I haven't been blogging lately, as my husband is off island, and I have been 'in charge'. Sounds very pretentious, but I have not had a lot of time to go online. The hens, ducks and ponies have to be fed and watered twice a day, and of course, as soon as my husband left we got snow, so I have been breaking ice on all the water barrels and trying to get the stand pipe outside to work. The last two days it has been so cold that I have had to haul the water from the house, as everything outside is iced up. This is most unusual, as we are so close to the sea, but the weather forecast does not look good for this coming week, when my husband is coming back up. He is going to get a rough journey, I think. On top of that, I have had a sick dog. Penny had to get an emergency hysterectomy last week. We were really disappointed, as we were going to breed her in May, but we were told, if we did not get the operation done, she might die, so there was no choice. She is fine now. The stitches came out today, and she is running about in the snow, without a care in the world.

The top picture shows the colours I chose for the pinwheel quilt. I was going great guns, but I got sidetracked, and I am now working on a new project (naughty, naughty!) I am not going to show the blocks until it is finished, but it is an easy block to do, so that should not take too long. Here is a sneak peek of some of the blocks.

Thankful Thoughts

My sister is now back home and waiting to start chemotherapy and radiotherapy. We have been talking on Skype. It is great to have her back talking and laughing with me. She has a great sense of humour. Thank You!

Till next time.

tich

Jelly Roll Update

You will remember, perhaps, the story of the jelly roll and how I did not like what I made, here. I made a quilt top from the other half of the jelly roll (here), and it is still to be sandwiched and quilted.

I still had a load of the original jelly roll squares, which were going to be made into a rail fence quilt. I did not like it at all, so I cut out some squares, using two different colours of pink, and this is the result. (Sorry about the picture. We have snow storms today, and the light is awful!)

I only did this with half the squares, and last night I had a play with the blocks, to get a pleasing layout. That was when I realised the triangular blocks are, of course, now a different size! DUH! This quilt does not want to be made. I can't resize the strip blocks, as that will make one of the end strips too skinny. I am going to unpick two strips, and replace the centre one with a skinnier, pink strip. If this quilt doesn't start behaving, it will go on the UFO pile!!

It is my own fault. I just didn't think!! I have had a cold since Christmas, and that is my excuse for muddled thinking.

Thankful Thoughts

I did the last walk with Penny , our dog, last night, as Mr D was tired. It was beautiful. I managed to time the walk between the snow/hail showers, and the wind was making the clouds scuttle across the sky. The moon was supposed to be shining really brightly the night before, but as it was, I did not need a torch to see Penny, and when the clouds parted, I could see Mars really close to the moon. Beautiful to be out, but even nicer to get into a nice warm bed!!

This is our little dog called Penny. She is a border terrier and just over a year old. She loves everyone, even the cat.

I have only been doing a little sewing these last few days. My sister in Canada is seriously ill, and I have been finding it hard to concentrate.

Thankful Thoughts

I am really thankful I have such a nice family. It is not large, but it is loving. Say a prayer for my sister.

tich

Penny Rug Completed.

At last! I have finished my penny rug. As discussed before, I bought this kit from a newsgroup, which sells unwanted sewing items. It was supposed to be hand  sewn with cotton perle, but I decided to use my Bernina 440QE. I had never used the buttonhole stitch before on a sewing machine. My machine behaved well until I went to sew the outside edges of the small pennies. It was not too happy, but I managed. Not perfect, but I got there. For anybody who is interested, I used the following info to sew the rug. (remember I always take a note of this info, in case I want to go back and do something similar). The needle was, in most cases, moved to the extreme right.

St No. Tension St Length St Width Foot No. Extra

Inner Pennies

161 4 3.10 4.00 20 Mirror Image

Outer Pennies (2 together)

161 4 3.00 3.8 20 Mirror Image

Appliques

161 4 3.10 2.9 20 Mirror Image

Border for large Circle

161 4 3.00 3.8 20 Mirror Image