posted by Lily on books, family, quilts

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After a huge day of shopping yesterday – we took our New Zealand cousin Harriet to the enormous outlet shopping centre near the airport – it was all I could do to crawl out of bed this morning!  Seven hours walking round and around clothing stores just isn’t as thrilling as it used to be and I was so TIRED!  But there were friends to visit and quilts to sew, so Little A and I quickly did the chores and raced off to Carolann and Peter’s.  

Honestly, sometimes I think I should have a small portable sewing machine that I can pack into a box with a special kit of travel sewing gear, I spend so much time lugging my machine back and forth across town!  When we have our own home, I’m going to have a BIG sewing workshop with a HUGE table and LOTS of powerpoints and then I shall make everyone come over to MY PLACE!

Mind you, visiting such lovely friends is so good – the most relaxing, rewarding and jolly kind of day!  The children swam and swam …

[ here they are posing at the front porch railing, pretending that we are harsh mothers who refuse to let them in wet - what sad waifs! ]

… and then took off of an adventure to the close-by park with Charlie the dog, a backpack full of “emergency” supplies (drawing pad, pencils, tim tams, doggy treats and water for Charlie) and a marvellous dose of independence and confidence.

Carolann and I sewed and sewed …

our sister-machines whirring away contentedly all afternoon.

I spilt coffee on my Kaffe hourglasses (there you go Patti, I remembered the word!), promptly picked up the worst affected blocks and dropped them into the coffee puddle when Carolann scolded me for dripping them onto the still-clean blocks! But we dealt with this mini-disaster with giggles and good cheer and the blocks were quickly rinsed under running water and then set to dry in the front porch’s afternoon sun.

Carolann has made the most gorgeous appliqued Christmas puddings from a template I drew up in scrap class a couple of weeks ago – and pieced together her scrappy coin rows for the Christmas Pudding table runner.

And I sewed the first four rows out of 11 of my Kaffe quilt – what do you think I should call it?  Something summery and flowery and hot? Oh and I am trying hard to be random with my blocks – this is VERY hard for me.  I long for repetitive pattern …

Then I ran out of green background – boy do I hope Karen still has some left – it was the slimmest bolt when I left the store on Thursday!  The sewing ground to a halt.

But not before a huge summer storm leapt out at us with absolutely no warning.  There we were, basking in spring’s afternoon glow, when all of a sudden the sky turned a dark lavender/grey, sinister soft grey clouds rising slowly and menacingly out of the dense bank that had smothered the sun.

Goodness!  Time to retrieve the children (who were on the way home anyway and most annoyed that we hadn’t trusted them to recognise a storm and come home in time by themselves – oh well – that’s what mothers do!), bring in the still damp patches (omg – I’ve left them in the basket with the dry ones!) and settle down on the sofa with Michael Pollan’s In Defense of Food … and a bowl of corn chips and salsa.  I know, I know, bit of a poor choice, given the alarming statistics we were reading out loud to each other … but we had had a very healthy lunch :@

Awesome book by the way – completely mesmerising, fascinating description of the relationship between the food industry and the government, and so “common sense” – highly recommended.

What a lovely day!

Oooh and only six more sleeps ’til the loved one comes home. Good.