A Difficult Week

An irate school secretary phoned on Monday morning to find out why I had not turned up at school. I was mortified until I checked that it was not on any of my calendars so I suspected that it was most likely not my error since I write teaching commitments down while I am still on the phone! As I felt that my Houston entry was under control, I nipped into town to buy some summer shoes. On the way home the North Sea haar came rolling in and the temperature dropped by 10 degrees.

I stapled a sheet to the summerhouse then pinned the Norse Trilogy up for clear, bright photos:  a flat-shot of the whole piece and also close-up of the quilting detail. Next I printed out the entry forms and read to my horror that the entries MUST be submitted on a CD, accompanied by a printed photo. This contradicted the information elsewhere on the website that stated that pictures could be submitted via email. I soon discovered that overseas courier services are not as efficient as they claim to be if you live in North East Scotland. I was granted a one day extension to get my CD to Houston and UPS promised to deliver it on time. It was nerve-racking tracking the package as it hung around somewhere else in Texas for a while but it looks like it made it eventually. I learned an expensive lesson that I should become more organised with quilt show entries and there is no guarantee that it will even make it into the show.

My pride was injured this week when I studied the judging sheet from the Loch Lomond Show and I noted that I did not achieve "Excellent" for quilting technique, tension and construction.  I honestly wondered how it could have been improved!

After all of that stress, I decided to clear my in-tray of paperwork and discovered that I had forgotten to send in the information on my entry for FOQ so I quickly measured it up, wrote the blurb and rushed to buy first class stamps. This all seems to indicate that I am trying to do too much or that I really do need a personal assistant.

I was surprised to see a man peel the lids off butter in the local supermarket, dip his finger in and check the taste. He saw me watching him then turned around to open up another tub. It was revolting but sometimes I wonder if I will behave like that when I am old?

I made a start on an unusual customer quilt: it was a hand pieced hexagon quilt that is only 32 inches wide but 96 inches long, backed with a jacquard ready-made curtain. Its owner does not actually have a plan for it as she says that it does not match anything in her house. My machine can sew through army canvas, tweed, lame, and oilcloth but it really hated the jacquard so I had to quilt slowly. Several of the seams started opening up so I had to be very careful. Now that it has its glazed chintz binding it looks quite cute so maybe it will get taken on a picnic or laid at the end of a bed if it is lucky ;)

For two days I taught the class that the rest of the teaching staff dreads. It would be an understatement to say that several of the children had issues with behaviour... Frankly, it was a gruelling teaching experience and I was glad when I made it to 3.15pm on Friday.

When I got home I could see that our little black & white cat, Bitzi was not all well. She had been suffering with some sort of digestive problem for a while, not helped by consuming whole rabbits, fur and all. Over the past week she just started looking thin and scruffy so we took her to the vet surgery. They told us that she was very sick and the prognosis did not look good. It was upsetting that she was so weak that they found it difficult to take blood samples and set up a drip. We left her in intensive care and just had to hope that she would improve. Unfortunately, she did not pull through and we were all sad at her funeral in the garden. We remembered when she used to sit on the back of the sofa for family movie nights, the time that she accidentally got taken to work with my husband and how she could open doors by jumping up onto the handle. She was a wonderful, sweet natured family pet and we will really miss her L