Chester

Finally time to share my pictures from the weekend. Frodsham is near Chester which is where the pictures are from. I have to admit it wasn't a place I was familiar with, but now I am I want to go back and have a better poke around. It is a Roman walled city, with am amazing amount of wall left. It also has these fantastic shopping streets, with two shopping levels. I had a chance to see some of the under crofts below the shops, but as they are now businesses in their own rights I couldn't get pictures of them. We also had time to walk about a quarter of the city wall and see the remains of the amphitheater. The amphitheater must have been very impressive, to say nothing of imposing. You can only see a section of it, but the angle of the curve makes it very clear how huge it was.I'd like to go back to the area to go up the hill between the two places. Apparently (and I can well believe it) there is a great view from the top. Sadly this trip I had to head back straight after the workshop, but now I know how lovely the area is I know to try and extend the next trip.I felt the workshop went very well on the Sunday. We were working on 'Fur, feather and scale' and everyone left with three good samples and seemed pretty confident they could continue with the techniques in other projects. I hope they will share what they come up with as some sounded really interesting. However I think the big success of the day for me was getting another person hooked on free motion quilting, it might not have been the main point of the class but it's always good when someone else finds they can do something they didn't think they could. Thank you all for making it a great weekend. See you at the AGM in March.

Sara Impey, who would have thunk it?

Today's talk was for region 13 in Cheshire. It's far enough that I didn't think it was sensible to go there and back in a day which is unusual for me, so we drove up last night. I say we, as Tet came along to help, he had said it might be a big talk. Understatement, they are very keen around here. It was an amazing show and tell and a very scary audience. I had no idea they had so many well known names here. Probably just as well or I would have been worrying about it before the talk. At least I had a professional chicken stacker to look after me and to make sure I was in the right place at the right time. It seems herding Ferrets requires the same skills so I was very well looked after. Fortunately my talk went down well, as with a crowd of that size you really don't want to upset them. Many hands made quick work of packing my quilts and ensured I got lunch before the afternoon session started. Thank you very much to the lovely lady who gave Tet a lift to the station ns saved me getting lost or missing the afternoon talk. I have to admit I wasn't sure how I was going to get along with the afternoon speaker, but I do like to hear as many talks as I can so I was pleased to be able to stay.If you aren't familiar with Sara Impeys work I guess you either aren't a quilter ror have the same problem with names I do, her work appears all the best places, and I think she said she will have a piece in the V&A quilt show next year. Her work generally includes words and circles. She described herself as "a one trick pony" and when she said it I agreed. I loved her work the first time I saw it, and had thouigh all the others were too similar. Boy how wrong was I? I just hadn't got it at all. To really appreciate her work I think you need to see more than one piece at the same time. The year long gaps I have had doesn't do them justice at all. About half way through the talk it struck me, she is a writer who carves her words in textiles. The words are very important. Her quilting, while beautiful and exceptionally well executed, isn't as significant. The thought and feeling that goes into the letters surprised me. I think what really amazed me was that I hadn't worked it out for myself. After all if someone puts that much care and attention into each letter, might not the words they form be important? I hope at some point one of the shows will give her the space to display a lot of her work at once, and that she will write the background stories down to go with them. It would make a stunning show. Sara, a one trick pony? No more so than a writer who only writes in one language. A very entertaining and informative speaker. I believe she doesn't do many talks but if you get the chance to see her take it.

ARGH!

I thought today was going to be a fairly restful day. I had a few things I needed to do, but not too much. One job, that doesn’t sound bad on paper is post a book. Just within the UK nothing complex. However the post office has had massive queues that last few times I have been there and I didn’t have a spare hour to queue. I thought I would take another look at online services. Oh dear. That was my first mistake, calling Royal Mail to try and fix it was my second. Their phone line is an adventure game, but lacking any plot, none the options seem to fit what I needed at all, but it kept suggesting the online help. OK while I try and struggle through to a human I will ask the online person. Sarah, isn’t actually a person, it’s a pretty poor piece of software that tries to guess the question you were asking. Sarah felt that what I wanted was to get a job with them. Nope, not even close and no there isn’t even any way to tell the software it missed.

