About Me

Weardale, Co Durham, United Kingdom
I am a keen quilter, enjoying both hand and machine quilting. I mainly machine piece and avoid too much applique! I have 12 silly chickens who are supposed to live in a run alongside the main garden, but they didn't read the instructions and keep escaping! I am a very part time teacher, just a few afternoons teaching French to primary children to subsidise my fabric habit.

Tuesday 9 March 2010

Delinquent Lurcher strikes!

First the good news! The baby the farm mat is for arrived 2 weeks early at 6am on Monday morning, she is called Lucy Ellen. Today I saw pictures and she is gorgeous with lots of black hair. Well on hearing the momentous news, naturally I had to plan a shopping day to buy gifts to welcome the new arrival. So I set off for a trip to Hexham, a local ton about 30 miles away. I had a successful shop, bought some lovely pink newborn clothes and then set off home. When I got in Paul greeted me with the news that a rogue lurcher had jumped the gate and got into the garden. He killed 2chickens in the garden, went into the field next door and killled another one, then came back into the garden and ran off with one in his mouth. Paul couldn't manage to chase him off, despite trying ,which of course made him breathless and sick. You should know that Paul is recovering from a combined course of radiotherapy and chemotherapy for cancer of the oesophagus. He has only just started walking the dog again so running is definitely not good news, when he gets breathless he gets sick because after the Op 2 yrs ago his stomach in relocated in his chest.
when I went to feed the girls this morning they were very subdued.
We are still hanging on to bits of snow along the wall backs and on the high tops, but we have had such sunny sparkly days it looks really beautiful and I have discovered snowdrops flowering in both the gardens!
Today I aim to sew a friendship star block, layer it and cut binding strips. This is so I can show the Busy Fingers how to join binding strips with a diagonal seam so it disappears and how to put binding on their placemats. I realised that explaining would be confusing but showing would be easier!  This week I have to take the Janome 6600p as Christine has borrowed my Bernina 430QE. She preferred the Bernina blanket stitch for her farm mat so we have swapped machines until she has done all the applique. I originally bought the Janome to go on a Grace machine quilting frame as it has a bigger throat than a normal machine. I see now that Bernina have brought out an 800 series machine with a bigger throat and stitch regulator but I am not convinced I can justify the outlay!!

2 comments:

Pat said...

I am sorry about the loss of your chickens and hope your husband didn't set his health back by trying to chase the thieving animal who did this. Congrats to your friend on the arrival of her baby. Sounds like you got nice gifts. Have fun with your group teaching them binding.

Donna said...

Too bad about the chickens. Your poor husband has been through a lot, hasn't he? I hope he will continue to improve.