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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 ...

The weather has been perfect all week – no wind, highs of 18C, frosty in the morning. The birds have been singing, trees all have buds on, beautiful sunsets, and I even took off my thermal vest. However, snow is forecast next week:)

I managed to get 2 quilts done for customers. One of them took far longer than it should have because I was trying to use the customer’s Aurifil 40 cotton variegated thread on batiks and the machine hated that combination. After a lot of footering around, I used an 80 needle, reduced the top tension to almost ...

It’s been a busy old time these last several days.  I was booked in for my annual mammogram in Palmy and we had a caravan rally to attend the following day.  So to cut down on all the extra driving to and fro we decided to take the caravan and stay in a rural POP (Park over Property) on Wednesday for two nights while we attended my appointment and carry on to the rally from there.  That worked out well.  Gemma enjoys coming away with us and was rather intrigued with the cattle she could see out the window ...

My caravan is a Challenger SWIFT so I chose a digital quilt design that looked a bit like swallows in flight. I had trouble getting the design to line up as it was not a Bernina file so I spent a morning faffing around in Art and Stitch until I got it to link up nicely. It is a really nice design from Intelligent Quilting but it was slow to stitch out as there is a lot of back-tracking on the wings. I also had some trouble with thread breaking, possibly due to the mix of fabrics used, so I ...

I was flicking through old notebooks looking for the contact details of a customer who left the wrong number on my answerphone and it was obvious how much more I used to do. There were pages of scribbles of things to do and projects that were underway. Whenever anyone asked what I was up to I would always answer that I was super-busy. Nowadays, I think it is an achievement if I make my bed or collect eggs from my hens.

I did actually do 3 customer quilts this week – one freehand babygro quilt, a small Starwars alphabet quilt and ...

Microwave ovens have been mysteriously multiplying here. There is one in the kitchen – as you would expect. There is a rusty-ish one in the workshop which I might use on a rare occasion for dyeing fabric that is too small to go in the washing machine – in other words,  never. I bought one last year to take to Birmingham so Nella could heat food up in the hotel and the caravan came with another one. I was killing time the other day while Nella was in college for the afternoon. Rather dangerously, I found myself aimlessly wandering around Dunelm and ...

We are home again after our recent trip to Hawkes Bay to attend my sister’s Kathleen’s Memorial Service.  Here are a few highlights of our time away.  What could be better than fish and chips for our evening meal the day we arrived?  The Filter Room was close by and consists of a cidery, restaurant, and also does take away fish and chips.  Just what we wanted.  We may have to go back next time and do a cider tasting, I think.  As we were waiting for our order to be cooked, Robin sat in front of a ...

I can spend hours shopping online, usually reading all the reviews and checking for bargains. It generally works out well and is obviously convenient but sometimes my purchases do not quite meet my expectations.

I ordered a wool gilet because I love my scruffy, old, fleece body warmer from Boden that is years old. Disappointingly, the XL size was too big in the shoulders but did not zip up. To make matters worse, all of the binding was done in brown brushed nylon! I have an absolute horror of all things nylon, including tights, so that item was quickly dispatched ...

I received a super box of threads from Aurifil to promote with customers and pupils. The 40/3 longarm cotton is my go-to thread these days as it is reliable and looks great. I used a light green on a small custom quilt with a Celtic influence. I wanted to see if I could use the Qmatic to place borders and found that going horizontally was pretty good – although while the quilt looked accurate, it still had borders that were not entirely straight. This was more pronounced when I turned the quilt to make it easier to do the vertical ...

Our holiday was coming to an end.  Driving on to Feilding we caught part of Cyclone Dovi as it was passing by.  It poured all the way down to our next stop, but luckily we missed the wind while traveling.  Always a worry when towing a caravan in high winds.  We stayed the next two nights at the Coach House Museum.  Even though we had been there recently, it certainly was worth another visit.  As we entered the museum, we experienced New Zealand as it used to be, when the settlers arrived.  Dense forests full of birdlife, which had to ...

