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When my children were younger Christmas did not begin until after Fergus’ birthday on December 11th. We have an artificial tree now so it has been up with only its lights on, waiting for Nella to “dress” it when she arrives home. I must admit that I sort of miss the frantic round of Christmas concerts and performances. The trouble is that since the festive season starts so early nowadays, the whole thing is spread out and there seems to be no definite Christmas period (for me, at least).  All of the Christmas Fayres are over already and I never ...

Nessie and I travelled back to Scotland by train which is a long way with a dog on your lap, sometimes the floor. She was very good, especially at Edinburgh Waverley where we had 10 minutes to change platforms. Thistle (Fizz) was delighted to see me and was especially pleased that she could get access to my bed. Meanwhile my room had been turned into a recording studio and Nella’s room seemed to have been filled with the junk that everyone else had decided they no longer wanted in their rooms. It seems that I will have some serious ...

This is my third and final Sunday in Norfolk. Things have been hectic but having routines has helped. My Mother is recovering well and arrangements are in place to lighten the load of caring for my Dad. My sister is nearby but cannot be expected to put her life on hold and she has not persuaded me to move to Norfolk;)

I had an outing to Felbrigg Hall with Nella. It is a National Trust property in North Norfolk and it had put on a Christmas display of Christmas trees, lights and drawings of countryside creatures. I was intrigued by ...

Things were ticking along nicely in my workshop – I had to do a couple of customer quilts with binding and I planned to keep working through the Art and Stitch manual. On the side I was posting junk for sale on Facebook Marketplace.

Everything changed mid-week when my sister called to say that it looked like my Mother was having a stroke! I threw some stuff into a bag, booked a one way train ticket and headed to Norfolk with Nessie.

Things were up in the air for a while until we knew how serious the episode had been. It ...

At the start of the year I declared that I would like to be fitter but I confess that I have done nothing about it. However, this week I had quite the quilting workout. Liz and Frances were here with an impressive collection of quilts. We had both machines going doing freehand and computerised quilting, using up more than a full roll of wadding. The results were super:)

The other thing that had me dashing about was having a bit of a clearout – I had some success selling a few things on Facebook Marketplace and Vinted which has spurred me ...

Unless I have a list to cross off, I feel as though I have achieved nothing in Life. That list can include walk / brush dog just so I feel I have earned the right to exist in the world. Of course, the Universe could not give a toss whether I make my bed, water my plants or brush my hair…

I completed the experimental non-slip sofa cover which does a pretty good job. The red is nowhere near the shade of the original sofa which needs a really deep treatment of leather cream. Now, I should really make another one ...

Freya and I celebrated Nella’s 20th Birthday with her in Norfolk. As a child, Nella always used to request a different birthday cake every year and this year it was meant to be a pink angel cake (vegan). Like a Bakeoff contestant, I should have practised at home because using egg replacement, an unfamiliar oven with a dodgy thermostat and oddly shallow tins was all a bit much and I ended up having 3 attempts until I had an edible result. The first batch rose, dropped bits all over the oven then when I thought I had switched it ...

I am making myself study Art & Stitch so I know it inside out! Sometimes I find that it is not as co-operative as I would like in that things you think you have done before and learned, don’t always seem to work the same again. 

I planned to make my way to Norfolk on Thursday but there was a storm warning so I decided to set off on Wednesday to try and beat it south. I was not able to leave until after lunch so I only went as far as Glasgow and stayed with Freya. As the weather ...

After a weekend of torrential rain, the sun finally came back out on Monday and started drying everything out. Luckily, no water flooded into my workshop this time. The river was incredibly high when Nessie and I went for a walk. Instead of being a once in 20 years occurrence, it seems to happen annually now. 

I set myself ups for a busy week, knowing that I am going to Norfolk later this week. I did some online teaching, in person teaching and a couple of customer quilts. 

In a phone conversation with a Bernina Q-matic owner, she mentioned that ...

Despite my Q-matic system being a bit temperamental since it needs a new cable, I managed to keep it going and completed some customer quilts. I had to watch it more closely than usual so I was not able to go away and work on anything else, although I did manage to put a few stitches onto the quilted coat back. I have 2 front pieces still to go, depending on how much embellishment I feel it needs.

I decided to take my caravan on a Last Hurrah for the year to head north to Moray for a Scottie Dog ...

