My New Year's Quilt (photos to follow)

I shall turn my shoulder on the unfinished projects (although some are still being worked on), as it was OUR turn for a new quilt.  Several years ago now, my dear friend Sharon in Kentucky (Morning's Minion blog) sent me a parcel of quilting materials - oh, such pretty patterns andcolours, which I put on one side, thinking our house would soon sell, and then I would make a new quilt for our bed as a housewarming present.  Well, we are still here, and I am waiting no longer. 

(This photo took over an hour to load!!)


I chose a simple design from a magazine.  The main border colour was green, but mine is just random!  The blocks go together quickly being a very VERY simple pattern, and my new machine is such a delight to use.  I intended to start on New Year's Day, but it was about the 3rd or 4th before I began cutting out.  I've sewn about 95 blocks so far (200 are needed), but pinched 4 to make a work-in-progress quilt bag to cover all my materials and keep the cats off them!  Sewing the blocks has made up for missing the first two weeks of my patchwork class, due to no functioning car (but more of that later).

. . . . . another hour gone by . . . .

The broadband here the last 12 hours is ridiculous - falling out so no Netflix or Prime on tv, and I can't load a photo or send an email.  I can't even load the page to TEST the broadband speed, it's that bad.  Hah - now the page has loaded and it has spent the last 10 minutes TRYING to test the speed and is still at it . . .  I can see that a call to BT is going to be happening later today.  NOT a good way to spend the morning.

This Hollyhock floral design is my favourite.

As for the car, having paid out £400 to get it fixed - and then it wouldn't run when we went to pick it up! - we had to wait overnight whilst the garage did a further repair - cleaning the emissions filter which we think had been a problem for a long long time.  They did that free of charge, bless them, but gave us a couple of advisories, including one which we really didn't want to hear - the clutch was starting to slip.  Having already spent more than the trade-in value on our car (as we later discovered) we decided that despite our level of skint-ness (trade has been very poor in the last year) we would have to bite the bullet and go and see what a replacement might cost us and we drove straight to X-Hands to look at what was on offer at the car dealers there.

The W.I.P. bag to keep my half-made quilts and material free from muddy footprints . . .

To cut a long story short, we have negotiated to purchase a Nissan NV200.  It has a very low mileage for the year (2011), and has been regularly serviced and in good condition.  It gives us the boot room we need, with the seats folded back, plus height (there is a camper van version, but dream on Jen!)  It will be lovely to have a totally reliable vehicle again.  We  hated going out in bad weather in the Doblo as the windscreen wipers had been a real pain in the past - stopping working in really torrential rain, both times on the motorway and one at night, which was SO scary, trying to negotiate across traffic to get onto the hard shoulder.  Whilst the AA bod had fixed a clip on to stop it happening again, we were never convinced it was 100% so it will be nice not to have that niggle in the back of our minds.

So, money is going to be tight until the house sells (and it looks like we will have to drop the price yet again to try and attract a buyer, from desperation).  I am going to make sure all the forgotten tins in the back of the cupboard are brought to the front and used in . . . interesting! . . . ways and I will have to work my way to the bottom of the chest freezer too. 

I think when the weather improves regular car boot sale stalls are going to be the order of the day to clear the items not suitable for the Fairs we do now.  We need the space and we need the money . . .

Back later with photos.  I hope . . .