Monday Mystery Solo Robin

August 17, 2020

Morning folks, another week another Monday. For me Mondays start way too early, and we are getting to the point where my four footed teenager thinks this is too early too. He likes his sleep and his bladder is now up to the job too. For now I am that horrible parent who gets you up early even though you don’t have anything you need to do. Having shared the pain of a Monday morning lets see what we need to make this week.

I think we have made good headway on the techniques, and this week is a repeat. Ithink this was one of our first few challenges and I wonder if we can come up with some new ideas for this time.

Flying Geese

Last time I foundation pieced a wavy line of them. I would like to make them a different shape this time, but how far can I change them and still have them look like geese. I guess I need to do some thinking and drawing before tomorrow’s class. Next question, how many of these do we need and how big are they.

Add 3″ to one side of your quilt.

Hmm, that does restrict my options a little I had wondered if I could do short rows radiating but I think that might be tricky in 3″. Not impossible though. No need to fill the whole border with geeese either. I am sort of tempted, fiddly bit could be interesting and different to last time. I think I might go and lie in a bath and consider options.

Harvest has started

August 16, 2020

It’s that season again, fruit and veg is all getting ripe together. That means lots of picking and preparing. This year I have decided to actually try bottling some of the fruit, starting with apples. This started with me to ring a recipe to make spiced crab apple pie filling. As I don’t eat crab apple jelly this sounded really appealing. It sounds like the time in the bottle helps mellow the crab apples, and I love the idea of storing the apples on a shelf not the freezer. Yes I do know what I need to invest in is an apple rack, but that won’t be this year. So today we settled down and tried a first batch of bottled apple. It actually wasn’t as time consuming as I had feared, and we made it a family project which helped. I am very impressed by rinsing the cut apple in brine to keep its colour. I had always used lemon juice and that sort of works, brine is amazing. We have some really beautiful stewed apple from the bit that didn’t fit in the jars. We only wanted to process full jars.

Unfortunately,  I didn’t get the cooking stage quite right and they overflowed. So although the jars have sealed there is air in them so they won’t keep, this week will involve apple crumble I think. Possibly some more stewed apple too. It has however taught me a lot. I understand what I need to look for and I think how to avoid the problem in future. I also think I will use smaller pieces so they will pack nicer too.

It looks like the rhubarb season is pretty much over but the last of It is stashed in the freezer. Last year’s saw us through so fingers crossed this will too. We would miss our rhubarb icecream. This week is Tets birthday so expect a lot of baking, I am hoping to make it special despite us being at home.

Other than baking I have made good progress with my longarming. Possibly too much actually. Ruler work is hard on my hands, but it can also be quite satisfying too. To change how I was moving I also made progress with my knitting. Yup, I am still working on my lockdown scarf. I need to keep plugging away at it if I want to wear it this winter.

Fenrir has had an amazing weekend. He is really starting to understand his rules and so is getting more freedom. For the first time he has had run of most of the downstairs. He managed it really well,  it chasing the cats, not going up the stairs. His only struggle was excitement, which is an on going issue and completely understandable for his age, especially when lockdown has messed up his socialization so much. It is frustrating but we just have to work with it. I suspect it has given me a better appreciation  of how children must be struggling. Also how the parents must struggle, I am guessing the overexcitement with anything new is probably common across species. My hunch is he will be a bit behind where we wouldhave expected for his age but he will get there eventually.

I guess I shouild try to get some sleep, I need to be up and with it in the morning for the next step in the quilt.

What a relief

August 13, 2020

It may not be a lot cooler but for me it’s now just the right side of the line. I got so much more don’t today. The quilt on the frame is pretty repetitive but progressing well. I am listening to my audio books whole I work and not cooking my ears. I love my headphones but the do get horribly hot.

Fenrir was much better today as well. He was calmer and walked much more politely. I think the lockdown has slowed up his education, just like the human children. He has missed anlot of socialisation and gets horribly over excited when he sees new people or dogs. At least he is now calming down faster. We are able to give him more freedom as he makes better decisions.

I admit I was still too hot to consider eating lunch but dinner was possible which was nice. Hopefully tomorrow will be even better. I love being productive, feeling too ill to do anything is just boring. At least the hot weather let me get lots of laundry done.

Sorry folks

August 11, 2020

Todays blog is short, it’s hot. Yup I suspect you had noticed, but I did feel I should mention. Most of what I wanted to do today hasn’t happened including quilting, lunch and dinner. I have taken the cats out on to the nearly cat proof balcony a couple of times, and waters the dog. I am now going to play games with friends and test this months gin.

