oh ye of little faith..

I see from the comments left yesterday that one or two of you doubted that I had a stash at all, or that I ever intended to show the pictures, so here, for all of you Doubting Thomases, ........
My Stash

My stash

Judy L has issued a challenge to everyone to show photos of their stash. She's on a mission I think to show how tidy she is (giggle). I wasn't going to show mine until I dropped myself right in it when I told Lynn that if she showed hers, I'd show mine. So here it is folks..............tada........................

My Stash

Hmm, blogger won't let me post my pictures, so I'm off for a coffee in a minute, and I'll come back later.

I have also just taken Mrs PennyPot's Pineapple quilt off the frame, so I wanted to take a photo of that to show you, but the camera is telling me it's batteries are flat. Why do I get the feeling technology is against me this afternoon?

P.S.

I saw this Halloween blog layout on Karen's blog and several others, and loved it, so I thought I'd have it here too. Do you like it? Now I've found out how to do it, I might be changing my background on a regular basis.

Post script: Several people have asked me how to do this, so here are the details: Click on the logo on the top left of my blog, which takes you to a site called Daisy Gray Designs. When you are there you can choose a free background and follow her instructions. It was really very easy, and there are some fun backgrounds there.

Nature's Best competition

Just to let you all know that the voting is now open for the above competition. Just click the link on my sidebar. You can vote once for the large quilt and once for the small quilt of your choice. I wonder if I can vote for my own entries?

I entered Leaves Around the Cabins in the large quilts category (well now, there's a surprise!) and Cherry Blossom in the small quilts category. My friend Lynn entered Braided Batiks and Summer Posies in the large and small categories respectively and Sewing Granny entered The Butterflies Teaching Desmond to Fly in the small quilts.

There really are some lovely quilts shown though, so even if you're not intending to vote, it's well worth going and having a look at them.

It's a bargain....

Well actually, it's a freebie. To be completely precise, it's a giveaway. I don't often join these, on the grounds that I never win anything, lottery, raffle, nothing. In fact, I reckon if I entered something and was the only person who did so, I STILL wouldn't win. There now, don't you feel sorry for me?

Anyway, Paulette who lives in Canada is having a giveaway, for no reason except that she wants to. If you go over to her blog, here, you can see that she is giving away the first issue of a new Canadian quilting magazine and other goodies.

Her blog is well woth visiting as she always has some interesting and amusing posts about her life and her quilting.

A touch of the Reggie Perrins.....

Mr Fixit needs an eye test. He rings the optician. The conversation goes like this:

Mr Fixit: Can I make an appointment please?
Optician: Yes, certainly. Would you prefer a morning or an afternoon appointment?
Mr Fixit: Morning please.
Optician: 2 o'clock tomorrow afternoon then.

Triumph of hope over experience

or just plain stupid? I was reading Karendianne's blog this morning and she had referred to watching Wuthering Heights on TV. That led me to thinking about why I don't watch that or read it again, since I've read it several times before. The reason is that every time I saw it I hoped for a happy ending, and never got it. It is the same with some other books like Gone With the Wind. Now, when you've all stopped laughing at me you can decide for yourselves if I am an eternal optimist or just plain stupid.

Progress

There hasn't been any!
I did another row on Mrs PP's quilt yesterday, but mis-measured and fell off the end of the quilt. Oops. So the quilt is off the frame - again, and my stitch ripper and I are about to become best friends - again. Still, I have spent some time today digitizing a free pattern I found on the Urban Elementz site here. This was a panto for hand-guided LA quilting, but I really loved it, so I contacted the designer, who was happy for me to digitize it

so all's well that ends well.

On the computer/printer vs Mr Fixit, so far, let's just say that Mr Fixit is not winning. We have decided to call in a man tomorrow. Actually I have decided to call in a man tomorrow, cos I'm fed up with seeing Mr Fixit wasting his time and getting more and more wound up as time goes on. So I shall be making a phone call tomorrow, and I'll let you all know when it's safe to talk about wireless printers to us again.

Meanwhile today has been an absolutely glorious day. Mrs Nomad appeared with The Professor, The Chatterbox and Archie this afternoon and we sat out on the deck for a couple of hours and made the most of what might well be the last time we can do that this "summer".

