Christmas rush

Aaarrgh...no time for blogging, no time for sewing. Far too much yet to do. Made a couple of blocks yesterday when I should have been doing other things Christmas-related, but couldn't help myself..fabric is just too lovely.

Little sis decided on stars for the block, and this is what we came up with.

I like the scrappier block best, but can't decide whether to go really scrappy and vary the colour placement between the blocks or not.

almost midwinter...

Not many days left now until the solstice. Here today the sky is blue, the sun is shining and it is freezing. The last sunny day was quite some time ago, and now that we do have sunshine again the angle of the light seems really low. (Honestly, we moved 2 degrees further north and I make such a big deal about it!) The chooks have just found their way into the back garden today. This part of the garden has a 6foot high fence around it and I suppose was once ornamental, but since Harvey was new to us and wandered when we first came here, we designated it our 'dog garden'...and as I was gazing through the window admiring the hens this afternoon and wondering when we will get our first eggs, and whether it might be worth putting a light in the henhouse in order to get some sooner, I noticed some of these:

We didn't live here last winter and I don't know what they are. They're too big for snowdrops, but it seems early for daffodils. I'm going to have to keep an eye on them.

And I had a bit of a scout around and found these. They're a different kind.

It's reassuring to know the garden is preparing for spring!

Meanwhile, in the house, there are some preparations for Christmas Feasting. Chiefly in the form of my special 'laughing' mince pies.
These are usually a big hit and - look, one had disappeared while I searched for the camera (wasn't me, honest!). I use my own recipe for mincemeat which includes loads of cherries and pineapple and papaya and coconut (well basically anything remotely suitable that I can find in the baking cupboard) and with spices they taste really christmassy.

Not much sewing going on. I had just about decided on the pattern for the brown quilt, and then Little Sis announced she is coming up early this week, so I will see what she thinks about the options. And I'm hoping to persuade her to sit infront of the sewing machine.

Between hand quilting the green and red quilt, grouting the tiles on the hall floor and decorating for Christmas, there hasn't been much time for new projects in this house. I found some buggy barn scraps to practice paper peicing with. This is The Eyes of March block from Quilters' Cache.


My Chocolat fabric for Little Sis's quilt arrived. I think there's more here than I will need.

Decorating for Christmas was a lot of fun. Since we have been living in limbo for the last two Christmases, and most of our stuff was in storage during that time, I have not seen most of our decorations for a long time. It was so good to take them out of their boxes again, and to go round the new house finding suitable spots for them to spend the holidays. Our lights seem to have been multiplying, too.

We booked a holiday for next month. A while ago DH and I made the decision that January is *the* time of the year for us to holiday. It's all a bit miserable in this country at this time of year - even more so now we are living so far north. Last January we went to Cyprus, and next month we will Cruise The Med. Cruising is a new thing for us, and I will need to plan my projects so I have some hand sewing to take with me.

Someone asked about haggis that I mentioned in a previous post. Haggis, eaten with neeps and tatties, is a traditional scottish delicacy. Tatties are potatoes, and neeps are turnips. In our house we usually have bashed neeps, that means they are mashed and we have them with lashings of butter and black pepper - yum! Haggis, in the olden days, was sheep offal mixed with oats and heavily spiced, enclosed in a sheep's stomach. To cook it you had to boil the whole thing a pan of water for several hours. These days I believe there are restrictions on the cuts of meat that can be included, and it usually comes wrapped in plastic which you can peel off and then microwave the haggis in less than 10 minutes. You can also get vegetarian haggis, full of lentils and beans and very tasty. These days I usually prefer the vegetarian one - here's a photo of one from a famous Edinburgh haggis maker.

When I went up to shut in the hens, I could only find the three chicks (whew, my babies survived one day in the big world!) and the ducks. Esmeralda and her brood were NOWHERE. I looked all over the garden, in the wild bit out the back, in the trees, out on the road...I thought they had flown. And by then it was almost completely dark.

And then I remembered there is no door on the garage we just use for junk. They were in there, roosting on the rafters!!!

That's enough drama for one day!

