Chavvin' Awa

In this part of the North East of Scotland a common greeting is “Fit Like?”, meaning “How are you doing?” and the standard reply is “Chavvin’ Awa” which means just getting along fine. This was just such a week of chugging along, making generally good progress on my projects. 

I accompanied Nell’s class on a visit to a larger primary school to attend an animation workshop. I found this experience quite frustrating actually since the equipment was not all working properly and I soon found that my IT skills were probably more advanced than the course leader. Mostly I muddle through computer stuff, figuring it out in the end. I am now a fairly confident spreadsheet user and this week I downloaded a simple patchwork font and used a basic painting program to fill it with colourful patches. I wondered whether to use that sort of font for my book chapters but the process was a bit long-winded. I really don’t think I have enough time and patience to design a whole new alphabet with fabric filled patches like on birthday cards…

It rained almost constantly all week and everyone I met wished it would snow instead as that would at least mean that the light would be brighter. It was finally dry enough on Sunday for me to hang my Peppered Solids quilt on the field gate to take an outside photo. I was very glad to have my adhoc photo lights when I spent a day setting up photos for the opening chapters on sewing equipment. I am still not totally sure whether they are exciting enough to use but I have at least made sure that they are all set to 300dpi for printing. I am sure that some publishers must use stylists to fill jam jars casually with pins and ribbons so I hope that a few of mine are passable!

I tackled an enormous customer quilt in aubergines and taupes, free-handing an Amish type of swirl all over it. It was so big that it took a couple of days before it even got rolled on enough to clear the floor! 

The Beltane/Spring totem was pieced this week and I found that it went together faster than the autumn one as I had got back into the routine of alternating the curved joins. I intend to do the berry-coloured Summer one next and see if I can get them all quilted this week.  Considering how long it took to sew the beads onto the Imbolc set of 3, I really need to order the leather skins and some more lamé for the remaining 9 totems!! However, I also need to factor in time to do each of the book projects step by step so they can be photographed. Perhaps I should consider banning myself from the computer for a couple of weeks so I can catch up ;)