Christmas is Coming!

I made the most of time in the workshop to work on my 3 children's Christmas quilts. I impressed myself by making bias binding and kept the curved edges on the apple core quilt and the wedge shapes on the tumbler quilt. I added a fancy embroidery stitch all the way around the binding which really made it look festive. I used a simple template of ripples on Fergus's tumbler quilt but I could not resist filling in every other row with ribbon candy loops. I had intended to use the new feather template on Freya's giant hexagon quilt so that I could show how it looked to folk who may like to use them on DIY quilts but there were too many iffy inset seams that I wanted to stitch down firmly so it got swirled all over instead. The wool wadding and dyed flannelette sheeting on the back should make these quilts really cosy.

It was definitely a productive week here as I sewed wide borders around all of the house blocks so that they can later be cut wonkily and I worked steadily on a 36 page brochure on the USA Yurt that I would like to publish in time for Houston. It will be a stand-in until the real book is completed and it made me work on all sorts of sections that were previously half finished. The only sticking point will be finding a printer in the USA that can make a booklet cheaply enough so that I can sell them for a sensible amount. I spent some time trying to upload my PDF onto one or two online publishers but it was not as straightforward as I hoped and yet again I found myself switching between the new Macbook and the cranky old PC.

After much deliberation, I applied for one of the primary school teaching jobs. One minute I felt pleased by my decision then the next I felt sheer panic. Mo did a tarot card reading over coffee on Wednesday morning which was uncannily apt: it suggested that I should not worry about making a career change as everything would just work out how it was meant to be. Obviously, I don't intend to plan my life around a light-hearted tarot reading but it was a relief to be "told" to just relax and see what pans out.

My latest quest is to invent a recipe for crunchy, cheesy, seeded crackers. I have become fond of gourmet crispbreads that are delicious but expensive. My first attempt looked like overdone pitta-bread, tasting rather like dog biscuits so for my next batch I may just use a recipe that I have for canine treats and see if that works out better. If that fails then I will have to accept that the shop ones are perfect as they are and simply get on with the mass-production of bias binding to keep myself busy.