Well this morning I let the chooks out. Not into their enclosure, but out into the garden. This was always the plan, but I worried over how safe they would be, especially the youngest ones which we bought off ebay as eggs and hatched ourselves, and who have no mother(other than me!). These chicks are three months old now, and Esmeralda's brood are about a month older than that (2 or 3 of them are crowing now), and the ducks about 6 weeks older than them, so I reckoned it is time now that they all faced the world - and the 4 cats. Well three cats really 'cos Toby just sleeps. I have to keep going out to check on them. They're in the orchard just now, looking happy. They can fly. I shouldn't be worried.

Thank you to everyone who had suggestions about my quilting. I think this is going to be a quilting sampler! It's very interesting, as a beginner who hasn't given a quilt more then a passing glance before, to see the effect of placing the quilting different places. In addition to my last post I have now done a block with quilting 1/4inch on one side of each seam, and one with quilting through the middle of each 'log'. This latter is my favourite so far -thank you Libby, I would never have thought of this myself. I know I should, but I don't use a frame or hoop. It takes about half an evening for me to do one block and my fingers are now more numb than sore. But I love stitching the layers together, and I cannot say I think it is a waste of time.

Been spending a lot of time at the Quilter's Cache aswell, thinking about the next quilt. I ordered some more brown fabric. Brown and cream and ?beige - from Moda's Chocolat - and I'm looking for a suitable pattern. I have it narrowed down to one of about twenty five at the moment!

Yesterday DH had a day off work and we went over to the west coast, christmas shopping. We went to Lochinver, and had pies from the famous pieshop for lunch (I had haggis, neeps and tatties and DH had steak & ale, and then apple & blackcurrant. They were very good. And I'm not generally a fan of pies). I love art pottery, and this is what we bought:
I can show the plate 'cos the person getting it doesn't read my blog.


The others are for the house.
I just love the cockerel's tail.
And these have got to be the happiest sheep I've seen (for those who don't know, the hillsides of the scottish highlands are grazed by black faced sheep and the twisting roads are generally unfenced, making for interesting driving especially for tourists!)

My overwhelming memory of yesterday is of a long train journey through darkness.

This is what I brought with me to read. I spent most of the day in Glasgow. I got up at 5.30 - the middle of the night for me - and drove down, then got the train back in the late afternoon to Inverness where DH collected me. Then for a treat we went to Harry Ramsden's for Fish and Chips! It was nice to see little sis - she doesn't work Mondays at the moment. She is just back from a friend's wedding in India, and has been increasing her stash with some beautiful floaty dress fabric that she bought over there. It was generally an excuse to get her stash out and ooh and aah over it. And stroke it a little. There is tweed from Harris (a piece in pink and one in turquoise) and Thai silk (courtesy of the International AIDS Conference in Bangkok a couple of years ago) and now pashmina and some other stuff from India. And fancy buttons and offcuts of sheepskin and more. It's a real eclectic mix, with not so much in the way of cotton. This is an old photo of the silk she brought me back from Thailand. It's very lovely but I don't know what to do with it!

We had time before the train left to pop in to Mandors. We fought our way past the curtain fabric (and a lot of it was really gorgeous) to the craft corner. More oohing and ahhing and "look at this!" "look at this one!" and quite a lot of bolts got pulled. It was a bit frantic 'cos of the train departure, and felt a little like it was getting out of hand, but I think we got there. I don't think she has looked at craft fabrics before! We bought a couple of metres of brown from Moda's A Day in the Country which she really liked - she is very fond of brown at the moment. And a few other half metres of browns and reds. I think I will start to plan a quilt for her.

I decided what to do with the wools I showed earlier, and they are in the washer (for better/ for worse) as I write. Something simple with strips, I am thinking.

Quilting has been in progress on the red and green quilt over the weekend. Still a long way to go though! And sore fingers! I am trying out different styles.

Firstly, I need to say that my quilting stitch itself is a work in progress. And also that I am surprised by how much excess fabric there is, even though I smoothed and pinned the layers carefully. I wonder if I can get rid of this without using a frame.The outline quilting around the star itself I like, but the lines of stitching seemed to get a bit lost as I stitched successive 'echoes' of the star. I was hoping for something more - crisp, but my magic marking pen was SO magic that the line it left was visible for only about 5 minutes before disappearing. The quilting lines ended up being pretty much freehand. So I did the next block with an outline of the star and then something approximating to 'in the ditch'. What do people think?