Monday Mystery Solo Robin

August 10, 2020

I have to start by saying I think I just deleted the weirdest spam yet. For bitumen. I am so sorry if quilters were now planning some weird outdoor quilt structure but I do not allow advertising in my comments. I am somewhat skeptical that would really attract much business on any site. Does spam really bring in sales anyway? I guess maybe for the dodgier products and services. For more practical products, I can’t see it. I for one would actively avoid a company that tried to advertise that way.

Well enough of that, we have important business to do. We have quilts to make. This week our technique is,

Caveman

This is a term I learned from Ricky Tims. It is an improv technique often with curves. Mind you in the theme of all technicalities count if you want to applique ston axes that would also be caveman. Our border instruction is

Add 4″ to two opposite sides of your quilt

Hmm, a bit snug maybe but we have some options there. I have seen caveman done in 2″ so all things are possible. This should lead to some fun discussions in tomorrows class. Sorry I have to run now, there is a dog in need of a walk.

Too hot

August 9, 2020

Far too hot, and no going out to hide in air conditioning. Still showers are possible, and watering the food gardens andnthe dog gets me a bit cooler. Unfortunately I had baking planned for today and a roast dinner. A friend’s birthday is this week and I wanted to bake for an afternoon tea. I will distance deliver tomorrow and there will be a virtual afternoon tea Tuesday. I have a lemon biscuit recipe I found online, which I made and I tried a second batch with lime. It seems lime is a much more subtle flavour so I will need to play with it to get it right, but I think it will be great if I can get it right.i had planned to make a quiche as well but after the first rounds it was just way too hot to keep the oven on. I am thinking salads and cold meat for the next few meals assuming the weather holds. Of course now I have planned for hot weather it will probably snow next week. It is a talent honest.

I would appreciate cooler weather, I have a lot of quilting I want to get on with. The new studio is a lot cooler than my old one, but even so there are limits. Of course quilting is preferable to piecing in the summer, who want to sit next to a hot iron atm?

Well with that said, why Yes I am distracted by the heat, I  am going to try sleeping. I wish you all luck I am sure you are all suffering with me. I would rather we were all comfortable but I guess suffering together has something going for it too.

Food glorious food

August 8, 2020

Oddly this has been a great food week. I thought Wacken was going to be the great week but just shows what I know. The start of the week wasn’t promising. I just wasn’t inspired to make anything. You know how you get that stuck in a rut feeling and don’t want anything you can think of? I went searching innthe freezer and found Ikea meatballs. I haven’t got many left and I can’t get more but this was exactly the emergency they were waiting for. I even have the sauce to go with them. I need to find the recipe, I know Ikea posted it when lockdown started so I should be able to make them from scratch.

I also discovered some pre cut pieces of chicken leg while I was hunting, which made for a very quick low effort risotto this week too. I never knew the stuff hiding at the back of the freezer could be so inspiring. Friday night is steak night twice a month, so needs very little thought, but this Friday we went one better. We had takeaway pizza for lunch. Maybe that doesn’t excite you, but we haven’t had food I didn’t make since February so for us it was a big event. Our local pub has a large garden and an outdoor pizza oven. It is very well set up to minimise contact and possible risks. We only felt happy trying it because we had been able to chat to the owner. I really hope the personal touch will become more common and more valued, because I really do appreciate it. Fenrir also thought this was amazing. A bonus walk, to a new place (well all of 10 feet new and exciting), and pizza. It was lovely to have food I hadn’t had to cook, and it was really good food. Having eaten at the pub several times I am not at all surprised it was good. I don’t think it will be a regular thing but I will try and get another before the weather turns bad, after all it helps a local business right. I am just doing my civic duty, eating pizza

Latest quilting project

August 6, 2020

Recently I have mostly been posting piecing, but it’s about time I shared the latest bit of quilting I did. I showed this one in progress but it is now just awaiting binding and a hanging sleeve. I guess I should also think about where I am going to hang it. The top hung over the mantle piece in my old sewing room for years, I think this time it will be in the longarm room. I guess it could do in the sitting room but I am not sure it really fits there. Well I have time to ponder. It does still need the binding. This one is pretty small, I would say about a meter square. That encouraged me to go pretty dense on the quilting. Also having been hung as a top it had distorted quite a lot. The double wool wadding and dense quilting had mostly flattened it. I am sort of tempted to try blocking it. I think I could find space although probably only on hard floors. I probably need to look up ways to do that, meanwhile here are the photos. Black on black quilting isn’t the easiest to get photos of sorry.

Home from my holiday

August 4, 2020

OK, before we start, my holiday is largely in my head. Wacken this year cancelled a while ago, Germany was very on the ball with their restrictions. However, following massive fan support they decided to go virtual. If we couldn’t go to them they were coming to us. So I prepared. I tried to get as many elements of Wacken as I could here. So read this post, with that in mind.