The updated weather report

My black cloud has gone. Mr Fence, who I'm now going to call Mr Fixit, fixed it. He took the top off and attacked it with a big scarey screwdriver. The problem was that one of the drive belts had come loose, so he tightened it, and now it's working beautifully.

Mind you, he has his own black cloud now. We recently had to change our router, and that meant the setting were changed, so now, our computers can't see our wireless printer, and he can't sort it out. Any minute now I think he's going to pay someone to come in and fix it.

Bertha has been working on Mrs PennyPot's quilt, and we have done one row of one of my favourite pantos then we had to stop as it was time to collect The Chatterbox from school. Tomorrow I'm off to Mrs PP's to play in her super studio for the day with a couple of other friends, so I'll not be doing any more quilting till Saturday.

There's a black cloud............

........... over my house today. Can you see it? It's very black. The day before yesterday when I was using my PCQuilter to quilt Mrs PP's quilt, I was using a pattern with circles, except... my circles were coming out with flat tops and bottoms. I undid it, and assumed I had done something wrong when changing the pattern size, etc. Last night I had a friend here and we were going to play with Bertha. My friend wanted to sew a feather wreath. Well, what a mess. It was very distorted, the oversewing wasn't, etc. This, together with yesterday's problem made us think it might not have been me. So we tried sewing a simple circle. Flat top and bottom. Small square? Distorted. Large square? Distorted. Oh pooh sticks. It has to be something on the PCQuilter. We left it, with much muttering about blooming technology. Mr Fence is, as we speak, looking at the insidey, technicaly parts to see what he can see.

I'll keep you posted.

I've got a problem..........

Here is Big Bertha, all ready to get to work on this quilt belonging to Mrs PennyPot, BUT..... Bertha and I just can not decide how to quilt it. In fact, we've started twice already, got half way through a row and decided we didn't like it. (I've become very friendly with my stitch ripper again over the past 24 hours.) Now, I'm going to take the quilt off the frame for today cos I won't be able to do any quilting during the day, and I want to put some plain fabric on cos I've got a friend coming this evening to play with Bertha, and I thought it's better not to have a real quilt top for that, specially as it's not even my own top.

So, back to my problem. How am I going to quilt it? Perhaps inspiration will strike during the day?

Harvest Festival

Thought you might like to see pictures of Mr and Mrs Nomad all dressed up and ready to go to the party! Mrs N's birthday will be tomorrow, but she had her party on Saturday. Doesn't she look "lovely" in her 1980's finery? And how about Mr N dressed up as Jimmy Saville, complete with wig and cigar.

Yesterday Mrs PennyPot came over, and just look what she brought with her. Everything there was fresh from her garden, even the honey.

Today I was going to give Big Bertha some more exercise, but at the moment the frame is only set up at half size, and I need it at full size now. Mr Fence was going to set it up for me this morning, but he is in bed unwell, and I don't really think I should get him up to do it, do you?

Nightmare........

.........is what I've been having over the last few days.

My quilt group decided earlier this year to make a couple of quilts which would be raffled off at a coffee morning in November. Since I never know when to keep my big mouth shut, I volunteered to quilt them. I should have known better. I did stipulate the backing must be quilting fabric and the wadding was to be a decent one which was not poly. The quilts were dropped off earlier this week. The backing was so dense I think it could stand up on its own! That, plus the fact that the blocks were all made by people with differing levels of expertise so the seams were not too good at times, oh yes, and the odd pin left in! made for a tricky job. Poor Bertha nearly had a (nervous) breakdown when I tried to persuade her that she wanted to quilt the first one. Eventually, by raising the foot, raising the pressure on the foot, fiddling for ever with the tension, etc, I got going. The final result is OK, but I have to say that the backing fabric just does not do it for me. I was told it was bought specially because it went so well with the tops. Whaaat? You can see for yourself in the pictures.

Next time I am heard even thinking about offering to quilt a group quilt, please would somebody remind me of this experience?

Thoughts from the North........

.....about Harrogate quilt show.

