![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
Quilty
(LJ app still letting me post to my LJ even though it won't log me in. V mysterious!)
It has stopped being quite so cold, for which I am very grateful. It is rather misty, but I suppose you can't have everything.
I seem to have been quite busy, with living room redecoration arranging, pooch wrangling, failing to find a new horse, and several quilt-related things.
We've been doing miserably at getting the new living room floor arranged, having tried two shops in Canterbury. The first, when we said "we've decided that we'd like hard flooring but don't know anything more than that" waved vaguely and said "it's over there"; we did eventually coax some more information out of the sales guy, but weren't very impressed. The second, when I first tried (on a day when the car said -2 in the centre of Canterbury), had a 'back in five minutes' sign on the door; I waited ten then gave up and went to run other errands that were quicker than expected so I tried again later: the sign said 'open' but the door was locked, so no sale for them either. I have got a painter coming to quote tomorrow, though, so that's some progress. And my new curtains are here, and the furniture-other-than-the-sofas. Getting there.
Pooch is in fact doing very well. She's having her swimming lessons once a week, and is still on slightly shorter walks than usual, but otherwise she's back to normal now. All seems to be healing fine.
I thought I had a lead on a horse, but it turned out that I didn't. Thinking of trying a dealer who does a finder service (for a fee), but I'm waiting to hear back from a couple of people I've asked for gossip from, first.
On Saturday, I went to quilt club. It was the annual session where various people demonstrate various techniques and you choose which four of the eight demos you want to see. Moderately interesting, but I didn't really learn anything much and came away from a couple of them thinking 'that was not only a needlessly complicated way of doing that thing but also involved a slightly expensive material that could have been just as well replaced with an incredibly cheap one'.
On Sunday, I went to an all-day workshop to learn how to make Storm At Sea blocks. Mostly, what I learnt is that my instinct when looking online at designs using the blocks, specifically that the class was going to involve a lot of fiddly cutting of fabric and I'd be much happier using a paper template like I usually do to sew onto instead, was entirely correct. I think I'll be doing that for the rest of the quilt, and further think that there's a better than 50/50 chance that, when I've done so and come to sew the whole thing together, I'll end up taking apart what I did in the class and doing that on paper as well so that it looks more consistent. It was interesting, but my hands were very unhappy by the end of the day.
To be fair to the class, my hands didn't start the day entirely happy: the quilt made up of all the little folded squares is finally finished! I (very minimally) hand quilted it in the end, because I didn't want to risk quilting over the folds, and that went very smoothly with a doll needle and embroidery floss, but then I came to do the last little bit of it: blind stitching the top and bottom of the quilt together around the edge. I've learnt, over the years, that some fabrics are harder on my hands than others, and it turns out that linen is one of the bad ones. On a good day, I was managing to do two sessions of about a foot and a half each.... Still, it is now finished, so have some pictures:
The down side of my being out at weekend was that Mike had to horse wrangle by himself when they were coming in to bed. They behaved on Saturday but on Sunday went charging off, spraining a couple of Mike's fingers in the process. They were also behaving like idiots list night, trying to get to the new mares (even GB!): possibly they've come into season. To be on the safe side, even though it's going to be a bit slippery I'm going to just let them run down the hill on their own tonight rather than try and lead both of them in along the road.
It has stopped being quite so cold, for which I am very grateful. It is rather misty, but I suppose you can't have everything.
I seem to have been quite busy, with living room redecoration arranging, pooch wrangling, failing to find a new horse, and several quilt-related things.
We've been doing miserably at getting the new living room floor arranged, having tried two shops in Canterbury. The first, when we said "we've decided that we'd like hard flooring but don't know anything more than that" waved vaguely and said "it's over there"; we did eventually coax some more information out of the sales guy, but weren't very impressed. The second, when I first tried (on a day when the car said -2 in the centre of Canterbury), had a 'back in five minutes' sign on the door; I waited ten then gave up and went to run other errands that were quicker than expected so I tried again later: the sign said 'open' but the door was locked, so no sale for them either. I have got a painter coming to quote tomorrow, though, so that's some progress. And my new curtains are here, and the furniture-other-than-the-sofas. Getting there.
Pooch is in fact doing very well. She's having her swimming lessons once a week, and is still on slightly shorter walks than usual, but otherwise she's back to normal now. All seems to be healing fine.
I thought I had a lead on a horse, but it turned out that I didn't. Thinking of trying a dealer who does a finder service (for a fee), but I'm waiting to hear back from a couple of people I've asked for gossip from, first.
On Saturday, I went to quilt club. It was the annual session where various people demonstrate various techniques and you choose which four of the eight demos you want to see. Moderately interesting, but I didn't really learn anything much and came away from a couple of them thinking 'that was not only a needlessly complicated way of doing that thing but also involved a slightly expensive material that could have been just as well replaced with an incredibly cheap one'.
On Sunday, I went to an all-day workshop to learn how to make Storm At Sea blocks. Mostly, what I learnt is that my instinct when looking online at designs using the blocks, specifically that the class was going to involve a lot of fiddly cutting of fabric and I'd be much happier using a paper template like I usually do to sew onto instead, was entirely correct. I think I'll be doing that for the rest of the quilt, and further think that there's a better than 50/50 chance that, when I've done so and come to sew the whole thing together, I'll end up taking apart what I did in the class and doing that on paper as well so that it looks more consistent. It was interesting, but my hands were very unhappy by the end of the day.
To be fair to the class, my hands didn't start the day entirely happy: the quilt made up of all the little folded squares is finally finished! I (very minimally) hand quilted it in the end, because I didn't want to risk quilting over the folds, and that went very smoothly with a doll needle and embroidery floss, but then I came to do the last little bit of it: blind stitching the top and bottom of the quilt together around the edge. I've learnt, over the years, that some fabrics are harder on my hands than others, and it turns out that linen is one of the bad ones. On a good day, I was managing to do two sessions of about a foot and a half each.... Still, it is now finished, so have some pictures:
The down side of my being out at weekend was that Mike had to horse wrangle by himself when they were coming in to bed. They behaved on Saturday but on Sunday went charging off, spraining a couple of Mike's fingers in the process. They were also behaving like idiots list night, trying to get to the new mares (even GB!): possibly they've come into season. To be on the safe side, even though it's going to be a bit slippery I'm going to just let them run down the hill on their own tonight rather than try and lead both of them in along the road.