The lingering cold that I had after my Glasgow trip turned out to be Covid. I was not especially unwell but lacking in energy and had no sense of taste. I hunkered down in the workshop and just got on with some quilting. It was not that easy actually, because my machine keeps conking out and giving me error messages which I tell it to ignore before starting again. New wiring has been ordered which should arrive in mid-October so hopefully we will keep limping along. 

I received a letter from Police Scotland informing me that I was caught by ...

This week was rather busy as I got myself organised to teach 2 workshops in Glasgow. I had 3 customer quilts to complete, hand-outs to prepare and some samples to produce. I drew several examples of quilting designs and laminated them until my aged laminator decided to swallow some whole. I tried taking it apart but I decided it was a lost cause. I think in future I might actually stitch the examples as well for reference. 

I stopped in Dundee on the way to Glasgow to visit the Tartan Exhibition at the V&A. It was a really diverse ...

After another epic drive north I spent the next day trying to get reorganised. My workshop could do with a big sort out but I am trying to remind myself that it does not all need to be done at once. Indeed, the universe does not even care whether I do it at all. I have a mega customer quilt to get done before I leave to teach 2 groups in Glasgow next week. It was frustrating that the Qmatic system kept stopping with an error message that there was a problem with the sewhead. On closer inspection, I discovered ...

On Wednesday last week I clocked up another 500+ miles driving down to Norfolk but without a caravan it seemed easy to get up some speed and drive for 10 hours. 

Just before we arrived in Norfolk there had been a summer thunderstorm – warm humid conditions were perfect for fungi and I spotted a fine specimen of Chicken of the Woods growing on a willow tree by the river. Freya was very impressed so I have put some in the freezer so I can take it home for her. When cooked it is firm and actually tastes like quite like ...

I have been “off-grid” in the Peak District for a few days. Earlier this year I agreed to meet up with cousins who are hard-core caravaners. I was looking forward to it but also dreading it. Nella and I took 6 hours to get as far as Lockerbie, partly because I took an unnecessary detour. We stayed overnight in a farmer’s field and I was relieved that I did not have to unhitch. One of the most stressful aspects of towing a caravan is stopping – whether it is for fuel or the loo because you don’t know how ...

My main mission for the week was to catch up with customer quilts that I had not done in the lead up to FoQ. I like to keep on top of them as I find having a queue of quilts a bit stressful!

True to my word, I have been making an effort to test out my cameras so I get to learn all of their features. It does not mean that I have necessarily made any decisions to trade any of them in but the exercise has been worthwhile to become more familiar with them. I have also tried ...

After all of the excitement of FoQ, this week was spent low-key pottering. Nella had also been away at Freya’s and visited her cousins in The New Forest. Every now and then I decide that my house and / or workshop has reached saturation point and has way too much “stuff”. I like to think that I am organised until I can’t find something. I know that I had some strong magnets which came out of a magnetic pin dish that smashed but I honestly don’t know whether I threw them out or whether I put them in ...

This week I got down to putting together some class specs and requirements. It has been a while since I came up with “lesson plans” so I struggled with the discipline. I usually aim to plan more than is required which is what most primary school teachers do to keep the fast workers occupied. I will be teaching my Northern Lights improv curves class in Glasgow next month but I decided to add another element which is improv bridges. I am experimenting with machine appliqué methods. The original class was just free-cut strips but I decided to give the pupils ...

Last week we went to an afternoon of “Outlander” related talks at the Willow Tea Room in Sauchiehall Street, Glasgow. I had not realised that the event was an off-shoot of a whole Outlander Conference at Glasgow University so there were some diehard fans in attendance. One of them was not at all convinced when told that Falkirk is not in fact at the heart of the Highlands. Nella and I had made Jamie Fraser t-shirts for the occasion but nobody even noticed. The first talk, given by a guy from the Jacobite Society, was disappointingly dull as he read ...

Help Ma Boab is finished! My finger tips were burning after all of the kantha stitching and hand binding. I took my friend, Ellen’s advice not to tinker with it further and packed it into its box ready to send to FoQ. I took outdoor photos and think there is a bit of a bow at the bottom end, although I am telling myself that is an optical illusion since I used a wide-angle lens.

We had Freya here for 3 days which Nella loved. She is finding it hard being here in the countryside without any friends, reliant ...