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I am back home after a quiet week in Norfolk where I spent some time settling Nella back into Uni life and taking my folks out for coffee. Time passes weirdly quickly without anything much happening there. I did some hand-stitching on my quilted coat pieces and some mending on my Mother’s 50+ year old Bernina Record. 

My sister asked me to help run up some haggis-style beanbags for her Cub Scout group. They are going to be used to play some sort of “catch” game on Burns Night. I made a prototype which passed muster so she did ...

I wonder what will happen in 2023? What new obsessions will fixate me? Since seeing a post on ceramic Christmas trees on Instagram by #magentamodern I have wanted to create a similar collection. I have bought a few books on HAND embroidery so I can embellish my crazy coat. It was meant to be a slow project but it would be good to get it done by my exhibition at the Scottish Quilt Show in March.

2022 was not necessarily what everyone hoped for with a war in Ukraine, strikes and inflation. However, here there were many positives. Nella went ...

I don’t know what it is about pre-Christmas week but it either feels like Christmas will never come while at the same time the days go as fast as when calendar pages flip to show time passing in a movie. I did some last minute Christmas shopping in a junk shop which actually meant that I made a couple of fun but unnecessary purchases for myself including vintage orange Tupperware and an ugly lamp.

For the first time since 2018 Nella enjoyed preparing festive food and eating it! This was what really made it our best Christmas in a ...

I had a very festive pre-Christmas week in Glasgow and Norwich. It was Fergus’ 21st birthday so he spent the weekend with his pals and he looked a little worse for wear when Freya and I collected him on Sunday morning. Freya and I did a mini pub crawl in Glasgow with her boyfriend, George, and Nessie, of course.

I was a bit worried about the weather reports for our journey south but we had no problems at all.

Norwich was very cosy and festive – the Christmas lights were lovely and we had a pleasant wander around, buying sprouts from ...

It has been getting colder this week and we had a little snow. I felt justified in spending only a little time in my workshop then coming inside and watching a Christmas movie while I did something else in the afternoon.

I made a cut-out Scottie Christmas card one afternoon so I could make sure that all of my cards got posted early due to postal strikes in the UK.

I cut my crazy quilt into coat shaped pieces using a “Sew Me Something – Bianca” pattern. I have made this coat previously in boiled wool. I have been attempting to ...

December started with a flurry of activity. On Monday I went to Glasgow for Freya’s Masters graduation. The university looks rather like Hogwarts – all Freya needed was a cat and a pointy hat to look like Prof. Minerva McGonagall. It was a proud day – she worked hard on her Masters for two years as well as coping with a full-time job and covid restrictions that affected her studies.

I had two customer quilts on the go this week and since they were Christmas themed, I decided to put on some festive tunes and do some gift wrapping.  I knotted ...

It is a good job that I have been keeping on top of customer quilts because my workshop will be out of action until it dries out! We had a repeat of Storm Frank from 5-6 years ago which was meant to be a one in a hundred years type of weather event. Well, global warming is no myth here as extreme weather becomes increasingly normal. It had been raining persistently for a couple of days but eventually the ground was soaked, and the field drains overflowed. Before I knew it water was pouring in the door, seeping under the ...

There goes another week! Admittedly, most days are the same these days. The unseasonably warm autumn weather seems to be finished – there was a bit of a storm midweek which blew off the last of the leaves off the cherry trees which are now bare for winter. I was trying to make a video but the rain was hammering loudly on my workshop’s tin roof.

I did a couple of customer quilts, using a favourite pattern, “Stacked Snails” which looks like a modern Baptist Fan.

I came up with another project on the L890 overlocker / coverstitch machine. I fed ...

I spent the past week in Norwich to celebrate Nella’s 19th birthday with Freya and Nella’s friend, Kirsty. It was the first time since 2018 that she had a birthday cake and a birthday tea which was wonderful:) She has settled in well to Uni life, partying a lot, worrying about friends and assignments. She did more exploring the city with us than she had on her own and discovered the wonders of Norwich Market. 

The weather was unseasonably warm and our day out to Southwold was just like summer. I stayed with my folks, Nessie had a ...

I spent a quiet week in Norfolk as Nella settled in at Uni. I met up with her a couple of times in Norwich but mostly she was trying to socialise as much as possible and make new friends. It was not actually Freshers’ Week yet so things were a bit slow. Nella could not get used to everyone staying in bed until at least lunchtime. She is really looking forward to things getting going, joining societies and getting stuck into studying. 