I did eventually get a very nice lady in customer services, who absolutely understood my problems, and did try to help. She assured me that Royal Mail does want to help small businesses and that I can’t be too small to be worth their help. She gave me a phone number she thought was a direct line to business accounts. It wasn’t it was online postage sales, who couldn’t help but could pass me on. To online business accounts, who can only talk to you if you have an account but can pass you on to sales. After all this run around, I’m too small. I need to go to the post office. So including time, parking, postage and petrol I can spend about 35 pounds to post this book. Or I can call a courier and spend about 10 pounds, or I could just hand deliver it as I happen to be doing a talk in the area and it looks like it will only be a few miles out of my way. Isn’t it great to know you can get a package anywhere in the country, just by taking it there yourself. We are heading backwards at truly amazing speed. I think the next time I queue at the post office I need to buy a heck of a lot of stamps then I can just stick the postage on and put it in a post box. They do still sell stamps don’t they?

BICS event

I was going to post about the comics event this weekend. I didn’t have time yesterday and now I have been well a truly beaten to it. I may share the photo later anyway, when it returns home, but for now take a look at Cy’s blog and vist the show with him.

Socks

I've mentioned socks a few times and I finally remembered to photograph them. To the left is my first sock knitted on two circular needles instead of on 4 double ended ones. I love the techniqe. It's a lot quicker and I find it easier on my hands too. It's just waiting for it's toe graft, then it's done.it's partner is being knitted with the first sock of another pair. Two socks at the same time on a pair of circular needles. I'm not sure how it compares speed wise with knitting one at a time, but it is very satisfying. It also encourages you to keep making more if you've already done one sock of the next pair. Of course you could knit matching socks together, but that means splitting a ball of wool and increases the chance of mixing them up and knittinmg with the wrong one. I think I will stick to doing odd socks.

Quilting the world, for customers

Sorry I've been a bit quiet. I've finally had a chance to make serious in roads in to the pile of customer quilting that has been growing since before the Festival of quilts. I had imagined I would come back from the show, take a few days off and quilt up a storm. It didn't quite work out like that. I drastically underestimated the amount of interest a show like that can generate. Thank you all so much for your support it is appreciated, although I am still fighting a loosing battle with my email backlog. I see the end in sight, take a short break and I'm losing again. Oh well. The picture is of one of these customer quilts with a border I am especially fond of. If you haven't entered the Road 2 California quilt show there is still time as they now allow online entries. It's a pretty good system and easy to use. It even checks the resolution of your images for you. I like it a lot, as just preparing and posting the entry was time consuming and expensive. I hope that if it works well for this show others with a lot of international entries might try it too.For those of you who quilt too much, or overuse your muscles in other ways you might like to search the internet for 'Gelli bath'. I'd love to be able to say I saw it and immediately thought of it's theraputic possiblities, but well, that would be a lie. I first saw it in Toys R Us on a quilt related mission (pool noodles). It was aimed at kids and consequently hit me. It looked fun, but when I read the package it was only designed for a very shallow bath. I sulked and bought pool noodles. I later discoved a grown up version, which has lots of very proper words about home spa treatment and all it's benificial effects. All very nice but how much water will it turn to jelly? Half a bathfull, fine, sold. I was initially disapointed the kid in me wanted a really thick bath. The quilter however is thrilled. It has delivered much happer muscles. My shoulders and legs have taken a pounding the last two days and are now happy again. They are right the gel holds heat amazingly and delivers it better too. I don't understand it, but I will be using it again. My very fussy skin even likes it.If you are in Birmingham, 'Bad Rain' will be on display this weekend at the science museum there with BICS. BICS is a comics event and my quilt will be on the stand of Insomnia publications, who published Cancertown the graphic novel it comes from. The creators of Cancertown will also be there along with many other writers and artists. If you've never been to a comics show this is a nice one to start with. It's an interesting venue and a good size event for a first experience. Say hi if you see me.

Rush hour?

It seems that around London rush hour now runs from about 3.30pm to at least 9pm. It's not getting silly, it's got silly. I am currently sitting a a Polish war memorial with a hot car and a road masquerading as a car par between me and my house. On the bright side I have a dvd player in the car and a new quilting dvd to watch. It is (P)fun – (P)feiling – (P)feathers by Claudia Pfeil. It is designed for longarm quilting machines, but as with most longarm information it can be used on domestic machines too. So far it is all about using formal feathers (aka bump bump feathers), she is showing some great ways to fill space with them. I was initially very disapointed. I've tried this type of feather and I really don't get on with them. The more I've seen of the dvd the more certain I am that the fact they are this type of feather is what I really like about them. So I've come to the conclusion it's time to try again. These feathers do have a different look, I like the look and it has to be more than a year since I last tried. It's not that long ago that I thought I couldn't do any curved feathers so why not these? As soon as I clear some customer quilts I will give it a go.