Time Wasting Technologies

I signed up for Mobile Me, supposedly a productivity enhancing programme to link my computer, ipad and phone so that contacts and emails would all be synchronised over a technological "cloud". However, I wasted a ludicrous amount of time trying to load it all up and get the gadgets to connect with each other. I really wonder whether it was me being dense and missing the obvious or whether it was actually far more complicated than necessary. It is still not quite all tied together with the computer but theoretically I can at least access and edit the calendar.

I was very excited when my new Kitchenaid mixer arrived and immediately made a bucket full of mashed potato and cookie mixture. Strangely, it juddered alarmingly when mixing a batch of bread dough so I wasted yet more time on the internet trying to find out if it is normal for an industrial type of mixer to struggle with a basic loaf. It is not supposed to do that, of course, then I came across a website full of Kitchenaid complaints that I wish I had never read. Sadly, I have to pack it all up and send it back for a replacement which is frustrating. I made Freya's chocolate birthday cake the old fashioned way and it tasted great.

I finished off the couching and binding on Pi Sqaures on the new Elna machine and was pleased with the extra throat space. It is really annoying that it is around an inch too big for my Horn cabinet – if I lower the table I can't plug it in! I was horrified at the cost of new, larger ones so may just get the basic Janome/Elna table instead of the hideaway cabinet. I eventually managed to get half of a customer quilt done, ordered more fabric and dye for Yurt2's roof and got packed up for the family trip to the Isle of Mull.

We had a very scenic drive through Perthshire to Oban to catch the Caledonian MacBrayne ferry across to the Island. It was only a 45 minute crossing; beautifully sunny and calm. We drove on the single-track main road towards Tobermory with its brightly coloured houses on the harbour front. After settling in to an old fisherman's cottage, we had a supper of freshly caught mackerel and chips from an award winning van on the jetty. We ate it sitting on the steps of the clock tower in a heavy rain shower as a double rainbow arched across the bay.