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?