Beads and Pirate Ships

    

http://www.bonniemccaffery.com/vidcasts/092.html

(link above to vidcast)

Contrary to my decision to concentrate on quilting, I was in school for two days again. One day I was the visiting Science "expert", ad-libbing lessons on the human circulatory system, magnets and the senses. Two days later I was muddling along in an infant class, reading pirate stories. 

Freya successfully applied for a tall-ship expedition from Amsterdam to Aberdeen with deaf and hearing teenagers from UK, France, Germany and The Netherlands. Since the trip is only a month away, there has been a flurry of sourcing sailing gear and making travel arrangements. I decided that I will fly out with her and visit a few museums in Amsterdam before waving her off on her adventure. 

We visited the Great Tapestry of Scotland at the Art Gallery in Aberdeen after shopping for Freya's thermals and were very impressed by the interpretation of the drawings and skilled stitching. There were many other enthusiastic visitors and it would be well worth a second visit to notice more of the clever details. 

I spent much of the rest of my time quilting a large, modern customer quilt and getting the a large double-wedding-ring ready to start next week. I am getting a steady stream of quilts in at the moment without even doing any advertising. I could probably give up school-teaching altogether but it just seems a prudent idea to keep my teaching skills up to date.

I decided that I would need to sew beads onto the leather skins that I have quilted in odd gaps of time that I have. Some of the tiny stone chips take around an hour to sew onto relatively small circles!

Bonnie McCaffrey posted a link to a video-cast interview of me that she filmed at FOQ last year. I actually thought that she may have forgotten about it… I come across as quite bonkers, to be honest. My accent is a peculiar mix of posh Radio 4 with the odd very Scots word. 

A Facebook friend posted a picture of the front cover of Generation Q Magazine which mentions the article about "The Quilt Quine's Hoose". I hope that they send me a copy because this magazine is not available in a digital format and it is not currently on sale in the UK. 

I tried to crack on with my E-Book on Friday but I felt a bit like a headless chicken, having not looked at it properly for some time. I will try to do far more with it this week although I have an additional project to squeeze in for a ruby wedding table runner and I am being tempted by some very funky Japanese linen that I want to use in a quick and simple "just because" quilt. Although I have seen a very clever square-in-a-square layout online that creates a secondary star pattern, with no instructions or dimensions, of course;)