Wacken is a music festival in North Germany and my annual holiday. Sleeping in a van, no not a motorhome a van, for 5 days in an often muddy field is my idea of fun. There is music great food and nice people. It is a break from reality. The flight out was great no long trip to the airport and no queues. I did miss my smoked salmon breakfast, due to a bread crisis that caught up with us a day later. Ialso missed seeing all the other people heading for Wacken. Though once the event started we did get to see some of the cars arriving on site with the W.O.A. tape on the backs. I love that. My in flight film this year was Bloodshot. The newish Vin Diesel film. I was expecting brain in a bucket entertainment and well it delivered. I hope it was based on a graphic novel, I really aught to look it up. Every year I buy a couple of films for flights and downtime. If the weather is difficult it really helps. I also took my knitting which had been neglected recently, nice to get back to it.

Setting up camp seemed to go very smoothly this year. A new coffee table arrived bang on time and looks like it will be more dog proof. It will provide a place to hide my quilt cards too. I may like little antique tables but with a large dog modern oak has it’s place too. After setting up camp we headed out to wristbands food and drink and merchandise. The food and drink delivery was less than 5 min after camp was done, pertty perfect. I actually decided not to wear my wristband, and to keep it full length, maybe I can add it to a quilt. Security this year was much more relaxed despite the much bigger audience. I guess checking so many countries would have been hard. Perhaps if I had been on the video I would have made a different call.

Food and drink is a huge part of the Wacken experience. For me pig on an essential part of the festival, as is black honey icecream. The pig on a stick was really tricky, but I managed to get some pork belly strips that were pre marrinated and they were a decent stand in. Of course that also meant we needed a BBQ, which we had had delivered a couple of weeks ago but only set up for this event. Black honey icecream was surprisingly easy, although I really need a different honey to get the true effect, still it was close enough.

This year there was only one band on a at a time, which meant I could try to see all of them, some I didn’t stay for mind you. It is the joy of Wacken, they really do try to bring us a huge range of bands, which means most people find somthing they like. It also means most people will find something they don’t. The bands also started later this year, 4pm German time. So if there hadn’t been a dog with me I could have had a lie in.

Wednesday kicked off with their battle of the bands entries. A mixed bunch as you might exect from different countries, but some of them were really pretty good. I hope some will play full sets next yeear. The next that interested me was Motor Sister. I was sort of hoping for a female Motorhead cover band. I was out of luck but they were OK, probably not a band I would seek out but fine to listen to. They were followed by Rage who I really like and I enjoyed a lot. Handily they then put on 2 bands I am not keen on just in time for dinner and doggie play time. It is another advantage of gaps in the schedule. Although it can mean meals at some odd times. The highlight of day one for me was Doro, filmed at one of her drive in concerts. She has done quite a few of these this summer and it looks like they have worked pretty well. I have reached the age where the idea of a comfy seat and a roof at a festival does have an appeal. I hadn’t realised that her bassist would have changed for these concerts. While most of her band is European her bassist is American and thus stuck with the travel ban. It wasn’t the same without him, but still a lot of fun.

We had an assortment on bands taking us to after midnight. Fenrir got to come and see some of them, he didn’t seem overly impressed. Of course being a dog he follows the you are happy so I am happy principle but the cats actively enjoy a lot of the bands we do so got far more out of the first Wacken they were able to atttend. It also suited them far better than haing a cat sitter, Fenrir has no idea such terrible things even happen.

Thursday, being another relatively late start for the bands, I had time to finish watching my film (short flight I often don’t finish it on the plane) and do some more of my knitting. I did a lot of knitting over the festival. I generally take a small craft project with me and it is surprising how much you can do in the little bits of down time. I admit I haven’t tried taking knitting in. Not sure if even circular needles would be deemed safe. As I said above this year security was very lax so I had more options. I got a surprise fun band early Thursday, Deine Cousine. They did their set from a boat in Hamburg. I knew Hamburg had had a hard time in the war, I didn’t know a lot of it is really striking architechture. The band said they wanted to show us their city and they did that, they also taught me a new word unkaputtbar. It is just a very satifying word. They are a pop punk kinda band, good on a summer day when they seem to have just as much sun as we did. The highlight of Thursday was Alice Cooper. I wondered if he might perform from his home studio, he has been working there with his daughters, but of course that would limit his stage effects which would not be him at all. So instead they showed a previous Wacken performance which was great, and I had a much better view this time around.

