Please don’t be upset.

I decided what I wanted for this week’s border. It is a combination of several of the ideas I had yesterday. It is from my book, but it is also smaller so I could use the papers again, though I am still not thrilled with their accuracy. I also went with the wonky dancing idea.

As it was only one border it was very fast. The wonky bits on each block are totally improvised. Which I am sure made things faster and was a technique I have wanted to try for a while. It wasn’t fabric efficient, but I enjoyed it sufficiently that I am now planning a whole quilt based on this. So this simple little border may prove to be one of the most useful for me. Well until the next good one I have decided that for this quilt I am going to try and throw my starting block as far off center as I can. So I now have a head start on picking where new pieces fit. Just wait we will get a run of add all round now I have made that decision.

Yesterday our monthly meat and fish delivery arrived. As it needs to be cold that delivery can’t just sit in quarrentine so it was all washed and put away, and a thought hit me, once upon a time we didn’t need to clean shopping. That seems really weird to me now. I did wonder if that was just me but asking around I have a few friends who know feel the same, I guess there is some truth in those research papers on how fast we form habits. It also shocked me how long it took. 50 minutes from delivery to put away. That’s as long as going to the shop and buying it used to take. In a similar vein, you may have seen the image on social media saying the worst purchase of 2019 was a 2020 planner. I disagree, I have never had so many things I needed to keep track of. Purchases, delivery dates, and really important when I need to clear things from quarentine to normal storage. That’s besides the dog log which was why I actually bought it. Maybe the people who make the images have a much better memory than I do.

The penultimate folding chair decided to throw me on the floor this morning. When the previous one did that I rolled beautifully and was fine, this time I was thrown the other way and hit my shoulder on a wall then a floor. I can’t reccomed that as a way to start your day, and it means we need more chairs. Not the best timing, but we had picked some we liked last time we were in Ikea. Thing is my dining room is still full of my stock, fabric threads and books, so the dining table isn’t set up and not ready for real dinning chairs. So I thought I would buy a few more folding chairs to ride us over. Well, it seems everyone has been buying folding chairs. Maybe for all the kids now studying at home? Yes I may be clutching at straws, but the whole family working from home was the best I could come up with. I tried lost of chairs, some I didn’t even like in the hopes of getting 4 folding chairs. Once it looked like I would be paying as much as for proper dinning chairs I decided that OK it wasn’t really convenient but I would buy the chairs we want for the dining room. Or not, those are discontinued, and second best are discontinued in any colour I would want. Sigh. Next try, Argos had some I liked the look of, and well if they aren’t great we will make them our only when we have guests chairs. Yes they really had them, yes they would deliver and in less than a week, sounds promising…..over 45 minutes to check out. I swear even with Argos, not the quickest store, it would have been faster to drive there, but in store and bring them home. I can only assume people are doing a lot of shipping. Still they are ordered, the delivery planned and hopefully they won’t throw me on the floor. The old chairs were plastic folding chairs over 20 years old I think, so I can’t claim they owed me anything, well maybe a softer resignation.

Monday mystery solo robin

Well it is that time again. Fenrir has had his moring cuddles and toilet break so we can find out what our challenge for this week is. He was exceptionally cuddly this morning and that is something I am trying to encourage so he got extra attention. Now he can have another nap before his morning walk and I can come here. I really need to either print a proper set of these cards or buy another pack of the print at home business cards. Shuffling paper is really tricky. The border this week will be,

Add 6″ to one side of your quilt

Yup, I know we have had that one. When I draw a duplicate I redraw if it is still a duplicate we get it anyway. Today I drew 2 we have had before. As time goes on that will happen more I guess. Believe it or not the sizes do go down to 3″ and I think up to 10″. The technique this week is,

