to see how that goes next time!

Family Christmas

We had a quiet Christmas, did a bit of festive cooking, watched a couple of TV movies and walked the dogs. The only time I went into the workshop was to fetch more food supplies from my makeshift larder. The kids were pleased with their gadgets that included an Ipad mini for Nell, Nintendo DS with Pokemon for Fergus and an old fashioned record turntable for Freya. 

Before we got too used to being lazy we packed up and caught a train to Norfolk to visit my family. I am pleased to report that there were no hold ups or hassles on our 3 connections and I enjoyed the opportunity to read a gripping thriller called "The Goldfinch" for almost 8 hours.

It was lovely to catch up with everyone and see how the little boy cousins have grown. There were more presents and yet more wonderful food! We collected a fresh turkey from the butcher in Beccles so we could have a full-blown Christmas Dinner on New Year’s Day and we also enjoyed a mooch around Norwich. Even the kids noticed how time passes differently in Norfolk as our days simply flew by. Too soon, we were back on the train back to Scotland and the journey seemed even longer on the way home. 

After such a long break I did not feel inclined to tackle my expanding TO DO list straightaway so I decided that laundry and taking down the Christmas decorations should suffice until school starts on Monday. I am tempted to start a completely irrelevant small sewing project just to get myself back in the workshop and to stop myself from undertaking a mega-spring-clean to avoid going in the workshop which has become very cold over the holidays. It will take a few days to get back up to a bearable working temperature. 

The house always feels like it might burst after Christmas until I find somewhere to stash the new stuff and we will have to polish off all of the cheese, biscuits and chocolate before we can possibly consider any new healthy eating regimes which is why my New Year’s resolutions will start a bit late - and I may just need a little sustenance to help get the dreaded annual tax return out of the way!

De-Mob Happy!

I think that the Christmas term is a week too long! The final week is absolutely hectic when  most school children become over excited and over tired. My class party was an hour long sugar-rush of squealing and chasing until I made them do a ceilidh dance to my live fiddle playing medley that included The Dashing White Sergeant, Jingle Bells and something that I made up on the spot because I forgot what I was meant to be playing in 4/4 time. They fidgeted through their end of term carol service and could not sit still in the Muppets Christmas Carol DVD but they did seem genuinely sorry to say goodbye to me as I wished them all a Happy Christmas. 

The pupils at Banchory Academy gave a magnificent music concert on Monday evening - the choir sang Skyfall and Winter Wonderland beautifully. The weather has not been particularly festive with gales and rain. I keep hoping for frost or snow but it does not look likely and I may just clean the BBQ just in case high winds bring power cables down again.

I tried to complete my Christmas shopping in Banchory but was unsuccessful in my search for nice socks so I substituted them in the only possible way by purchasing mini bottles of Gin and Tonic instead. My week whizzed by as I made several trips to the parcel depot, used yards of sellotape for wrapping and finally scrawled the last of the Christmas cards. On Thursday evening I helped myself to the bottle of Chablis that I had earmarked for Friday. 

Mo, Tania spent a lovely evening together at the end of the week exchanging gifts and drinking plenty of Fizz. We had been so busy lately that we barely even caught up for a quick coffee in the past few weeks. 

There was not much sewing activity in my workshop which becomes an elves’ grotto and festive food cold store over Christmas. I bound a quilt that is a present and admired two packages of fabric that arrived. I ordered a fat-quarter selection from Anna Maria Horner and some deers, thinking that I might get around to making some new cushions for my scruffy old sofa. 

The other package came from Ani’s new shop in Kingsbridge, The Crazy Catt Quilt Shop. She put together a sample pack of hand dyed strips for me to try out for my Northern Lights project on the P&Q Magazine Cruise to Norway and the colours look perfect. I might have to sneak out to my grotto to see how it looks pieced together.

I hope all of you enjoy a Peaceful and Happy Christmas with plenty of mince pies and chocolate! xxx