Christmas crafts
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♥Oct. 24th, 2017 // 07:35 pm♥
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For the best part of a year now, ex-Mrs Up the Hill has been trying to get me to go along to another quilting group that she's a member of*, but it meets on a Saturday and whenever she's mentioned that there's a meeting in a few days I've been away or has visitors coming.
It's a more organised group than Little Quilt Club, run by a woman who does a fair bit of teaching. Every month she has a Project, which you can do or not as you prefer, and once a year it's a Charity Project. (To be fair, we occasionally have that at Little Quilt Club, but at what I shall probably take to calling Organised Quilt Club there are handouts and everything.)
( Those footnotes got long and whingy )
This month, my seeing ex-Mrs UtH and one of OQC's meetings came close in time, and I was free, so I went along. The Project was Christmas themed (intended to be a two-session one, although next month is Novacon), making either Christmas cards or a table runner with a Scandi Gnome theme (apparently, this is a Huge Thing, although it's passed me by entirely. They are quite sweet).
My Christmas cards (pah! amateurs!) were very nearly finished before the session, and I decided that if I tried to do a table runner the way that she intended then it would have to have masses of blank sky to fit my table, so I thought I'd make a wall hanging. Further consideration revealed that, mostly on account of bookshelves, windows and doors, there aren't actually many places downstairs where I could put a wallhanging other than on the side of the stair case, so I've ended up with a slightly oddly-shaped design (and am quite impressed that it fits given that I eyeballed it while not able to see the staircase).
Here's where I've got to so far:
(That right-most tree isn't bizarrely deformed, there's a fold in the fabric!)
I still have to quilt the background: swirly things on the snow and hilly things on the mountain should be easy, but... I seem to have ended up with masses of blank sky. Sigh. I've got some nice silver/shades of teal slightly metallic variegated thread that I think might make quite a nice aurora around the trees on the horizon, although I'm not sure. I could stick some stars on it, or I could chop it off, or I could do something else entirely. Anyone have any suggestions? |
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Jodie news
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♥Oct. 24th, 2017 // 08:09 pm♥
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In other news, Jodie is now t-shirt-free, and I've put the cushions back on her sofa, so I think we can call that recovered. She has still got a feelable wound on her side, but it's healing up nicely.
I spoke to the vet today, after she'd spoken to the oncologist, and the conclusion is that there's very little value in re-testing the samples. The oncologist reckons there's about a ten percent chance of the cancers recurring, and that if we want to do anything more then it would be an ultrasound scan of her abdomen to look for suspicious patches. The vet, very sensibly, said "Even if there is, what would you do?", and she's right so I think we're going to leave it for now.
This afternoon, we picked the last courgette of the year, chopped down all the dead and dying veg plants, and moved half a dozen barrow-loads of compost from the big compost bins to the veg bed. We're very bad about the compost bins, and just occasionally throw random stuff into them. I suspect that the (non-horse-owning) people we bought the place from did the same, because once we got down towards the bottom the compost was really lovely-looking and contained bits of the surface of our riding school, suggesting that the people that *they* bought the place from used to chuck in any horse poo that was deposited in the school. |
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Meeces
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♥Oct. 24th, 2017 // 10:06 pm♥
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We started filling the bird feeders two days ago, which reminded me that I should probably set the mouse traps that we keep near the boxes of bird food.
Having got four since then, I conclude that (even though it's still warm outside) I probably should have started earlier....
Old house, in the countryside: as long as they're not in the main part of the house I don't really mind, but I do want to keep them somewhat controlled.
I noticed that the barn smelt mousy a few days ago, and set those traps for the first time today. We'll see what the morning brings. I may need another jar of faux-nutella.
Maybe I should have another go at convincing Mike that we need a couple of feral cats in the barn. OTOH, it might cause trouble with the neighbouring domesticated cats! |
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