Squares and triangles

Before Rachel asks, yes I think distorted squares (aka diamonds) would totally count as her starting square is also distorted. I think this sounds to me like a few quite traditional blocks this week. The side I will add to is 39.5″ so I have space for six 6″ blocks. There are so many that fit the squares and triangles theme I could easily make them all different. or I could scale the blocks down a little and have room to put some extra black around them, maybe even bounce them up and down. Hmm, that could be fun and I could use the papers to make the half square triangles again. I could raid blocks from my book, those are 6″ and several fit the desctiption, although so long as I have some squares and some triangles it all counts. Oh oh I could do scrappy stars. I have seen lots of those and I really like them but I have never made any. That would be a great change of pace too. There was me thinking this was a simple one now I have a head full of ideas again. Sigh, maybe I am alergic to simple.

Wow, just look at this

I am pretty pleased with how my Monday mystery solo robin is coming along, but look at this stunner.

I really love how differnt this is to mine, even when we both chose flying geese as our foundation option. Also remember this quilt is based on a diamond. That adds a whole other dimension. I am looking forward to seeing where Rachel takes this next. Tomorrow we find out what our next challenge is, I can’t wait. Yes I really do find out at the point I write the blog post.

What an amazing day.

Today has been a bit slow but we have achieved things. Let’s start at the end. Tet and I are both out at concerts. Well OK in at concerts. The band he was due to see live tonight are playing online, and upstairs. I am watching Sabaton downstairs. That’s a proper Saturday night. Very reasonable bar prices at this venue and a great selection. I think I may be seeing another band here tomorrow night. The people sitting in front of me are a bit annoying at times, but that happens everywhere, and I can at least try moving either me of the cats. Yes my cats like Sabaton too.

We started the day with a cooked breakfast, the meat subscription I found does really nice bacon, not too salty, not bad for pot luck. Their sausages are good too. It’s not something we can do often but that just makes it nicer when we can. We then just sat for a while, it’s not something we do often and again, it was fun and I progressed my knitting. When I saw that we were going to get stuck at home I decided to knit a scarf hood cape thing. It’s a large conical tube all simple knitting but on small needles and in a fine wool. I am a very slow knitter but I am hoping I may get to wear it this winter.

Having rested we then had another look at the utility room light. It turned out the fitting itself had failed so we have now replaced the florescent tube with an LED one. Now we can see when we take Fenrir outnst night. I have good night vision so it wasn’t too bad for me but Tet does the last toilet break at night and has poor night vision, so it was actually pretty dangerous. Even using some of our camping lanterns.

After that we moved on to the garden. Earlier in the year a friend came and helped me plant 70 trees. They will form abother section of hedge along the side of the orchard. They are all traditional English hedgerow trees, and several also provide foraging which I like a lot. As they are small and this has been the driest April we need to water them. As you can imagine that is quite a task, but with two of us it isn’t too bad and I can get the raised beds watered at the same time.

Our rhubarb is going crazy, so tomorrow and for the next few days there will be rhubarb crumble. I would have made more fool but I can’t get cream atm. So the next batch I harvest will become a rhubarb cake. We also have lots of spinach and radishes. I love fresh radishes, so no hardship dealing with those.

I did miss my exercise group because of all this, I hope they will forgive me. All in all I think today was a win. There are things I wanted to do that didn’t happen, but that’s pretty normal, maybe I will get to them tomorrow.

Some things just stick in my head.

Today has been pretty productive until I quilted three areas I meant to leave unquilted. I have unpicked two of them and will try to do the third tomorrow. I have trained the dog, done my exercise and flattened the cardboard box mountain. While longarming I have time to think, not always a good thing, and I am still bothered by the lady I heard on the radio earlier this week. She was saying with lockdown she has no life because all her routines are gone. She went on to list things she isn’t doing any more, and yes one of them I can’t see a way fo her to do from home. The others though I can see ways to do, and that is what bothers me. If you have things you love doing see if there is a way to keep doing them. I admit some are easier than others. I am really missing my aquafit classes and unless I buy a swimming pool I can’t do them at home. I can do low impact knee friendly exercise videos which are surprisingly similar. Want to exercise with friends, call them, message them, use a video link if you like. You can do it. Another one I thought of that will be hard to do at home (unless you already have a lot of equipment) is pottery. Maybe air drying clay or salt dough would work? I am not a potter or sculpter so I really don’t know. My real point is if you want to do something at a certain time each week, you probably can. Probably even with others if that is what you want.

