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!)