The calico I ordered from ebay for the backing of the log cabin quilt turned out to be unsuitable when it arrived. Much too thick for hand quilting. I am just itching to start quilting this, and couldn't wait to order some more fabric or go to the shop, so I had a bit of a rummage and found a few bits of fabric that I thought would do the job. I cut them into 51/2 inch squares and am piecing them. It's a mistake, I know. I will regret it. But I reckon that if I'm going to spend all that time quilting it, I might as well quilt something that I really like, front AND back. And I do like a challenge! I've been thinking some echo quilting might be nice around the stars. And then quilt in the ditch around the gold border. My quilting friend Gay suggests some stars in the green border too, and I think that might be nice. When I get to that stage!!

Oh, and I put binding on my Chook wall hanging from Rachel's of Greenfield. Here it is, very badly quilted, and here is my hen Esmeralda. Isn't the resemblance between her and the large chook in the wallhanging just uncanny?

Many years ago, while staying in a house that belonged to a Norwegian lady, I noticed some very beautiful quilts she had, made of wool. At the time, I thought of them as 'blankets' rather than quilts - the only quilts I had seen up until that time were made in cotton with gaily coloured traditional blocks , or ones with tiny hexagons. These unusual woollen 'blankets' stuck in my mind; I even tried to make one when I was a student, on a borrowed machine and with remnants I found in the dress fabric shop. But it did not satisfy. ( It is, in fact my first UFO.)However on Friday I was in the local wool shop ( the quilt shop is too far to go just for thread) and there were some bolts on the bottom shelf that just caught my eye. Locally made (Peterhead Woollen Mill) and £1 a metre! Only 20 inches wide, but still I this was too great a bargain to miss! So I bought a half dozen metres. And I think I might have a go again at making one of those cosy woollen quilts... Or maybe a bag or two.

The red and green blocks of the log cabin quilt are all complete and assembled, and I appliqued the last star last night - the last time I appliqued anything was in primary school, 25years ago! This is my first machine-pieced top, and the first that I will definitely quilt, and the learning curve has been really quite steep.

And the pink quilt is nearly assembled. A couple of people commented on it (thank you!). The original idea was to make one for a little girl; hence the hearts and the pink and the texture. (candlewick that has been worn and loved has such a lovely texture - it can't be compared with new candlewick even after the new stuff has been washed a couple of times). I made a few of these quilts in the summer, but didn't like any of them enough to keep - or even to give to the little girl I had in mind, and so I listed them on ebay - and they sold. But someone emailed a couple of weeks ago and asked for some more to give as Christmas presents - I was so pleased she liked them enough to ask this, so I said I would make a couple for her. And I'm almost finished!

OK, OK, so I missed WIP Wednesday. Sorry. Not a good show for a newbie, is it? But it's mostly all been blogged anyway, so I don't feel quite as bad. Here's a pic of a couple of appliqed squares I made on Tuesday for the pink quilt.


I don't even like pink, so I think this will be the last quilt like this I make.




Yesterday just went west at an alarming rate - and we don't even keep thanksgiving here, so I don't have that excuse.... (Athough I have to say I am thinking of instigating it at our house. We could really use some celebrations at this time of year. It's getting darker and darker in the mornings and Christmas sometimes feels like a long way away). Anyway yesterday we went to Inverness to upgrade my mobile (I can't do it over the internet as I need to press the buttons to make sure it's tactile enough to be fun to use - nothing worse than pressing 'buttons' and then having to check that it's registered with the phone what you're trying to do). That makes two days I've gone to Inverness this week, and that is two too many for me! Anyway we came home with not a phone but a laptop, so the evening was spent setting that up and trying to remember passwords etc.

Important principle when making hearts for raggy applique - no two should ever be the same!



Oh, and thankyou to all the people who commented on Bella...I will give her a big hug... Here she is with Harvey. (I bet he'll get a big hug too...) They are Bernese Mountain Dogs (a bit like St Bernards, but black in colour and a lot less slobbery)

I thought I'd show one of my favouite photos. This is Bella, and she is my faithful and constant companion. And a big cuddlebunch. And a Dog of Independent Spirit. It's not a perfect photo, but it seems to show her character well, and it's just about my favouite photo of her (and believe me, there are a lot of them!). When this one was taken, she was sitting on the back seat of DH's car, just waiting for people to come along and give her a cuddle...she generally attracts such a lot of attention and really revels in this role. And she especially loves children - we have often found her getting hugs from children we don't know.