That lead on to my second thought. I am not at all sure when we will really be able to have quilting classes regularly in person again. So I need to start looking at other routes. To that end we will be ordering me a web cam, I assume that will take a little while to arrive due to current demand. After that I have a couple of thoughts. I would like to do a more informal regular meeting. Where quilters can catch up with and inspire each other while getting their mostly sewing issues sorted out. I think it is also worth looking at doing more indepth taught technique classes. Those will be trickier but I think can work with the meeting style interactive system. I know it would be more efficient to record set lessons and sell them repeatedly but I much prefer tailoring my teaching to the people taking the class on the day. I would rather people stop and ask a question right there, so some sort of live lesson seems a better option to me.

I would love to know what you think about online classes. Would you be interested in an interactive class like this? It won’t be quite the traditional formal lesson, it will be more the way I teach in person. Would that be good or just too weird. Am I nuts thinking this could work?

Ooops

Well I had a cunning plan. I knew (ha ha ha) I would finish this weeks borders yesterday so I figured I would delay blogging to post that. Then I didn’t finish and it got late and I played with a dog. The plan was good though honest.

Despite today being Thorsday and thus the day I clean all our floors, I somehow decided that wasn’t enough housekeeping type stuff and unpacked the last of my boxes of clothes. I also discovered 4 more magical mystery boxes from the packers. Those went back in the cupboard and can wait for the next random burst of enthusiasm, at least all of my clothes are now hung up. The reason those boxes had sat was they are the hanging clothes and those I wear much less. I was missing a couple of items I actually wanted, and those haven’t turned up, which is a little worrying. On the other hand I rediscovered some items I hadn’t missed but have put straight into service. Before we moved I did slim down my clothes a lot so I just assumed what I had now was what I had.  Those 2 projects took all morning.

This afternoon I have finished this weeks part of my quilt. It was my 5th idea that made it this time. I knew before I even saw this weeks instructions that I wanted something easier than last week. Ideally less pieces. My first idea was to put 1″ of black all the way around then a border of half square triangles then another 1″ of black. The sides dont divide by 2 so that would have been a pain. OK so next I thought foundation piece 2″ spikes for the space between the 2 black strips. Nope that’s a lot of pieces again. Well maybe a scrappy border made on till roll of all the bits I have hanging about, but then I couldn’t be sure to get triangles. Then I had the idea to use plain borders with pieced triangle corners. I nearly started drafting spiral log cabin triangles and remebered again lots of pieces. Then a free gift from a quilt show came to mind and led to these borders.

The free gift was papers for making 1.5″ finished half square triangles from 5″ squares of fabric. It worked pretty well and was certainly quick. The accuracy I would call acceptable. They aren’t spot on but for quick and dirty they are great. Of course they aren’t actually the right size for what I needed but a tiny border fixed that issue. So there we go, Thursday and I have this weeks borders done. Tomorrow I can do a bit of quilting then I can grab one of my other in progress projects for a couple of days. Not sure which one, but trust me I have no shortage to choose from. It would be handy if I could finish something and empty a box for this quilt but that may be a little too ambitious for 2 days. I guess I can have a look.

Geese finally done.

I am officially all goosed out for a while. I am just not doing any more. I am thinking this weeks Monday mystery parts might still be foundation pieced but I am not totally committed to that yet. Sort of hoping I come up with an alternative. I do really like both the ideas I have had so far though. Oh decisions, decisions. This is where I have got to so far.

