Last weekend Di aka Quiltova and I went off on a little jaunt….and we flew off to visit Marrakech in Morocco. You may know Annabella, who lives there and who we ‘knew’ through various bees, most notably Stitch Tease. Here we are with Annabella’s first Stitch Tease quilt…..

If you ever get the chance to visit Marrakech please take it. It is a fabulous city with a 500 year old souk, ancient palaces and madrassas, hidden gardens, scents of orange blossom and other less appetizing things, spices and pointy toed slippers…and don’t forget lots of couscous and tagines. Quiltova and I had a fabulous time exploring and getting to know Annabella, her son Zaki and husband Youssef as well as her mum, who was over visiting from England. We stayed in Annabella and Youssef’s lovely little riad right in the Medina!

Here are just a few of the sights of our weekend. Only three hours from Switzerland and yet soooooo different.

Normal life has now been resumed and I’m slowly coming back down to earth.

Thanks girls for a fabulous weekend!
Helen

I’m sorry If you’ve stopped by in the last few days and discovered that the blog has been down again. It’s those horrible rotten spammers again…..more to the point apparently Dutch rotten spammers who have been targeting my blog in a bid to bring down the server..which they duly managed to do. So now if you want to read me from the Netherlands I’m afraid you can’t as we’ve had to block all access from there. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again..I DON’T GET IT! What on earth are these people trying to achieve and don’t they have anything even a teensy weeny bit more worthwhile to spend their time doing? Aargh…..

Rant over.

Otherwise life has been trundling on as normal. I have finished putting together my European Siblings Together quilt top. Thanks to all my bee buddies for the blocks, which I think you will agree, have gone together very nicely. I added a scrappy piano key border to make the quilt a little larger. It isn’t a cool designer quilt, but it’s going to be something cosy to give a fostered child something to snuggle under. I hope to get it basted (yuk) and quilted (yay!) in the next week or so…watch this space.

Otherwise I’m trying to lose weight, trying to get fit, trying to simplify my life….you get the picture. None of it is very successful, but I’m not giving up. I have realized that with turning 50 the weight and fitness issues are harder to deal with, but I’m confident that I’ll get there!

The biggest problem has been the awful sport-related headaches that I’ve suffered from for years after running and which have been getting worse. After a lot of research and long conversations with our wonderful local chemist I’m trying the latest ‘cure’. having eliminated everything else I’m now thinking it could be a potassium deficiency. So supplements to the ready I tried out my new wonder mixture on Sunday. I didn’t run very far or very hard, but I also didn’t have a headache afterwards. A baby step in the right direction maybe…

Ah well, onwards and upwards.

What do you make of the missing plane. Now that is a mystery isn’t it?

have a good one,

Helen

The last couple of weeks have been busy – but full of nice things – some spontaneous get-togethers with friends, lunch and a mooch afternoon in Zürich with the lovely Elisabeth from Shark’s Dinner and a flying visit to England to look at an art school with daughter no2 and spend the weekend with her godmother, my god-daughter and the indefatigable Eric, saver of the blog.

(You may have noticed some interruptions in blog service recently – and I don’t just mean my failure to write anything! For some reason I have been the target of a massive spam attack, which managed to bring down the server, not once, but twice. Amazing what the words ‘quilt’, ‘fat quarter’ or ‘half-square triangle’ can bring about….no, honestly, I’m joking, as we don’t know what the trigger was, but it did set me to wondering about the incredible pointlessness of the life of the spammer. Enough, don’t get me started….Eric saved the day (again) and that’s all you need to know!)

We even managed a lovely day in York with said GM and GD, timed impeccably to coincide with the Viking festival. I love York, so any chance of a day there is one that I won’t pass up, even though Betty’s tea shop has become so popular with Japanese tourists that there is no chance of a table unless you are up for a two hour wait outside.

