A Productive Weekend

Well I don't know what it was like where you were this weekend but the weather was absolutely glorious where I was which encouraged a very productive time.

Quilting wise I finished the gift quilt I was making, put together the centre of the first jungle quilt, did the quilting for one of my finished tops and sewed the binding on two of its sides. I definitely need more practice re the actual quilting bit - I've decided that sewing straight lines is incredibly boring and I go way too fast trying to get it done. Still, practice makes perfect and I'll work on making myself take time because I'll only end up spoiling the work I've already done.

Stitching has also been going well, I've made good progress on my Small Start for Feb - First Moon Colony - Cirque des Cercles has had some attention and last night I properly finished two projects, The Stitching Shed's Santa cushion and The Cat's Whiskers' Spring Fever Biscournu. I also made headway in finishing The Cat's Whiskers' Alyssum Scissor Pocket.

I'm thinking to work on Sleigh Ride a bit this week. We're away visiting friends next weekend and the one after we have friends visiting us so I don't think I'll get much stitching done for the rest of this month as I have to finish the Jungle Quilt in the next couple of weeks too.

I don't have any pics of the above because I spent yesterday in the garden and it was too dark to take good photos by the time I remembered so I'll take some pics this week and post them.

I had a Stitchers GTG at mine on Saturday. A couple of my friends run online stores so we filled my house with their stock and had a great time rummaging through it all. Kate from Sparklies was one of them and she was kind enough to bring me some dye to do a piece of fabric. I bought a metre of white/silver metallic off her last year with the idea of dyeing it at some point and when I got given Row of Christmas Fairies for Christmas I decided that I needed that particular fabric dyed a paleish blue (and I needed it NOW! LOL)

Kate ran a dyeing class last June when a bunch of us stitchers went away together for the weekend so I was confident enough to go ahead with the dyeing (and her great instructions helped too) and the fabric has come out just as I wanted. I've got half a metre left which I intend to dye during her class at this years GTG as I want it the same blue but with a hint of purple so I need a bit of guidance. I have so many christmas/snow designs that I'm sure I'll get through the fabric in no time!

As I mentioned we spent a large part of yesterday in the garden starting to clear up a bit. We finally had the bonfire we'd been putting off since October. Okay it's not that environmentally friendly but we had so much to get rid of it really was the only way. Since moving in we've taken around 150 large bags of garden waste to the tip and we had more than all of that to burn yesterday. Plus we have about as much again (if not more) to cut down and remove so the bonfire has at least given us the chance to clear the backlog.

I had a chat with DH about my plans for the garden. He's not really a gardener, okay, he's not at all a gardener, so he's happy to let me decide what I want to do and then help me when he has to. I want to plant a couple of fruit trees as we've taken several trees out (because they're in the wrong places and not particularly nice) so I want to put some back and I figured fruit trees are a good plan. I'm also hoping to put some fruit bushes in as well so I'll be doing lots of research into what my options are. At the moment I'm thinking Pear, Plum and Cherry Trees but that could change.

I'm also going to have two vegetable beds and a small greenhouse. Obviously this is not something that will happen this year but we can at least plan it out and get started. We've decided to fence off the last quarter of the garden (the bit that still needs clearing that DH refers to as 'The Secret Garden') and leave that till last as it's going to take a lot of work to get it sorted. There's the remains of a pond, a million blackberry brambles, trees, shrubs and a lot of bricks embedded in the soil.

See, I told you it was a productive weekend!

One final cheerful note, I was spoiled with Stash this weekend. I was gifted with a couple of Fat Quarters and two lovely charts, I bought (shhhhh, don't tell) a few charts on Saturday because they were reduced and I'm awaiting some stash in the post which I ordered for DH to give me for Valentines (much more rewarding than flowers and choc). Oh and Bent Creek finally released the last of their Red Thread charts and the next part of The Big Zipper so those are included in the packages winging their way to me (my enforced Wagon ride included those as 'allowed' purchases)