Yes the geese are wiggly. They were meant to look like gentle waves but I think I was a little to subtle. They are fun and they fit the theme so I am going to declare them a win. I do think they are quite busy so my plan for this week is to calm things down a bit.

Yesterday I decided it was time I started the car. It hasn’t moved in over a month and that isn’t really healthy for them. It started perfectly, ah the joys of 2 batteries and a slightly newer car, but what surprised me is the brakes had already started to stick. So I drove it back and forth on the drive to losen things up. Let it get warm so it shifted the coolant about and called it good for another month. Typically as these things go the car will get to move today. The lightbulb has gone in the utility room and is an odd length tube. Which we need, as it is where the dog has his crate and of course it is a size we can’t find to have delivered. Screwfix claim they have set up a no contact collection serivce. So Tet will give the car a run and pick up a light tube. We are making cleaning plans and decontamination plans before even starting the mission. This new world takes a lot more thinking than the old one did. I did consider going along, mostly so we could take the dog in the car, but really I don’t need the risk. Yes we will have to retrain after lockdown, so be it. Staying well is the most critical thing. The light bulb we need now, the car happy dog can wait.

I also grabbed a pair of jeans yesterday. I keep hearing people say they have only work elasticated trousers since working from home so jeans won’t fit any more. Yes, I am aware that’t not quite the cause and effect Anyway I am pleased to report my jeans do still fit, they are a but loose but not terrible yet. I will keep up the good food and daily exercise and hope to have shrunk out of this size by the time I am released.

Monday Mystery Solo Robin.

Well thanks to you guys I know for sure it is Monday again. I hope you made better choices than me last week and had fun. Please please send me some pictures I am dying to see what you are making.

If you haven’t started yet but would like to join in the fun the first step it to make yourself a quilt block, or find an orphan block hanging around your sewing space. It needs to have straight sides and I reccomend making it at least 9 inches on at least one side. No it doesn’t need to be a square. Once you have a block pick a week and follow those instructions. Yes you can do the weeks in any order. Yes you can do more than one week in a week if you have just joined. Yes you can take more than a week on any instruction and pick back up when it works for you. The main rule of this event is all technicalities count. These instructions will keep appearing while we have these periods of staying home. No I won’t stop just because the goverment changes the rules, I will keep going while we are stuck. Yup I realise I may end up making more than one quilt I am sort of considering getting a second on the go so I can pick week to week which to work on. I admit that may make things just too crazy but I am sure there is a limit to how much I can fit in one quilt.

So with all that said, we had better have this weeks mission hadn’t we, firstly the technique this week is,

Pieced triangles

Our border size instruction is,

add 4″ to at least 2 adjacent sides of your quilt

Hmm, well those are interesting aren’t they. Pieced triangles, does that mean each triangle is pieced or the border is made of triangles pieced together? Yes, either or both. All technicalities count remember. For me I need to have more than one triangle, as it is a plural in the instruction but other than that we have a wide open instruction. I think I like having the choice of how many sides to add, although that will mean more thinking. I am sort of tempted to go all the way around kinda like a reset, but at the same time will that be too reguar. Oh decisions decisions. I do know it will NOT be more flying geese. I really need to give those a rest, but feel free to do some if you aren’t over dosed on them as they are indeed triangles.

Now I need to get this up so those who go to work have something to think about in boring meetings. I consider that a public service, providing distractions. Have fun and let me know how you are getting on.

Oh well I tried

I had thought I would easily finish the second border today but the weather got me. I spent a lot of time working on the garden and preparing the produce. Oh, that and working on training Fenrir. We were warned that about 6 months dogs forget everything they have learned. That isn’t totally acurate but he certainly has needed to go back a few steps and have some intensive guidance. Still something to keep us busy I suppose.