I usually have a good poke around junk shops when in Norfolk ...

This week was all about Nella getting ready to go off to Uni. I kept adding things that I thought were essential for student life such as a pepper grinder and stove-top coffee maker. She kept telling me that she had too much stuff;) I made her a round cushion shaped like a Loveheart Sweetie. Qmatic stitched out the lettering and I had planned to use the L890 to add chain stitching from the reverse. However, I don’t have the clear foot so I could not see where the needle was going. Instead, to highlight the lettering I painted ...

It has been quite a week in the UK! Just 2 days after swearing in the new Prime Minister at Balmoral, The Queen died aged 96 in one of her favourite places. The News has been filled with royal tributes and trivia as we become the subjects of a King for the first time in 70 years. We went down to the gates at Crathes Castle to witness Queen Elizabeth II make her final journey via Edinburgh to London for her state funeral in a week. It was a surreal ...

Nella, Nessie and I spent the weekend at a music festival called Doune the Rabbit Hole near Stirling. The last time we went to a festival was just after Nella was first diagnosed with anorexia in 2019 and we really should not have gone because it was a pretty miserable experience. 

We had a great time in 2022 and it felt like we had turned back the clock on life. Camping in the caravan was a superior experience, particularly as I also put up a gazebo with fairy lights. I enjoyed trundling my trolley around with jumpers, chairs, drinks and ...

After a delay of 2 years due to the pandemic, it was finally Freya’s graduation from St Andrews University, postponed since the summer of 2020. She and her friends caught up for a week of festivities in glorious summer weather. They had all just left quietly in March 2020 without a chance to say goodbye to each other or to the town where they had spent 4 years. 

With intrepidation, Nella and I set off on the caravan’s maiden voyage, hoping that the town centres would not be too busy. We made it in one piece and managed ...

It has been a truly epic week, starting out in Glasgow where Nella and I went to stay with Freya to see a band which cancelled at the last minute. At any rate, we went out for tea, followed by ice cream and stayed the night so Nella could get a train the next day to stay with her lovely cousin in Exeter. This was a huge adventure for her, having not been anywhere unaccompanied since she was about 14. She managed the long journey and had a great week experiencing life as a student, partying, playing bingo and making ...

I have been trying to make wee videos to summarise Bernina Qmatic lessons that I have been teaching on Zoom. Nella makes a great job of editing them then I add notes and screenshots which I hope make some sort of sense. I don’t claim to have THE definitive method for doing things – just ways I have found that work for me.

Other time wasting exercises this week have included trying to track down lost Hermes parcels and chasing up my KLM cancelled flight expenses which still have not been processed.

I have been enjoying watching The Great British ...

I have caught up with all of my customer quilts for now so I had time to finish a few things off in the caravan. The dead battery finally got recharged and I was able to get the water pump going at last. I now know how to get the gas going so I practised making toast in the grill. I thought it would be fun to be able to lie in bed and get Alexa to turn gadgets on so I invested in a couple of smart plugs. I can now command Alexa to switch the kettle, heater and ...

I have to remind myself that I have been away from home for the past 3 weekends and psychologically that is busy, even if there is no major project going on. I worked slowly on a couple of customer quilts, had a half-hearted attempt at making pleated facemarks (Nella’s request), and had a lovely, overdue catch-up with Mo who has wire-haired dachshund puppies. 

There was a full day without electricity for some sort of maintenance and I really wondered what I was going to do all day without power and wifi. I determined that I would learn how to ...

I have been catching up with my recent trip to Norfolk, making myself do jobs that I have been putting off! Despite my best intentions, I had not filed any paperwork since Christmas so that took AGES! Nella has been enjoying her new part-time job in the Crathes Castle cafe over a busy Easter weekend. I took Nessie for a walk in the grounds and called in for a coffee. She was not at all impressed by the scary Easter bunny – a security guard in a dubious costume.

Since nobody here had miraculously shinned up a ladder and cleaned the ...

My only mission last week was to complete a customer quilt and get the caravan serviced. I accomplished both:) The quilt is for a friend’s grandson in New Zealand and I am sure he will love all of the different feature fabrics. 

I was nervous about the caravan inspection but it went surprisingly well. There were signs of damp but it is not really a problem for me unless I get rained on in bed. The Caravan Man did not say a word about the interior decoration and he said it was entirely roadworthy but ...