In the Pink

There is nothing like a lack of time to concentrate the mind. Despite having had months to prepare the Yurt for its exhibition at Stitch and Craft Olympia, I only really got cracking this week. I regretted having sent all of the bunting and trimmings to the USA. I ordered many more metres of pompom braid, made new bunting for the roof, and dyed some crochet flowers magenta to replace the original feather cockades. I really don't think I like procion dye – it always looks so promisingly vibrant then most of it gets rinsed away. I must order some more Hungarian dye as the colours fix far more reliably. I even had to resort to using a box of purple Dylon to dye a piece of vintage linen that had been marked with blue ink for cross stitch as I couldn't find the original backing for the last ever yurt panel that I never got around to quilting. It was actually pieced at the end of last summer in honour of the rampant weeds in my garden.

I only had two days in which to do all of this since I was teaching in school again this week and I have to admit that I think I worked harder because of that limitation. I quilted "Willowbay Herb", a basic strippy panel, the same way that I quilted "5 Bar Gate" that is now in Wisconsin. I painted in all of the skinny lines and added some machine embroidery. I stopped myself from adding even more embellishments and crystals as I simply had to get the binding and Velcro attached.

There was a bit of a farce with the Post Office this week... I paid a customs bill for Parcel Force to the Royal Mail online by mistake. These two organisations are related but are no longer the same company. There was much to-ing and fro-ing between automated customer services until I paid the customs bill again to the correct company then got the original one refunded. After all that I received an email informing me that the parcel had been mislaid. I decided not to bother getting even more annoyed and anyway, my local Postie turned up with it the next day!

The over-priced package contained the giant hexagon die from Accuquilt. I couldn't help myself – as soon as I had finished packing all of the Yurt gear into the Landy, I had to go and cut out Freya's Christmas quilt. I am really enjoying these easy in-between projects where I don't have to worry obsessively about perfect points and I can use whatever fabric I happen to have as long as it is vaguely Christmassy. I may just sew a row or two tomorrow after I have collected a new batch of Yurt postcards and packed my overnight bag...