I was pushing to finish but I have realised it is Sunday, and that means a nice long bath so I will have to catch up tomorrow. I think I made a mistake picking something I have done a lot of recently. I haven’t got over that never ending run of flying geese yet so doing more hasn’t really been much fun. When something feels like a chore it takes so much longer. I am very pleased with the effect and honestly nothing else I consdered would have worked as well, but it doesn’t make them more exciting.

The geese on the other side are different colours and will fly upwards, well as the quilt is currently hung upwards. The quilt is coming out much wilder than I had imagined. I somehow expected more black and less colour. Part of the joy of this process is not knowing what the final quilt will look like, so I will go with the flow and see what happens. I think quilting this will be a bit of a challenge, glad I won’t have to worry about that for a while.

Now I am going to cut this short and head to that bath. Time to pretend I am on holiday and have nothing better to do than relax. It’s funny really, my regular annual holiday has no where to bath at all, yet I associate holidays and baths. Never claimed my brain made sense.

Well there’s a thing

The last few days I have really felt out of sorts. Somehow I couldn’t get my act together. We have wondered if I was run down, or sick. Both seem unlikely I have been resting and exercising and I haven’t seen anyone who could infect me in what 5 weeks.  This morning I think I have found the issue. It’s my dog. Seriously thats seems to be the whole thing. Addmittedly I have limited data points and I am not an impartial wittness but I think thats what has been throwing me. Little (ha ha ha ) man had an upset tummy for a few days, which turned out to be he had eaten a bit of cloth probably from a toy. Which meant I went from coming down in the morning and having a cuddle with him to coming down in the morning to a crate of poo and a crazy dog. Doesn’t sound like a massive change I mean I am still up and the same time and in the same place at the same time for the same length of time. However today I came down and got my cuddle, an a nice polite toilet break outside then another cuddle. I feel alert and ready to get on with the day. Dinner is thawing and all is well. Hey I am here blogging see. The last few days I just couldn’t get my brain in gear to do it. I know this sounds nuts, but all I can say is I got out of bed feeling as bad as usual and now I am functional, the dogs crate was the only change I can see, well other than its cold and grey but that doesn’t have this effect. I have even remembered to put the mega moisturiser on my hands. Hey is everyone finding they need crazy amounts of hand grease now or is that just me? I cook so I have always washed my hands a lot, then we got a puppy and it more than doubled but now it seems almost constant and my skin really isn’t loveing it.

Being out of sorts yesterday and knowing I was making bad judgements I decided not to sew, I had had a few near miss disasters the day before. I thought I would get on with my knitting. To knit I need something else to keep my brain engaged and finally lost me temper with the TV. There is just nothing on, I couldn’t even find tolerable background junk. So shelves or not I had to get my DVDs out. We have a room that will be our library, yes we have that many books, though CDs and DVDs will live there too. What we don’t have yet is shelving in there. So all our entertainement is still in boxes. Well nearly all I had to find some quilt books a few months back so some of them are out. We had some free standing book cases at the old house. No where near enough for all the books but just about enough for some of the quilting section and the DVDs. I can’t claim they are neat tidy or easy to get to, but I now have most of the fiction DVDs on shelves. Which means I can watch things I actually like. I even have some new ones I need to watch, which I admit was part of the drive to sort them out. I think with the current situation it may be a while before the room gets it’s shelving but at least I am a bit closer to having a working system again. I was also smart emough to put the other boxes of quilting books on the top of stacks so I can see them if I need to refer to them again.

I hope today with my rediscovered mojo I can get the next borders finished for the Monday quilt. Ideally without any major messing up. Given the rain I can’t see the garden distracting me and I think the other half is ‘out’ at a quiz day. Out these days means in his office using the internet to connect with others but we still call it out as the net difference is minimal. Trying to decide if I make bread today or postpone Sunday breakfast to Monday when I will have a bread delivery. I suppose I should wait and conserve flour, and really one day is much like another now anyway. Does it really matter which breakfast is which day of the week with the new commutes? No, I will be patient. Monday is the new Sunday or something