Best Laid Plans and All That

I often wonder why I bother to make plans when they so frequently change or go pear-shaped! On a whim I decided to rustle up a simple quilt for my mother-in-law using squares that I cut long ago. Th idea was to test out the new longarm machine with its on-board computer. I am not at all sure that this has been my wisest investment. I bought it to do some really basic bread + butter customer quilts and bedspreads but it has been a bit of a struggle getting the software and hardware all co-operating. I got it all updated remotely by the Grace Company in Utah over the internet and it seemed to be doing what it was meant to except when it did things differently. It is probably my fault for not bothering to study the instructions - in the end it quilted some big spirals over the quilt and I just freehanded some swirls in the gaps that should not have been there. 

My attempts at photography for a magazine article proved to be a bit of a disaster because I had inadvertently set the pictures to a low resolution so it looks like I will have to take most of them again. That is a bit of a pain but even worse is that I can’t go back in time and re-shoot some of the quilts that are no longer here or beautifully snowy scenes from 3 years ago. 

Fergus decided to buck the trend for becoming a terrible teenager and start a year earlier on his 12th birthday. He did not behave very nicely and it all ended in tears with “the worst birthday ever”. At least that means things can only improve next year! He was very disappointed that we had another storm/powercut just before his friends were due to visit and play on the Xbox on Saturday so I had a last minute, expensive trip to the cinema with mountains of junk food at TGI Friday!

I completed online applications to be a quilt tutor at MQX Midwest and I am excited to report that it looks like I will be a member of the teaching faculty for Springfield, IL in 2014. Fenella wonders if I will meet “The Simpsons”? Surely there will be a drive-thru-do-nut shop!

As parcels continue to arrive or not be delivered on an almost daily basis in the run up to Christmas, I could not think what the enormous package was that was delivered by truck this week since most of the boxes contained books, slippers or music. Once I took off the outer cardboard, it was obvious that the coracle had been sent back from its UK tour. Now I just have to figure out how to store it tidily;)