Monday 29 March 2010

Holiday

think the diagnosis is that it is I,m off on holiday for Easter with my family ,so no blogging.

My laptop has taken a turn for the worse at present . It went to PC world yesterday , the man there was very patient , he gave it a check . I think the diagnosis is age . parts can be replaced . I have gone through the motions to see if I can get things that I need to . problems here and there . getting into blogging seems to be the most troublesome .

I am not dismissing my friends , hopefully all will be sorted eventually

Friday 26 March 2010

Up , Up and away

I mentioned yesterday how I bought 2 Olive , BBC cookery magazines . I decided to make a curry from a recipe in one mag,. the recipe was a rival to a Gordon Ramsey one . I get out my ingredients , the red chilli looked a bit shrivelled , I cut a bit off to taste to see if it still had oomph ! I am now back down off the ceiling !!!!!!

Yesterday afternoon I was reading a blog new to me . I was mesmerised , I didn,t notice it raining , Oh my nice dry washing was wet again ,

The blog is everything vintage check it out, it should be on my sidebar . I love it .

Thursday 25 March 2010

Purchasing Power

I,m off for a holiday with my son and daughter -in-law , just one week over easter . So, this week I have been after a swimsuit and a dress . I gave my swimsuits away ,so needed one , I might indulge in another, £12,99 at Asda , not exactly breaking the bank .
Tuesday I decided to go to town , the sun was shining and I knew if I stayed home it would be the usual bit of cleaning ,bit of tidying, bit of gardening , sewing and same things that are done everyday ,so off I went . I browsed around , all I bought were 4 avacados , and 2 magazines . A man on the market sells the previous months glossies £1 each ,one called Place in the sun , the other Park homes and caravans, they are what I call lollipop reading and when I pass them on someone else can suck the lollipop .
Wednesday, off I went again . I threw 2 saucepans in the bin and decided I must replace the small non stick one . I bought a really quality one from T,K Max £4,99 with a lid , but on the way for the saucepan I poked my nose in the House of Fraser discount outlet. Immediately a dress caught my eye . I looked at it , mulled over, put it on the back of the rail hoping it might still be there when I had mulled somemore , I took 2 steps away , 2 steps back, took it to the fitting room, It now hangs in my bedroom . It,s beautiful , I feel good in it and I have not bought a dress for a long time, the assistant said "can you get here Thursday or Friday , were having 20 to 50 % discounts " , I might just do that .
While in the town I had lunch , as well as the saucepan and dress I bought 3 more magazines , 2 called Olive, they are BBC cookery , superb mags,.and being out of date it doesn,t matter , I think they are far more up to date on ingredients and recipes than expensive cookery books . The other mag,. is House and garden March issue , You cannot get better than that .

Now after slumming around in my nightwear I,ll have a shower but one more thing I want to do before closing my lap top . The bungalow opposite has just had an estate agents board put up , I want to suss out the price . Being nosey helps the world go round .

Monday 22 March 2010

Time on my hands

My friend bluebell is going on a gap week , I hope the weather is better than it has been today . I shall be spending time rooting and a tooting with my fabric stash , tidying it and giving it the once over . Stroking fabric, sighing over it and thinking if only I had the time to make all those quilts I bought the fabric for in the first place .

Blog hopping cuts into sewing time but it is oh so necessary to see what everyone else is up to . A short time ago I looked at the blog of Diane Knott, she has a wonderful tip on her site, I immediately sorted a piece of fabric and a lace doily , followed her instructions and ended with a patterned paper that will be so useful . Tomorrow I shall be having another go, I can think of many things I can use her tutorial for . No! I,m not giving much away , you must go onto her site to find out more , thats only fair . Join her as a follower , she is a very giving person with her ideas and even if you don,t want to use them her site is so interesting , Diane is a very talented person .
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Sunday 21 March 2010

cushion cover

scraps of material that made up into a novelty cushion cover , I slipped a cushion pad inside to take the photograph , the pad isn,t big enough but my next job will be to make one the right size . Wonderful what we can make out of our stash after rooting around.
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Wednesday 17 March 2010

Cheater Panel

This is a cheater panel I bought for £1.25 from the fabric guild , I hand quilted it , the sides are small samples called quilters mix , I vaguely think they were about £2 , the colours were just right to extend the quilt . I now measures approx 54 x 46 inches , I always enjoy these colour shades

Yesterday I bought a piece of pink fabric with butterflies on from Laura Ashley, This afternoon I made 2 cushion covers from it .

I shall probably be digging in my stash for something else small enough to do . I have no enthusiasm to do a big project . Is it tiredness at the end of the winter ? I don,t know . Anyway it will soon be all systems go in the garden , that is my second love .
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Hyacinths

When Iwalk into this room the smell of Hyacinths is overpowering. I rate these spring flowers with roses and lilies to be the most evocative of smells . I have 4 pots of hyacinths that have finished flowering lined up outside to be transplanted in the garden . they never come up as big as they are when bought in the pot but still look pretty in the borders
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Saturday 13 March 2010

New, old book

Not a very clear picture but a beautiful book for just a donation to the charity box at the sewing afternoon
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New Book

This is my latest Kaffe Fasset book . now I have 3 .
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and finally

and finally a close up . I,m sorry to show you a sort of upside down , back to front , but I did say --------
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Same quilt

Here I am showing the corner and backing
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picture 3

A picture of the machine quilting on the sides . I use my ordinary brother sewing machine . It,s the nicest machine I have. I do not yearn for a high falluting fancy machine . this does everything I need to do .
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picture 2

This is a close up of the elongated hexagons
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Quilt

This is a quilt I have been working on for a friend, she pieced the top , I added the sides , batting , backing and machine quilted it . It is made up of elongated hexagons .. I shall try to show other aspects of the quilt .

Because picassa kept telling me I had no disc space left a friend moved some pictures over to a D disc , now when I try to blog pictures I can only bring forth the ones on the D disc . The current pictures I have taken I presume are on a C disc , so, I can only bring up 1 at a time , not a series . this means I have to keep closing down to show 1 pic,. at a time . me being absolutely computer illiterate will have to try to sort this one out . Oh Dear !!!!

I have been and indeed still am a bit out of sorts . I have a cyst on my finger through wearing a thimble , sometimes it,s quite painful . I can manage to do some sewing as long as it isn,t thick but I do tend to pierce the end of my finger with the needle . From now on I shall only be doing my own patchwork.

Yesterday I was reading blogs and really enjoyed looking at some that were referring to what they called White Wednesday , these girls were showing all kinds of delightful things . You know how it is you flick from one blog to another that is mentioned, forgetting to keep track of what you have seen , now I do not know where to find these sites , can anyone enlighten me , Some were shabby chic but all so interesting .
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Thursday 4 March 2010

Oh ! no

It seems bluebell and myself are off to the fabric guild again tomorrow morning , apparantly she dropped some of her purchases when we went last time . She found she was something missing , i.e a pair of knitting pins and a card of buttons . a kind person found them outside and handed them back inside the fabric guild . I shall walk inside there shielding my eyes .

The bird house in the picture I made out of card sometime last year ,it now hangs in bluebells house . I like making useless crafty things .
I put 2 new bird houses up yesterday in my garden , I would be so pleased if they were habited this year . I try hard but don,t seem to get many birds in my garden but I did have a new fence last year and for it to be done I had to have exsisting trees and bushes taken out , the birds took umbridge and went elsewhere .

My fish pond was cleaned out at the weekend and the pump also . Thats another spring clean , if the weather stays reasonable at the weekend I,ll be able to tidy the borders in the garden , I have a few spring bulbs that the packet says Feb,. is the planting time
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