Quilt finished

This morning I have taken pictures of the second Caterpiller quilt I have made and a bag from a pattern in McCall's Quilting magazine. I should have phoned Asdings for some Pellon, then it would not be so wobbly when standing on it's own - but I didn't because i wanted to make 'then' while I was between big projects! It was such an easy fun bag to make that I will probably make more........

March - and nearly over already!

Since the last posting we lost our internet connection and our phoneline!!! Why? how? WELL!
himself decided that he would like to have the same facilities with the TV that our younger son Stuart has - a Sky + box that allows you to pause, rewind, record, playback and a lot of other things.......while we are going to Sky for their TV we may as well have the package that includes cheaper phone and broadband!!! OH how I wish we hadn't even started all of this.......we could have had a similar box from our original service provider! Virgin also do a +box! and I had been reserching it on line and had told him about it - problem ?- Sky was cheaper......Virgins was a £5 a month.......Sky's you bought for a one off payment of £49 !
The Sky dish was installed, the +box connected to the TV, then we had to order our Sky Talk and Broadband.......their phone system is dreadful! too many options and no one answering.....but we got through eventually (India?) - told them we wanted to transport our phone number over and were told 'that's Ok, no problem ' - I then went down with the flu! didn't read the mail from Sky till I was up and about again - only to find that they were installing the phone the next day BUT with a different number! Back on the phone to them again and got the assurance that they would change it as soon as possible - three weeks later we cancelled Sky and now a month later we have a tempory phone number from Virgin as Sky have mislaid the number! Only one fly in the ointment - Sky have not acknowledged our cancellation letter......have they had it - is it still sitting in their intray with the other three letters we have written? Who knows - but after over 5 hours of calls to them and the letters, and being told that once we have our own number it will be ANOTHER two weeks before I can have broadband back again! we have now written to the Telecomuncations Ombudsman! and are happily back with Virgin........ who installed the broadband and tempory phone with-in three days of contacting them!

I suppose that having no internet has been good for me for a while - I have done quite a lot of sewing and knitting, but I have watched far too much TV!
I have made another caterpiller quilt and a large bag from a pattern in a magazine, from the lovely pack of Moda charm sqares that my good friend gave me for my birthday last year. I have no pictures yet - I will take some later ......

Today is lovely and warm (14c) and I have actually been in the garden doing a bit of tidying up....I always leave the seedheads on my plants so that the little birds have some extra seeds for the winter and something to shelter under. The stalks and dead heads have now been removed from the border nearest the house and when I feel like it I will do one of the others......I should really dig the borders over too but the ground is so wet......now I have cleared the rubbish perhaps the sun will dry it a bit - then it wont be so heavy to dig.

February already?

Where did January go? I know we have been busy - a week in Bath and a weekend in Leicster quilts being made, sandwiched and quilted, sitting for grandchildren etc but the month of January seems to have just disappeared!

The week we spent in Bath was a lovely break away after all the hassel of Christmas. The hotel we stayed in was a pretty, private one, close to the city. So we walked every day into the city to explore. It was very cold that week and we just wrapped up warm and of we went, finding places to warm up and have hot food when we needed to. We have been to Bath once before and had done most of the main touristy things then, like visiting the baths and the pump room, Jane Austens house and the house that is 'open' in the Crescent, so this time we went to the Assembly rooms and the exhibition of Fashions, to the Cathederal and the museum in the crypt (fascinating) .

We had a lovely walk along the river and round the outskirts of the city and came across a glass blowers.....what a lovely way to keep warm we thought....so we went in and watched a demonstration of men blowing glass and making the most beautiful blue glass vases and jugs. There in their display cases were over 100 small pigs.........these were done by the children of a school in the city, each pig with a different decoration.....

We kept on hearing about the 'Pigs' and while walking through a covered market we came across a full size one - then a second one. Apparently last year they had these pigs everywhere! they were plaster casts that had been painted by various groups, shops and individuals etc and they were put on display all round the city. In the autumn they gathered them all up and did a few repairs and put them up for auction for charity.

We had such a lovely holiday that we were reluctant to come home, the journey was a bit hair-raising as there was a freezing fog and the temperature was -5 on the M4....froze the windscreen washer bottle! So we had to keep stopping in service areas and pulling off the motorway to clean the windscreen! The ride home was very pretty though with the hoar frost all over all the vegetaion........trees and shrubs like fairy tale grottos, all silvery and sparkly in the weak sun that was trying to penetrate the fog.

The weekend in Leicester was to celebrate the 60th Birthday of a neice! can't believe she is that old. It was nice to catch up with the other side of the Bailey family for a while. Pat is the local Vicar of Cosbyand we thought she was also retiring but apparently not so, her contract keeps her there untill July, when there will be 'discussions ' about her next move.... My sister-in-law looked well, but she had decided not to drive herself up to Leicster and had been brought up by one of the other neices. Laura lives in Sidcup and even at the age of 86 still drives round that area, but she thought that the drive North would be too much for her! some woman that one. She always frightened me when I was younger and terrified my children.

