Strange; very strange...

Go and buy (lots of) fabric. Pore over it, pat it, fiddle with it, hold it up against self, walls, cats, willing friends, unwilling husbands, the kid walking past on his way home from school.

Eventually, having repeated the above many, many times so as to accumulate a large and unwieldy stash of pristine fabrics.. buy the book. More books. Magazines, flyers, exhibition booklets, online freebies and lots of photos of bits of mosaic and stained glass.

Divert yourself into knitting and crochet for ... several ... years.

Get a grip; install a big bookcase; stuff it full of sorted stash.

Then sign up to a class!

Next thing, you are engaged in cutting up purrfectly good bits of fabric into TINY LITTLE BITS. These scatter all over your worktable, ironing board (aka back-up worktable); bed, floor, clothes and cat. Sort, re-sort, sigh, swear, and sob over them until some semblance of what you intended the pattern to be, manifests itself.

Endure the delay caused by lack of sewing machine foot/needle/thread of correct/lack of ability to remember how to use it cos it's been so long ... thread, re-thread, test bobbin, swear a lot more....

... and!!! ...

produce a bloody marvellous bit of patchwork, all those tiny bits of fabric now neatly (if not necessarily very accurately) sewn up into something that is far greater than the sum of its parts. Spend far too long patting, de-threading, ironing, tweaking and admiring, and hanging the result on all those mentioned in the first sentence. Decide that borders don't scare YOU and pick the width, easily.

Stop it before you go blind, demented and/or sew it back-to-front (a distinct possibility) and be taken out to dinner.

I think this counts as progress! Today brought to you by eau-de-ironed cotton, and ... and ... just you wait for the photo.

Reviewing, sort of..

Two weeks ago I started a new patchwork class - how to make a Ramallah quilt. Using saturated plain colours, on a black or other dark background. Very interesting, using only a basic log cabin, but swapping colours within the patch, and then cutting the whole thing (a 30cm patch) into four pieces, so that you get four times the possibilities for making different patterns and colour combinations. Interesting. A good reminder that back to basics is a very valuable concept. I know *I* get stuck in the gorjussness of patterned fabrics, and textures, and sheens... and here is a very very simple idea which leads to stunning results!

In other news, it's windy, cold, two of the humans in this household of two are not well, and Wendy has made it quite clear that she purrfurs being an only cat. And, now that she's had a taste of some different types of cat fud, she's also making it clear that mere crunchies are so, like, yesterday. The only thing we have as a weapon to use against this shameless blackmail is the fact that we are still bigger than her. Not much I agree!

I'm also crocheting a circle, in a very restrained pallette of colours. Also a departure for me, who likes strong constrasts. I'm using plum, rose pink, dark blue, mid-blue with pale flecks, dark teal, and a very pale lilac. Two rows each of trebles. It's about a metre across now, and I've used up the plum and original rose pink wool. So when I get to the end of the next 'band' of the colour repeat, I'm going to stop the trebles and begin making chains. A few rows of that in the remaining colours (and, maybe, not a complete circle in each colour, but I'll see what that looks like), some tufts of the colours in mohair (the mid-blue and the rose pink... hmm... blue and pink... maybe NOT. Blue, mid-blue and teal might be better) and it's finished. And yes, dear patient reader(s?), I shall attempt to post a photo. If I can manage that, I'll have a go at putting a fold in, and also posting links.

Both of my laptops died last week, and one of them is beyond redemption. Well, not the type of redemption *I* can afford. To my amusement, the fixing-it bloke said 'its logic centre is kaput'. Logic centre??? Who knew? But I am very grateful that my new lappie, the darling Airbook, is fixable UNDER WARRANTY. For once, the consumer is ahead! I should be back to hours of 'studying' asap. Meantime I am reduced to using M's desktop, which the fixing-it Macbloke took very hard. He could feel my pain....

This week brought to you by burnt jam, overcooked veggies, several smashed glass things, and a stiff neck. Nearly all of these set-backs were caused or at least directly related to a complete lack of sense of smell, shaky hands (Ventolin roolz!), and bad sleep. I HAVE worn some Obsession, some Prada, and some Gucci. For all I knew, it coulda bin eau de catbox, dead spuds, or lashings of lurgy-lotion :-/