Good Start to the Year

First posting of the New Year and it’s the usual drivel. Thanks so much for all the good wishes from all around the world. I’m not sure about the genius bit but we’ve certainly done well on the domestic disaster front.

Margaret - getting down was OK, the problem was getting up. I’m getting to the stage where, if I’m on my knees, I think ‘What else can I do while I’m down here’.

Pat - good advice about keeping the laptop out of the kitchen.

Carol’s handbag disaster eclipses all mine, I think. I can live without the oven but cameras and phones are lifeblood. Poor you. Dorothy has noticed that it didn’t take us long to get the laptop sorted but we still haven’t done anything about the oven.

T’other Maggie - I have to confess that Clive already brings me breakfast in bed. We are supposed to take it in turns but, somehow, I’m always asleep.

Yesterday I bit the bullet and started clearing out my ‘finished pieces’ cupboard. I was looking for a particular embroidery for an article I’m writing but it was all in such a muddle that all the work was dragged out. So a big throwing out commenced. Why do we keep so many little bits that ‘might come in handy’? Anyway I was strong and the dustbin is full. In the process, I found lots of long lost work.

This little bag was one of my early attempts at using embroidery software. It was digitised and stitched on the Janome 9000 and the stitching area was very small so I made tiny units of houses. It was all about terrible floods that had just happened, so nothing changes. I was working on a Hundertwasser theme for a design course - hence the squares.

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Here are the little houses sitting on top of the waves - made by using a pattern fill within a small wave shape. This formed the strap, too.

I was in the middle of this when Clive suddenly noticed that the weather was getting much better so, on a whim, we downed tools and set off for the Purbeck hills. We are lucky living here in having the New Forest one way and the Isle of Purbeck in the other direction.

Had a great walk at Arne, which is usually a good place for birdwatching, but they all had hangovers and were staying in bed. Excellent walk though, with lovely views of Poole harbour and the hills. Drove past Corfe Castle and on to the ferry at Sandbanks for a short cut home. It was lovely.

Today we are off to Bournemouth with smallest grandchild but I am not feeling guilty as I’ve been up since 6am and have finished setting a workshop.