I have been concerned about the future of this show ever since the Festival of Quilts started up, and I saw nothing this year to make me feel any happier.

There were, on the face of it, plenty of quilts on display, but when you looked closely, there weere a lot which were in one-person shows, if you know what I mean. Now don't get me wrong, I love to see these mini-exhibitions from professional or semi-professional quilters, but I did feel that there were less quilts being entered by ordinary people, which is a shame.

There were a lot of wonderful traditional quilts, but, as I said before, the judging amazed me at times, and I know it wasn't just me from comments from friends and things I overheard. (An advantage to having very acute hearing I guess?) Mrs PennyPot and I decided that to win an award, the thing to do was either use a bit of gold lame in your quilt, or sew on some sequins! I know I'm probably old-fashioned, but to me a quilt is for snuggling under, and some of the things I saw would be better in an art gallery.

There were even less traders this year, with some of the well known ones having gone missing, but on the plus side, there were a couple who had never been to Harrogate show before. However, I don't think people were spending. I was able to get to every trader easily to look at things, rather than seeing the usual crowd 3 people deep on the first day.

I think there is a combination of problems here. 1) the economy is probably hitting home; 2) those who do have the money to spend probably went to Festival, where there is far more choice and all the big name traders go; 3) as less traders turn up each year, then less people go to the show.

All-in-all, I saw nothing to make me feel more optimistic about the future of this show, which is a shame.

Well, you did ask! (Well, actually, only Bilbo asked, but there you go.)

Cars'n Quilts

OK, you asked for photos of my new car, so here they are. Isn't she beautiful?

Now for the quilty things. This picture shows everything I bought. I was really quite restrained, wasn't I?

Now, I'm sure you'd like to see it all in more detail? Oh OK then, since you insist:

First I bought this wonderful bundle of fabrics which are from a range called Spice Trail.

Then I found a bargain:




Just look at the price of that. £4/metre that worked out at. It was too good to miss, and I was even more lucky cos I found two bundles, so now I've got the backing for a quilt and loads of light cream tone-on-tone to use in quilts.






Then, with Christmas in mind, I bought these.



I have been wanting to make a Christmas quilt for years and I have decided that 2009 is the year to do it. Mind you, I'm not saying that 2009 is the year to finish it!

Still thinking of Christmas, I bought these next:

Sorry, you can't see any more of what's in there cos it's a surprise for Mrs Teacher for Christmas.





I thought these were so cute, they had to come home with me too.

Now I thought I didn't like batiks, but.....



These were such lovely butterscotchy-toffee colours I couldn't resist them





My final buy for the day was this jelly roll.



I just loved the soft, slightly dusty colours in this roll, so it had to come home with me too.





That, much to the relief of my bank manager and my credit card company, was the end of my shopping for the day.

I even know what I'm going to do with some of the things I brought home with me!

The Great Northern Quilt Show

is where I've been today.

Mrs PennyPot and I had a lovely day there. We saw some amazing quilts, some "interesting" quilts and some that you look at and ask "why". No doubt you want to see all my photos? OK, here they are............




...........Did you enjoy that? I'm really sorry folks, but I forgot my camera. We did have to wonder at the judges reasons sometimes for awarding the ribbons as they did. It seemed to me that you could throw together a top, add some gold lame of a couple of sequins and win, but some of the most amazingly executed quilts which were completely traditional did not win anything. I wish we could see the judges' comments, perhaps I'd understand better then.

I did see the quilt Ms QuiltingProlifically entered. It's called Basket Case and you can see it on her blog here.

Sadly, I noticed there were less traders again this year, with a number of my favourites missing, but on the plus side there were also a couple of traders there who have not been in the past. I obviously did do a little shopping while I was there and I'll show you what I bought tomorrow.

I'm off now to put my poor, aching feet up.

I've got it........

.......I picked up my new car this morning. I drove it home, and was very happy with it's handling and comfort. I got back at lunch time, and since then it has been persisting down, and it's been thundering too, so I haven't been able to go out and play this afternoon. Mind you, the manual is a very thick book, so I'll spend some time reading that instead. (It's a big, thick book, but I don't think much of the plot!)