Why does everything go wrong at once?

First the telephone stopped working and we are waiting for an engineer sometime next week. Then, while clearing out one of the kitchen cupboards, we discovered that it was collapsing and needed urgent repair work to stop a disaster. My husband struggled manfully, holding up the cupboard while fixing the legs and I wiped things down. Went to rinse out my microfibre cloth and discovered there was no hot water. Yep, the boiler has packed in and so we have no heating either. The earliest British Gas can get out to us is Monday. Oh joy!

Adding to the annoyance, the kettle is being temperamental and only working when it feels like it, the cooker is refusing to light and I'm having to use matches, the cancerous lump in Sophie's ear has started bleeding which is probably the beginning of the end and E's girlfriend can no longer live with her half-sister and wants to stay here 'temporarily'.

Arrrgggghhhh!!!!

Rainbow Scrap Challenge 2012

In a bid to be more productive I've signed up for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge. Not sure what kind of block I'd like to make but this beautiful quilt caught my eye. I don't think I've got the fabrics to do it justice sadly. Maybe one day.

Arrgghh!!! All the pictures are huge and table breaking, even on the smallest size. Trying to sort things. And fixed. :D

My desk is a tip

I've done quite a lot of cooking and sewing in the lead up to Christmas as most of the gifts I was giving were home-made. This has left my desk a huge mess.

So my project for the next couple of days is to get it sorted out and cleaned up. Maybe get round to the filing while I'm at it! Then I can get on with some sewing.

New Year, new start!

Going to try and keep up with my blog a little better this year. I wonder how well I will do.

Just testing

I've had to change my email address and then discovered that I didn't know my password for this blog. I've been so bad about posting to it that it didn't really affect me until I wanted to check out all the blogs that I read.

Hopefully it's all sorted now.

I made bread

This is the most beautiful loaf. It makes me want to hack all the crusts off and gobble them down slathered in butter. Instead I will be good and let it cool and wait until breakfast time.

My poor laptop

It's pretty old and has been starting to show signs of coming to the end of it's life. The main problem has been wide bands of the screen that are either dead or permanently on the wrong colour, leading to an interesting stripy pattern which makes your eyes hurt if you watch too much TV on it. Friday though it flickered and wibbled and then over half the screen died, leaving me with about 4 inches on the left hand side that worked. My MIL has been a sweetie and is using her laptop instead of her desk-top computer so that I can borrow her screen. It's kind of awkward but at least I can access the internet.

I have new mousies

Actually I have 5 new mousies but out of all the photos I took, these were the only ones that weren't just a blur!


Spice

Florence

My youngest son decided to build an igloo for his Club Penguin figurines using the ice cube tray as a mold. It worked fantastically well and he had a great afternoon playing with them.



He's normally a total computer addict and it was nice to see him voluntarily playing outside with toys.

We had some more snow last night and the garden looks very pretty again.

Broken Hearts

It's too cold to do anything much except stay in and watch bad TV and after finishing my brother's quilt I just wasn't in the mood to tackle anything big so I've been playing with a few more Broken Heart blocks. One day I'll have enough to make a sofa throw or something.











Obviously these have alternate pairs!

Teazle's Coat of Many Colours

Poor Teazle has crummy genentics and has a pretty much bald rump. She really needs something to keep her cozy in the cold weather and so I made her this.

Doesn't she look stupidly awesome?

It's usually only for wearing around the house and in the garden, she has a black, waterproof coat for proper walks but yesterday, because it was so snowy, I put it on Sophie when we went out to the park. It looked so happy and bright against the white snow and we got a lot of positive comments about it.

Snow!!!

We finally got the snow we were promised yesterday.




Not a huge amount but the garden looks beautiful






and they've closed the schools which has made the kids very happy.





The dogs liked it too.



We went to the park and had a great time throwing snowballs but I'm quite glad to be back in the warm now.

Chris' Quilt all quilted and waiting for it's binding to be sewn down. Hand sewing is not one of my favourite things so that might take a while.


Blogger is being it's usual helpful self and has grouped the pictures and won't let me ungroup them to type betweent them.

The second photo is the 'what's above your computer' shot from Monday and the third one is my front door looking quite festive. Note the fabulously artistic distressed look.

Brother and SIL's Quilt

I spotted this pattern on Bonnie's Quiltville website a long time ago and it stuck in the back of my mind. Being a thrifty kind of person, I found myself with a huge box full of blue and turquoise strips that were left over from other projects and the need for a Christmas present for my brother and his wife. This was the first thing I thought of.

I was really hoping to show you pictures of Chris' Star Quilt all finished but it's turned into a bit of a disaster. The main quilting went fine but I turned it sideways to do the side borders and somehow I've managed to get great big puckers in the backing fabric which are going to require a huge frogging session. Sickeningly that part of the border quilted like a dream, I should have known that was a bad omen.

I'll photograph it tomorrow and laugh about it but right now I just want to scream.

I was downloading pictures from the camera and found a couple of things I haven't shared.

First there was this beautiful pink lemonade. It looked so pretty I just had to take a picture of it. Pity the quilting frame background isn't quite as photogenic.



Then there were these fabulous squares that Ally bought me as a present. They are so pretty and girly. I can't decide what to make with them but whatever they end up being part of, it can't fail to be wonderful.





I've just about finished quilting Chris' quilt. I don't think I'm going to have the binding done by the time she gets home on Thursday though.

The weather was lovely this morning. Sunny but breezy and not too hot. Perfect dog walking weather. They thought so too.

When I got back I worked in the garden for a bit. Had some lunch and felt energised and ready to finish Chris' quilt which has been on the frame for a week now. Unfortunately on my way to the quilt frame I slipped on a pile of books in a plastic bag and wrenched my leg badly and so instead I'm laid up in bed with my leg propped up on pillows.

Boring!

Biopsy Results

Teazle is feeling a lot better now. The drain has been taken out and everything is healing up nicely.

The vet phoned with the test results. The lump on her back was only a sebacious cyst so no problems there, the big one on her side was a lipoma and no cancer cells inside so no problem there either. The one on her tummy turned out not to be breast cancer as suspected but a mast cell cancer on the underside of her skin. They say it was in the early stages and that they got all it's margins so hopefully it hasn't spread further.

After losing Bracken so recently I was pretty wibbly about Teazle but that's a lot better result than I was fearing.

She hopeful gets her stitches out on Friday and then it's just a matter of waiting for her fur to grow back.