Another strange bank holiday weekend in lockdown, and this week I also had a couple of TOIL days that I had to use, which seemed slightly ridiculous, but were quite nice to have nonetheless, in that I could go shopping at the relatively civil time of 9:30 am yesterday. I got to finish one quilt top, get another cut up, another small project completed, restocked the shop after the arrival of a huge order and cooked some lovely food, including a fab Thai red curry, which I’d never tried before, but which will definitely be going into rotation on the menu (not least because there’s leftovers in the freezer, plus some leftover paste in the fridge!). I’m not sure why, but lockdown has had me exploring a lot of new to me foods, some that I’ve drooled over from afar for years (usually on TV, and which I’ve generally forgotten about 10 minutes after the program has ended, until the next time I see it pop up), some that I’ve had pinned for years and never got round to trying, and some that I’ve spotted ingredients for on a shelf in the supermarket and thought, ‘what the heck!’. All have been successes, thankfully, and I look forward to exploring more.
What about you, have you learned or relearned to love something different recently? Or have you fallen out of love with something and you can’t quite work out why? I was going great guns on reading until about Easter (23 books this year by then!), but then I started a new book and faltered. I think I’m struggling to suspend disbelief on it, so I might set it aside to try another time and hit up something else – my favourite reads are mysteries, tending towards the cosy mysteries and the ones with female detectives of the early 20th century (of which there are actually quite a few!) and this one was set in a slave plantation in the early 19th century with an eccentric owner that builds dirigibles while his brother and fellow owner seems to rejoice in torturing the slaves. I definitely need a better head space to fully appreciate it.
Finishes This Week:
So these weren’t on the horizon at all last week, in fact they weren’t on the horizon until about 10 minutes before I made them! I bought 4 pieces of colourful minky from a quilt show years ago (I think possibly one of the ones at Ingleston) I had no plan for them then, although I think I thought they’d be bigger than they were – minky tends to be wider than quilting cotton to start with, but these turned out to be quilting cotton FQ size and I was a bit stumped, so I shoved them in a corner, and only rediscovered them a few weeks ago when there was an unfortunate furniture toppling incident and they fell off the top! So I set them aside somewhere more prominent to pretend to think about it… and in the end I just thought I needed to get them off my very limited ‘waiting area’ and out of the way, so 2 cushions were born, a colour on each side with a coordinating zip for one of the colours on the bottom – time spent to make, less than an hour! I need to collect a few larger cushion forms for them, as the ones inside are a wee bit small.
In Progress This Week:
I finished my Plaidish top! I was hoping I might be able to rig up a photo shoot, but it was windy, so it wasn’t to be. In the end, I had to photoshop the bottom row into last week’s mosaic (some of the colours have gone a little odd) I’m now sending it off to Cath @cumbrianlongarmer so that she can thread baste it for me. I also pieced a backing from a duvet cover and pillow set, which worked out rather well, so I’m going to try that again some time.
I’m also chopping up Heather Ross’ Far Far Away 1 and 2 reprints, but I forgot to take a photo before I started cutting, sorry!
I also signed up for a sew along for the Tattoo Quilt by Berene Campbell of Happy Sew Lucky, and I’ve been busy chopping up the foundation pieces (it’s all FPP) I still need to get out my coloured pencils and stack of solids to decide what’s going where.
To Be Worked On This Week:
- The HR quilt
- Possibly start cutting a Big Kiss Quilt (I’ve already pulled some long hoarded fabric, and I’m loving the quick makes now to use up my stash!)
- Who knows what else may leap out!
Have a great week all :o)