As for the sewing, there has not been a lot going on over the weekend. We have been making a start on tiling the hall floor ("on point" - as it happens) and there is a lot of tile cutting being done. And Little Sis has been up from Glasgow, returning the runaround which she borrowed after she wrote her own car off last month. It will be nice to take the dogs out to the beach again!

I made four of these blocks for the new quilt yesterday. It's going to be scrappy! The pattern says to place all the reds and greens at random, so that's pretty much what I'm doing. And hoping the overall effect will be nice to look at. I don't have much of an eye for colour, preferring colours that occur in the natural world around me. I suppose this makes me quite conservative in what I choose but now my eyes are opening a little, due to looking at quilting resources and blogs on the internet. (A big thank you to all who have quilting blogs!). I'm starting to think about the next project after this one.

Won't these be lovely colours for hand quilting in December?

To get to the computer I usually have to deal with this kind of very comfortable problem, sitting on my chair.

Oh. And the floor. It's still bare. Even barer, if it's possible, as I spent most of yesterday afternoon crawling around on it taking out staples!

Renovations!

Well, now I never have to vacuum that old carpet again! We found these beautiful old floorboards yesterday. They would look so nice sanded and varnished, but I don't know if I can cope with the mess that would make...and we've already picked out the tiles... although we could use them somewhere else in the house. The corridor has been refloored at some point with plywood so I guess that is definitely going to be tiled. My treadle usually sits in the little nook at the bottom of the stairs. She just fits there perfectly.

After ripping up the carpet we decided that was enough hard work and went out for lunch. To Harrods. The Harrods of the North, that is - the Falls of Shin visitors centre, an oasis of civilisation in the middle of nowhere, where you get good lattes and wholesome food. It was very Christmassy, with lights and music. And they were selling Christmas trees outside! The first ones I have seen for sale this year.

After that we headed even further into the wilderness and found Sutherland Game where we bought some venison to go in the freezer for Christmas. If we can restrain ourselves. . .Maybe we should try it out first?

Worked hard all day yesterday, and this is what I have to show! I hope the recipient likes the colours. I still have quite a lot of work to do on it, hand finishing and all important ragging. I will maybe get some of the work done today, although Dh is at home - he doesn't work on Wednesdays - and we usually find something to do together.

What with all the sewing yesterday, I didn't get a chance to even start cutting the log cabin strips. But that will keep!

Most of yesterday was spent playing with my tiny stash, working out what fabric to put in the raggy quilts for my customer (such a thrill, still, that someone likes my quilts enough to comission some). I settled on some lovely, almost duck-egg blue for one, and will use up some shabby pink floral stuff for the other. Unlike before, it was all washed and neatly ironed before I cut it. I am learning a little. And I have cut about half of the chenille I need, so preparation-wise I'm nearly there. I do hope the new featherweight will sew chenille.

After all that I didn't get around to cutting the fabric for the 'real' quilt - so I have that to look forward to today - if I am brave enough.


Here's Sookie 'helping' me organise the new fabric after it was ironed yesterday afternoon.


Cathi shared her "new" treadle and I immediately had to rush off and take a photo of mine to share. I love my treadle machine! It was a present to my grandmother from my grandfather who I never met, after they were married (the story goes that she was not pleased with this old machine, and wished she had the new one she had had to leave behind in Scotland). I have always loved it, ever since the time I was so small that all I could do was play with the pedal, and had no idea that that was what she made my clothes on (because, of course, she always put it away when we came to stay). I have made on it my wedding dress, all the curtains for the first house we lived in after we were married, and about half the curtains for this house - until I learned how to make raggy quilts, and lost interest in curtain-making!!!

And, while I'm thinking about old sewing machines, here is a little Kimball & Morton machine I picked up when I lived in Glasgow - they were made there about 1900. It is more temperamental, and sometimes I can't get it to work at all.

