Yee-Hah!!!

Wednesday was a day when the tension mounted as quilters from around the world awaited the news from Houston as to whether their quilts had been juried into the IQA competition or not. Throughout the day news filtered through via Facebook of rejection notices and surprisingly, many were from renowned quilters. By the evening I was hopeful that I may have been successful, applying the adage, "No news is good news". Just after 10.00pm, after obsessively checking my inbox every few minutes, I was thrilled to receive the email from Crystal Battarbee that began, "Congratulations! Your entry, Odin's Trilogy, has been selected as a finalist to be exhibited at the 2012 International Quilt Festival/Houston in the annual IQA fall Judged Show, Quilts: A World of Beauty.  This year's jury selected 54% of the submitted entries for display."

This is a huge honour for me: it has been a long held ambition to see my work exhibited at Houston and even more exciting since this is the first time that I have entered. The quilts have to arrive for judging by mid August so I have already packed them up and arranged for UPS to come and collect them in good time. I think it almost goes without saying that I will now be planning a trip to Texas at the end of October!

It was high time that I sent off "The Ostrych" for Festival of Quilts, Birmingham so they have also been rolled, wrapped and posted so I am relieved that everything has now been dispatched. I am considering leaving "Odin's Trilogy" in the USA as it is so expensive to post it back if I want to enter another show so I may ask one of my American quilting friends to be its custodian.

I finished piecing all of the 25 main blocks for "Oz Bewitched" and I hope to turn it into a top this week. Then I will have to come up with a border plan.

The school holidays have interfered with my normal sewing output. There was a trip to the swimming pool and another outing to the beach, complete with guitars, BBQ, raincoats, wellington boots, wind-break and shrimp net. It was enjoyable, despite the strong breeze that sent the wind-break flying across the beach and the crunchy texture of sand in the burgers. The children always enjoy collecting driftwood for the fire and toasting marshmallows on sticks; if it had been a hot day this would not been such fun.

We had a couple of guys in to clear some of the rampant weeds that have gone wild in our abnormally wet summer. They also brought in a mini digger to clear a corner that was always full of rubble. There is now a new space the size of an average garden on which Freya wants to keep micro pigs. A more economical plan would be to keep normal sized pigs that could be "replaced" with new piglets when they reach the size of porkers. She is not keen on that version of the plan...

I went back to Inverness at the weekend to complete the setup of a new long-armed quilter and despite, my inability to understand technical instructions, it all seemed to be working nicely when I left the new owner practising her loops & swirls.

The plan for the coming week is to get ready for FOQ, take the Yurt to "Speyfest" and to make sure that I have bought enough cat food for our trip to Denmark next week. Perhaps I should clarify that the cat is staying behind – we are not taking cat food with us ;)