As expected, Barcelona was wonderful. There’s just something about the city that I love – and the warm sunshine,blue skies and views of the Mediterranean didn’t disappoint – in fact I enjoyed them all the more because I had driven to the airport along snow-covered roads…

Unfortunately I didn’t have much time for sightseeing, but just soaking up all that Spanishness, eating paella and really good seafood and soaking up the sun did me good.

Don’t laugh, but the first thing I did after checking into the hotel was to stroll through a lovely residential area to hit the local quilt shop – Club de la Aguja.

Long and thin, with fabrics, some yarn and lots of scrapworking supplies I had to knock on the door and be buzzed entry. (Clearly I don’t look like an axe murderer).  There was a buzz of activity in the shop, mainly from a table-full of knitters. The fabrics were nice, but I didn’t see anything Spanish or ‘different’ from what you find elsewhere. There weren’t weren’t even any books in Spanish, which was a bit surprising. Almost everything was American and fairly pricey. I didn’t break my rules and buy any fabric – there wasn’t really anything jumping out at me and calling my name, which I guess is probably a good thing.

What I did find was this little gem – a Japanese book on free log cabins translated into French.

I’ve been leaning in that direction for a long time and was intrigued by some of the shapes, so it really had to come home with me. Most of the patterns included are for hand-sewing, but I think most of them would be machinable with care. Paying was fun – but my sign language skills and a lot of laughing got us though. Not one person in the shop spoke a single word of English – so I was glad in the end that I wasn’t asking for fabric to be cut or for anything too complicated. (Memo to self: must learn at least a few rudimentary Spanish works – being able to say Ola and nothing else really isn’t good enough once you’re away from the tourist sights!).

Don’t you think a log cabin variation would just be the most wonderful stash buster?

Anyway, now I’m home again, back to the snow and a weekend with no plans to speak off….Lovely!

Have a good one!

Helen

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 16th, 2013 at 5:59 pm and is filed under Places, Quilting. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.