Here's most of the fabric for my new project. It's going to be a log cabin quilt. I am so excited, and will be using the featherweight to piece it so I have something to quilt as soon as possible! Been practicing hand quilting over the week end, so don't have much to show, but here are some other photos that might be of interest:

This is my small haul from the quilt shop. Dh took me on Saturday- how nice to be driven- it must be nearly 70 miles there and back and was a grey autumn trip.

To recompense, I went with him yesterday to Dunkeld ( a 3 hour drive from here) where he spent the morning making someone else's Discovery very muddy. I had reservations about going, and almost stayed home, but it turned out to be such a lot of fun, courtesy of Land Rover. Perthshire was so beautiful in the autumn sunshine. My only regret is forgetting to take my camera!

And here is the weekend progress on my latest Noah piece. Debbie Mumm's Noah fabric was, in a roundabout kind of way, the catalyst for me starting to quilt (that is a story for another day). I love the colours, and the boldness of the design. Of course the whole "two by two" part of the message has got lost, but I still love the line.

Great news! When I checked my email at bedtime I had a surprise email from someone I had sold a couple of quilts to in the summer. She loves them and wants to give some more as Christmas presents!

Photo is not good, but here is one of the raggy quilts she has:


I am so happy that someone likes my stuff! Now all I have to do is think up some more ideas...

She's here! She came yesterday. By 2pm I had given up on getting any mail yesterday, and went into town on some errands. I wandered in the library and went to the shop, and it was sunset by the time I got home. Checked the mailbox on the way into the house - there was the card! So I weighed it up (briefly), and made another 13mile round trip back into town and - here she is! !

She sews beautifully. Before dinner I made some little muslin bags for sprouting seeds in, out of left-over curtain stuff. Then I found an old pattern and made one of these:

Then it was 11.30pm and I have no idea what happened to the evening. Total endorphin haze!!

I decided to take part in an online 'swap' of sorts, that is doing the rounds amongst crafting bloggers at the moment. I had been resisting, mostly due to not being confident and being new to blogging. Then I noticed that one of my favourite bloggers, Cathi, was offering to make stuff and all of a sudden I wanted to take part. (I guess that's the world of blog....and I think I have been officially sucked in now!!!) As part of the deal, and to spread the love, as it were, I am offering five small handcrafted gifts to five people who email me..the first five who get in touch. Oh, and to qualify you need to offer to do the same on your own blog. Easy! So - any takers?

Time for some sewing...what a lovely thing it is to be able to sew quietly in front of the telly these long dark evenings!
This is one of my first quilt blocks, and of the nine made so far, the colours in this one make it my favouite. I started making these back in september, having recently re-read some of Laura Ingalls-Wilder's books. I found the Dove in the Window pattern on the Quilter's Cache, and then thought about all those 5inch squares that I had bought off ebay for no particular good reason...For a beginner, I think the block is OK. But it won't lie flat. Mil says why does it need to if you're going to put batting in it. But I'm not sure. I will give it a bit of a break, and then review my templates. Maybe they're not quite right.

Still waiting for my parcel to arrive!!!

They came, they played with the kittens, chased the hens, picked the last of the apples and raked up our fallen leaves, oogled at our bonfire and strained to stay awake for the fireworks, built sandcastles in the wind on the beach, and then they went. And the house was very quiet all the rest of yesterday.


This is not my doll, but one we found in the loft a few months ago, when we moved here. She was simply the best present a little girl could get, when I was small. Obviously loved very much, someone had put her away in the loft in a box of children's old things - because she might be useful one day...and forgot about her when they moved away. I rather suspect they have missed her by now - I don't know who they are or where they have gone - but Tiny Tears made a little girl very happy yesterday.

Here they are, the very last of the sunflowers which I picked in the sunshine this morning.


Yesterday I was seduced by ebay to purchase a secondhand featherweight. It's pretty much brand new, and wasn't expensive even though I couldn't wait and "bought it now". It's my first electric sewing machine. I'm so excited and I just can't wait for my parcel to arrive.


My sister and her family are coming for the weekend so I must prepare the house for a four and a two year-old -- remove the dog hair and dust and LOCK THE UPSTAIRS WINDOWS. And make a huge pot of hearty soup. Weather permitting, we will celebrate the 5th tomorrow.