Hi! - photo heavy

No, I have not fallen off the planet!! My husband and I went on a whirlwind visit round the family off island. Twice to my daughter's (and the new granddaughter) near Edinburgh, twice to my father-in-law in Glasgow, who has Alzheimer's, two nights with my son in Leeds and one day just for ourselves, which we spent at the New Lanark Mill in New Lanark. I will do a post on this later on. We went back to my daughter's and picked up my two older granddaughters (five and seven) for the rest of the summer. We had a ball. There was no sewing done, but we played and worked and picnicked. I have included some pictures to show how we spent our time.

Enjoy!!

tich

Huge Apology!

I won this giveaway from I Have a Notion. Due to the upset of my sister dying, the excitement of receiving so many packages of Civil War material from around the world and my daughter's advanced pregnancy, I did not blog about it. I feel really bad about this. Kelly Jackson from

I Have a Notion is such a nice person. She is such a caring lady, looks after her customers so well and writes a great blog. If you you read a lot of Patchwork blogs, you will notice that more and more bloggers are talking about buying their notions from IHAN and saying how good the service is.

The pattern is wonderful. It is from Aardvark Quilts. The picture below shows Pam Goecke Dinndorf, the designer from Aardvark and Kelly Jackson from IHAN.

The pattern is called 'Paperweight'. and is actually autographed!! Gosh, I am so lucky!! I am going to have fun with this one! To help me out, and so that I don't have to grovel too much to Kelly, please go over to 'I Have a Notion' and have a look at what Kelly is doing. Her business is wonderful and so is Kelly!!)

Thankful Thoughts

How can you not be thankful/grateful/full of wonder, when you see new life coming into the world. Last week I became a Granny again, and I now have a new granddaughter called Annabelle Dorothy. Her Mum and Dad chose these names because -

Annabelle - popular in Scotland in the 12th century.

Anne - Hebrew for 'God has favoured me'

Belle - Beautiful

Dorothy (Doreen, Ron's Mum) Greek - 'Gift of God'. Dorothy is also the the name of both my Mum and my husband's Mum, so all the Mum's are covered.

If you look carefully at the first picture below, you will see new members of the family here. One of our hens went broody, and rather than using the incubator, we put some duck eggs under her, and, so far, we have two wee ducklings. They are shut in, so that the crows and the seagulls can't get at them. Aren't they gorgeous?

Till next time.

tich

DJ G5 + Goodies

This is the latest DJ block, G5 'Poof'. I machine pieced the base, then hand appliquéd the shape on top.
This is how it actually looks. Do you think I should cut the base material away from behind the appliqué? Need some comments.
These are the goodies, which came today. Two lots of CW material, and some cowboy material and embroidery thread. Thank you so much Rosa, Sarma and Cynthia. I have had so many nice cards and well wishes. What lovely people I am getting to know. I am so lucky. Thank you all again.

Till next time,

tich

There was panic stations on Saturday, when I discovered my digital camera was not working!! How was I going to live without it? I use my camera every day! I use it for everything! In fact, the other day, I very patiently recorded the new hens taking their first step out into the big, bad world outside the new hen house. BTW the new hen house is standing up to the weather no bother at all. You may wonder why I say that? I did not tell you that it is a Sanday hen house, that is to say it is made in the Sanday style. Here in Sanday, nothing goes to waste. Everything that can be used again, is recycled, so the hen house was built this way. Wood left over from other projects was used. Not bad, eh?

Anyway, back to the camera. I spent part of yesterday trying to sort it, but to no avail. I took out batteries, swapped cards, but it was just being difficult. We were hoping to go on a guided tour of the Sanday lighthouse today, and I wanted to take pictures. As a last resort I phoned up the Wildlife Ranger, who does a lot of photography, went round to his house, and he worked it out within minutes! So I caught up on my goodies photos, and also took a closeup of the emu feathers, especially for Rosa. I must apologise for not thanking the ladies for the goodies in the last photos - Margaret, Rhoda, Marion, Sylvia, Marg, Margaret and Jenni.

The picture at the top shows the lovely things I received from Geraldine, Patricia, Petra and Rosa (again!) The materials are beautiful, and if you look closely there is also a huswif, sewing charms and a patchwork badge. I would also like to thank Petra's husband for the Scout badge. What a nice person!

Below are the emu feathers from Marg.

Till next time.

tich

Late

Edit - I am sorry the pictures are not coming up bigger, when you click them. Blogger sometimes does this to me and I don't know why!

I am a wee bit behind in my blogging. I was over in Kirkwall, all day Wednesday, and yesterday was a day to recover. The summer ferry time for the Wednesday ferry is 7.30 am, so that meant getting up about 5.45am and rushing around to get down to the terminal at least 20 minutes before departure. We had a lovely morning on the Mainland, which I will blog about later. The afternoon was spent at the physiotherapist and shopping! Yuck! But we managed everything and got home just after six. On the porch I had five parcels waiting for me, all from Australia, and there was one yesterday, again from Down Under! Look what was inside!!

There was all sorts of craft goodies, because Jenni read Rosa's post about me and Jenni then posted about me on an Australian group. I got beautiful material, including aboriginal design material, which I have earmarked for a project in the future, embroidery thread, which I am dying to dive into, buttons (oh, oh, oh!) an embroidery kit and an applique kit (which will both be ideal to do on the ferry), stamps, beautiful cards and sentiments AND ...Emu feathers! I am going to make something special with them, maybe a little bag, but they are too much fun not to use. Every time I pick up a piece of the materials I have received, or use some of the craft goods, I think of how this has happened and of all the wonderful people all over the world. It is unbelievable, but I will have happy memories and a lot of good friends for years to come!

Please excuse the quality of the following pictures. It was near midnight, and I had to hold my arms above my head, which I find very difficult.

We had an unexpected visitor last night -

A peahen!!

We have no idea where it came from -

but it flew about a bit and then disappeared!

Till next time.

tich

New Baby Girl!!

This is our new granddaughter, (no name yet), born yesterday, 7th July, at 7.45am. She was 8lb 3oz. Isn't she gorgeous (says proud Granny!)? The picture in the middle shows her sister, Holly, and her other Grandfather, who lives nearby. Happy birthday!

Till next time.

tich

Henhouse and Goodies

We decided we needed some more hens. We have a very posh henhouse for the older hens, but , of course, the old hens and the new hens cannot be mixed, so we had to get a new house. My husband decided he was going to build one, and then got a phone call from the supplier that the hens were going to be delivered in two days. Mr D did a fantastic job. On top is a picture of the henhouse without the nesting boxes attached. Notice the droppings board on the right hand side under the perches. I suggested that it might be a good idea to put in a waterproof membrane on the floor, to make it easier to clean. There is only a 14" space between the dropping board and the floor. Guess who was flat on her face pinning the sheet to the walls!!

But doesn't it look good?

This end has the pop hole, and those boxes containing the hens have just been delivered.

The hens inspecting their new home ...

and the perches.

I thought I would try the Dear Jane block G6. I quite like miniatures, but I did not do well today ...

The seams don't meet, and to add insult to injury, I put the the triangles round the wrong way! Anyway it is good practice.

I would like to thank Marie for this pretty piece of Civil War material, which the postie brought.

Thank you so much. It was really kind of you. I look forward to using it in the quilt.

Till next time.

tich