Friday, scheduled for pig on a stick day. The weather looks reasonable (better in Wacken proper typical huh) and it is time to give the BBQ a test drive. Annoyingly I caught the first band who I wasn’t impressed by then missed Thundermother who I really wanted to see again. I think they will be available to re-watch, maybe that is a mission for this weekend. I then had a run of bands that didn’t quite float my boat and all the bands I did want to see at the time I needed to be BBQing. Fortunately I could take the “stage” with us and set up outside. Iron Maiden were good to eat to, then Beyond the Black and Blind Guardian each played the VR stage. I called it the magic stage. I am sure I picked that up from something someone said and it does fit the stage. They have an indoor space with lots of technicians screens and lights. So they can make the stage do things that are not usually possible. They also could make it be either of the 2 main Wacken stages complete with crowd and the whole site. I guess many years of footage of all that gives you plenty to work from. Some bands did little more than a backdrop and some pyrotechnics, others really played with the system. If they do reuse this next year, and there are suggestions they will, I will be very interested to see what bands come up with.

Saturday is of course the highlight of the show, with the headline band. This year that was Sabton. I had very high hopes for what they would do with the virtual stage. While I liked what they achieved I think there is more that could be done, of course this was a first and at short notice so I need to not have too high expectations. What can I say Sabaton set the bar really high normally so I am not entirely to blame. I did love making the whole site a battle field, with aircraft and lots of tanks. For those of you not familiar with Sabaton they mostly sing about real history, the history of war. It is accurate accounts and often not flattering to the countries involved. I have heard people say they glorify war, I would suggest you listen to all the lyrics not just the titles. Sabaton usually perform with a tank or two on onstage. Obviously with the current travel issues and time constraints they were limited in what they could bring with them to Germany. Heck, I am pretty impressed they got themselves there. So rather than two physical tanks they had twenty virtual ones. I was also stunned that in the rather small stage they had brought real pyrotechnics. I imagine the band must have got rather warm. I have been to enough of their shows to know how hot those little balls of fire are and the band were surrounded at close range. It did look good though  I was also impressed with how well they worked the virtual crowd. I know that sounds really weird, but some bands really could work the crowd despite in not actually being there. I wonder if it is in part how sure the band is that the audience is there somewhere and how the audience will react. When it is hard to not applaud between songs and impossible to stay seated when they encourage you to bounce they are getting something right. It has to be really hard for the bands but a surprising number seemed to manage to suspend disbelief and play to the massive crowd they couldn’t see. As is traditional for the last day of the festival the first bands for next year were announced. I can’t say there is anything that really grabs me yet but I know they will balance things before I get there so I am not worried. I like that they kept that tradition despite the odd circumstances.

Sunday we fly home and usually stay up late to book next years tickets, they sell out fast. This time there are no tickets to sell. They were gone before the festival started and mostly to people had tickets for 2020. Wacken posted to say that it wouldn’t be right if the show didn’t finish with a server crash so launched the first of next years merchandise. I doubt sales managed to crash the server but it amused me. On the subject of merchandise, my Sabaton shirt arrived today. I ordered it after the show on Saturday and they had a warning that there would be a delay in shipping, yet here it is. I suspect I order one of the most common sizes and that meant they were holding stock of it, but I still think that is impressive when it is coming from Sweden.

Now, back to work. I have a class at 2.30. I hope this gives you a feel of the fun and connectedness a virtual festival can achieve when people are prepared to give it a go and suspend reality for a while. I loved it and it really did feel like a holiday.

Monday mystery solo robin

August 3, 2020

Well I am “back” and feeling much better for my holiday. I will get a post about it up later but for now I will crack on with work. It is nice to actually feel ready to work, it had been a while. I really need that 5 day holiday each year. Yes even if it looks a lot like staying at home. I woke up at a good time, thanks to the cat not waking me at 5am. Ready for a productive day. I did have to do one piece of work on holiday. My dog ate our quilt cards. Well OK he only ate some of them, but those may have been some we needed so I printed a new set. I have to admit having them on paper had been getting annoying. So I ordered some print at home business cards and now we have a nice more robust set. I will work harder at keeping these away from the dog. Of course these are not loaded to avoid ones we have already had, so we may get some repeats. I will redraw if we get a technique too recent though.

SO, this weeks technique is,

Log cabin

Ohhh, I like those, a lot. Of course don’t forget to consider out side of the box answers to it. Lets see how big a space we have to play,

Add a total of 12″ to two opposite sides of your quilt.

Nice, I think my good mood has passed on to the cards that is a great combination. Scope to have some fun there. Don’t forget we have a meeting tomorrow to play with ideas for this weeks border. It is as 2.30pm on google meet. Comment here to get an invite to the meeting.