I asked the Boss for time off quilting to work on the caravan and She said it was OK;)

There were times when it felt like a never ending project and I can still see wee patches where I need to touch up the paint. The shelves all got lined with sticky-back plastic and I was finally able to put stuff back into the cupboards. It was particularly fun to glue fake flowers around the bathroom mirror.  My favourite bit is the little neon sign promising cocktails from the cupboard with ridiculously cute curtains. I keep having nightmares that I ...

We're making the most of the sunshine, and what better way to do that than indulge in a huge raspberry snow freeze waffle cone ice-cream.  Made with fresh fruit grown at Windermere Gardens in Wanganui, and enjoyed while sitting in the café there.  I didn't manage to consume it all before it started melting and dripped down the front of my top, but that’s not an unusual occurrence for me.

Yummy ice-cream

So, what else have we been doing?  We had a great day out on a big red double decker bus the other day.  We don ...

These has been plenty of things planned for our ICA Rally while we have been touring around.  And today was one such outing that I have been so looking forward to.  A visit to K D’s Elvis Presley Museum in Hawera.  K D Wasley has been an avid collector of Elvis Presley records and memorabilia since the 1950s.  This was a real treat, and something I had been looking forward to with great anticipation.  I’ve been an Elvis fan ever since I heard him sing Love me Tender, when I was a young girl. 

We were warmly welcomed ...

Here we are, still on our ICA (International Caravan Assoc) trip.  After a week or so of gloriously hot weather, we had days of torrential rain.  The weather forecast promised us rain and colder temperatures, and it wasn’t wrong.  Just a bit of a shock after all that really hot weather we had been enjoying.  Sunday morning was time to move on, and I must admit that some of our group with bigger motorhomes were rather worried, as we were parked up on rather sodden ground.  Only one motorhome needed help in the end, and Robin was happy and ...

We are away on another caravan trip, this time for three weeks, from Urenui in New Plymouth down to Waikanae with the ICA (International Caravan Assoc) group.  I’ve found time to do some handwork, stitching a little more on the tea towels I’m making for my grand-daughters.  I’ve got this far on the pink one, and still have the boy fish slice to stitch.

Tea towel stitchery

I’ve got my knitting bag with me, and thought it would be a good opportunity to start stitching up a pair of burgundy socks I completed a while ago ...

It was refreshing to work on some straightforward customer quilts this week. I loved the mixture of fabrics used in the 3 “scrappy” quilts. This eclectic approach made me reconsider ordering a batch of Liberty prints for my caravan quilts and I found all sorts of floral prints already in my stash. I almost could not be bothered to start a quilt and I struggled to get going but once I had made up a test block, I decided to cut out enough for an entire quilt.

Nella had some college deadlines to fulfil, one of which was a transformation ...

Over the long three day Wellington Anniversary Weekend, our Caravan Club was running the bi-annual Regional Rally, and we were joined by Wairarapa and Wainuiomata clubs.  This was held at Naenae College, the weather was  hot and sunny, and we were grateful to have several large shady trees to sit under.

Some of the vans at Naenae College

Our caravan club members

The highlight of the weekend, as far as I was concerned, was the mystery bus trip to Taylorville – I’d never been there before so it really was a complete mystery to me.  The bus arrived and we ...

What a week of Big Stuff happening… I finished the tricky customer quilt re-do after 30 hours of work. It would hardly have taken more time if I had worked on the entire thing in the first place. Considering that it had issues, I think it turned out pretty well:)

Nella was offered a place at the Norwich University of the Arts to study a BA in Fashion & Communications. She was also offered a place at Grays School of Art in Aberdeen but she has already accepted Norwich. This is monumental progress for her and she has to work hard ...

On our last couple of days in Napier we called into the cutest little sweet shop around, visiting here is just like walking back into yesteryear.  Remember all those boiled sweets from days gone by? Lovingly displayed in large glass jars, every type of sweet imaginable.   We replenished our supplies of blackballs for him, and acid drops for her. 

Birdwood's Sweetshop

Where to next?  It was time to purchase some tasty fresh cherries.  I love them and we knew there was a roadside stall reasonably close by.  Robin doesn't care for them, so they are all mine!  And ...