Yes I know it isn’t today – it’s Monday but I have been thinking all weekend how wonderful it is to have a weekend. There’s nothing like the start of term to make you really appreciate Friday night! 

I was going to post last night but was finishing off what I wanted to show you quite late last night and it got too dark to take good pics so left it till today. Was working from home today so managed to get decent some pics during what was a fairly gloomy and wet day. 

I have had a lovely weekend. Friday night was very mellow sitting on the sofa with my Autumn stitching exchange (which is now finished – the first one anyway – just got to make it up). Saturday I went to Marsden again as part of my Marsden Jazz Festival  duties as I was helping out in the shop.We met up to fold all the festival t-shirts on Thurs (and drink a little wine!) so we were selling them at the shop on Sat. I had a  lovely time – it wasn’t very busy but had a nice chat with a few people and took my knitting which is very appropriate crafting to do there. Marsden is full of sheep and they feature prominently on the Jazz Festival publicity so I felt very in keeping knitting with wool! 

At this point we all have to wave and say a big hello to Barney (the Marsden Jazz Festival Committee chair – who is a lovely man known to have worn a sheep hat in public on probably more than one occasion) and Taru (the Marsden Jazz Festival Administrator, one of my oldest and dearest friends who is also fun, gorgeous and a very talented actor) as they have alerts that flag up any post that mention the festival. So hi there and thanks very much for letting me join you – I am having a great time! 

After my stint at the shop I had a wander round looking at the hills and a lovely lunch in one of the cafes there. Also bought some really  nice things at one of the gifts shops in the village but I’m afraid I can’t show you as they are Xmas pressies. 

Sunday I finally got chance to play with my new best friend – look at this shiny new sewing machine! 

 

 I have really never got into machine sewing which is a pity as I want to do more machine embroidery and quilting as well as the hand stitched stuff but my old machine just jammed constantly so thanks to birthday money from my lovely Mum and lovely kids I have bought this. And it came with lots of free thread and a big pack of scissors! 

 

As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago I am going to hopefully do an Xmas Craft Fair at Oakwell Hall so have been making some stock for that. Last year I developed my own design for some little Xmas tree ornies so have decided to do more of those – both as finished objects and as kits. The new machine did very well on the lovely zigzag stitch. The first one I did was finishing off the other patchwork tree from last year. 

 

 

I have decided to do some more regular patchwork designs to start off with – this will of course give me lots of scraps for the crazy patchwork ones that I can do at the end with all the little bits. So here I did some 7 panel patchwork ones. 

 

The aim is for them all to end up looking like this – 

 

I was on a roll (and the machine behaved beautifully) so I managed to get a little stack done – the top one is a four panel design. 

 

Have also cut out lots of material for the kits and taken more pics for the instruction leaflets that will go with them. Isn’t it just soo lucky that I happen to have a little (ahem!) Xmas fabric in my stash! 

Well have another busy week at work ahead – lovely daughter Ellie is home at the weekend and we are planning a cinema trip and a little retail therapy as I’m sure she could always do with new clothes. We are also hopefully going to York to the Quilt Museum  to see the Wartime Quilts Exhibition. We did try and go last year but unfortunately chose a day that it was shut! However we did get to visit the Minster and the Cath Kidston shop so it wasn’t a wasted journey. 

Thank you very much for visiting – hope that you all have a nice week.