Everywhere we went in York we encountered rather splendid Vikings, who had clearly been tending to their magnificent Viking tummies for a good long while. Daughter no. 2 was somewhat bemused. My favourite sighting of the day were two ‘grannies’ wearing normal clothes, but Viking helmets and fake beards, seriously discussing which tea shop they were going to rendezvous in after they finished their shopping. As daughter no.2 pointed out, you would NEVER see anything like that in Switzerland!

I’m slowly but steadily trying to plod though the projects in hand in the sewing niche – and today saw the final stitches in my Hannah Fettig Lightweight sweater. This might look vaguely familiar as I made a lime green version last year – also using Chickadee wool from Quince and Company. I can’t plug this shamelessly enough – faboolah sweater – just perfect, not too cool and not too warm and the yarn comes in gorgeous slightly quirky shades.

The last week has been pretty productive and I’ve finally managed to quilt and bind my Fireworks quilt. The pattern is by Camille Roskelley and the fabrics are Rouenneries Deux by French General. I still really love the red/beige/cream combination and I’m so glad to have this finished. I feel like I’ve been making it since forever. (OK, I HAVE been making it since forever!).

I hummed and hawed a lot before deciding to be very dull and just quilt in the ditch. I really wanted to showcase the fabric and the pattern and not the quilting (which was a little wobbly as you asked!). I clearly needed some quilting in the ditch practice – and it was looking way better by the time I was finished than it did at the start. It wasn’t exactly a meditative experience like FMQ sometimes can be, there was too much stopping and starting for that, but I’m happy with the result….and even more happy that I can get on to other things with a clearer conscience…..!

My boys have been away in the mountains this week, but I couldn’t really justify any more time off work after my Japan trip, so I was here with my girls. We had a good week – had people round for dinner, watched an outrageous amount of the Olympics and I knitted and sewed whenever I could. There is a sweater about to be finished too – it was amazing how much more sociable and productive I was than when the boys are here…can’t think why as we don’t really live in each other’s pockets in the evenings. maybe it was just me knuckling down and doing stuff and it had nothing at all to do with their absence.

I realized though that when I do have friends round and feel like I’m doing things then I feel much more balanced all round. As this is my big goal I guess I have to carry on.

Life is good

Helen

I’ve been back from Japan for just over a week. It was a wonderful trip, full of inspiration, new experiences and interesting things (and of course the food was utterly fabulous!). I’m sure I’ll go back….the door has been opened!

Now everyday life has resumed. I fought a bit last week with jet-lag, which resulted in a horrible three day migraine. Maybe going straight back to work was a little optimistic….

Even though I haven’t been blogging much, I have been doing things. There’s been a fair bit of knitting going on here and today I knuckled down and basted the Fireworks quilt top. I really hate basting, but at least I could combine it with a marathon watching the Winter Olympics session. This quilt top has been a very long time in the making. The big individual blocks took ages to make, but now that it’s done I’m really happy with it. It is pretty much single bed size.

I have no idea yet how I’m going to quilt this baby. I’m tending towards very simple quilting in the ditch. I want it to be soft and cuddly and too much quilting turns a quilt to cardboard in my experience. The jury is still out though, so if you have a good idea, please do let me know.

It’s incredibly mild weather here at the moment for the time of year, so I also braved the woods and went for a run this afternoon. I know it was good for me, but boy it was really hard work. I can’t believe how much fitness I seem to have lost through being a slob for the last few months. I need to do something about that….lose some weight and get my act together to train regularly. I KNOW I feel so much better when I do. I don’t want to turn into fat, frumpy and fifty ;-(

So things are getting back to normal. There are a few ups and downs with the children, but I’m learning to take the downs with equanimity. Nobody is dying and teenagers need to learn to take responsibility for their stupidity actions. It has taken me a lot of years and a lot of angst to get to this point. I’m learning to let go and to accept that I can’t make everything right. Sometimes things just don’t turn out how I would like them to, but that’s life. I’ll do the things I can actually do, make the changes I can influence, but a lot of the time things are out of my hands. They just are.

Have a good week out there in the ether and hopefully I will be back before too long,

Helen