Since then I have been doing a lot of sewing. A friend of mine had a stroke in October and has been very lucky in that she has only limited damage to one side of her lower body. It has curtailed her freedom though and she has always been a very independent woman and has found this very hard to cope with. She was looking particularly distressed one evening and I gave her a hug, but thought perhaps she should have a permanent hug in the form of a quilt - so- I made her a lap quilt in the colours of her sitting room. She is usually the giver of gifts and has found this pressie (unexpected and unasked for) very hard to accept. I gave it to her on one of the evenings that several ladies (we are lace makers meeting in her house every Wednesday evening) meet together and they all persuded her to keep the gift (she wasn't going to accept it as it 'cost too much and took such a long time to make') . I hear from one of the other ladies that she uses it a lot so I am glad that I have done this for her. She has had us in her house every Wednesday for many years - without her our group would have broken up long ago.

Well, we have had a super Chrismas! Youngest Daughter Sarah made her house available for us all to gather in and we each took something for the meal. There was just one missing from the whole family and that was my eldest Grandchild Terry - he decided to spend it with his girlfriend and their baby son Louey. So we sat fourteen down for dinner.

Sarah has had a new extension built and the family gathered in there before and after dinner - she can seat us all.......it is that big! and what is usually their sitting room became the dining room - it worked very well, but a lot of furniture moving - we have to go and collect our dining room chairs later today - and my shoes - we just could not find them when we were leaving - so I came home in my slippers!

I got what I wanted from my Secret Santa - the dvd of Mama Mia - which I watched yesterday afternoon while the boys were all watching Chelsea win in the freezing cold.

Nativities

After a super holiday in the Lakes with my eldest daughter and her friend we have come down with a bump. Our birthdays are over and now we must prepare for Christmas......the time of the infant school and playgroup Nativity plays is upon us! Yesterday we went to our youngest Grandson's nativity play at his school and today we went to see our youngest grandaughters one in the Church. Joshua's one was good but Joshua was a sheep and we think he thought that precluded him from doing anything else in the play! he did not want to join in anything else -even th singing of songs he knew. On the other hand Emily this morning sung her little heart out with all the songs she had learnt, and played her part of an Angel well.

This afternoon Jackie brought the youngest of the family -her grandson Louie -to visit Gran-Gran and Great Grandad, he has grown since I last saw him and he was only just toddling, now he is going up and down stairs on his own. Next thing will be going to see him in his Nativity play when he is old enough to go to playgroup I suppose! We didn't manage to go to our other Great grandson's nativity as it clashed with Joshua's so his Mummy has bought a DVD of it and we will see him in that - probably get a better view of that than we did of Emily's this morning.

Holidays

The bags are packed - jast last minute things to do to night and we are on our way to Cumbria! We have taken a time share place quite close to my friends, so hope to catch up wth them sometime during the week! Brian is very pleased with the work done on his car and is very glad to have it back in time to go North. It was delivered late yesterday afternoon.......Brian checked all the light connections to the caravan before he would let the delivery guy go.
Jackie and her friend Sue are coming with us - there are three bedrooms in our apartment, so plenty of room for two girls and all their junk! I did ask Jackies DH to join us but he has used his holiday time this year.......ah well I am trying to get those two together again! So Sue is coming to keep Jackie sane - her words! and let us old foggies go and do our own thing while they do theirs.....
We have packed our cold weather gear and walking boots - don't know how much of that I will do - my ankles are playing up and when I went to London the walking round Leicester Sq and Piccadilly was very painful! I will have to see......but I shall take my sewing and my art stuff....I'll be fine while everyone else walks.
Brian is busy making a big batch of marmalade - he loves making this and his own specail recipe......while I have been making a top from the patches I bought of the charity table at Thamesiders on Monday - they are just simple stars but some I have unpicked and remade - some with different fabrics in the middle - now they are a cohesive whole and I think the top will work well.

thank-you's and quilts

When Jackie came in yesterday evening she brought me a thank you card from my Grandaughter and Great-grandson - apparently he loves the Caterpiller quilt I made for him! (no picture of him with the quilt - yet!)
He had helped Mummy to write the card by drawing on it - his version of an ice cream which spilled out all over the inside of the card! guess it's his idea of of something nice - ice cream!

This little lad has chicken pox - and has been very spotty, I have steered clear of him while he was in the infectious stage - I don't really want to run the risk of Shingles this near to going to Cumbria! but I have kept up with the progress of this infection! we will baby sit this afternoon while Mummy, Aimee, baby sits Jackies little charge (she is Nanny to two little girls , one goes to nursery and one stays home), while she goes to have a a mamogram. Complicated arrangement I know but Jackies charge is very uncertain of people she doesn't know very well and would probably have screamed from the time that Jackie left her till the time she came back. She is about 18 months old by the way! and although she has come visiting us occasionally she doesn't know us well.

On Monday evening I took cousin Dorothy and my friend Sue to our quilt meeting - we belong to Thameside Quilters - and on Monday we had a talk by Gill Turley on 'Something old Something new' where she told us about the quilts she makes from reclaimed fabrics - mainly mens shirts.
She had some lovely quilts with her and I wish I had taken my camera because she was allowing photos.....some of the quilts have been in books (Quick quilts to be made in a weekend, is one of the books.) so I have been able to have a look again at some of the quilts. She used to hand quilt with tiny stitches but these days (with failing eyesight - she says!) she now uses larger stitches and thicker yarns.......these quilts are beautiful and so soft and cuddly.

I was glad I took Dorothy, it was the first real outing since her mastectomy two weeks ago. She was begining to get a bit down from staying at home all the time - she is like Brian and likes to be 'out and doing ' and although she was tired when I dropped her off at her home she said she had a nice evening. She goes to the hospital to see the surgeon again today - and hopes that they will remove the last of the dressings. The plasters irritate her skin.