Weekend stitching and knitting.

When I posted on Wednesday of last week  I told you that Scamp had been vomiting overnight but had been a bit brighter in the morning. John sent me a text early on that day to say Scamp had eaten a little and by the time I got home he seemed a happier dog. He still wasn't completely recovered but he was behaving more like normal. We think he ate something he shouldn't and it upset his stomach. Yorkshire terriers have quite delicate digestive systems but they are also dreadful scavengers and Scamp is no exception. He's not allowed table scraps but  he's very good at convincing people to give him some and occasionally that results in him being unwell. He's now back to his happy self and enjoyed a long walk today across the local common on Sunday morning. It's not only Scamp who's feeling better, I am now that my fur baby is OK.

Very little sewing happened at the end of last week so over the weekend I needed to catch up but on Saturday we had arranged to go to the Courtauld Impressionists, an exhibition at the National Gallery, with Katy. The gallery was very crowded but the pictures were good. 
By the time we got home and had cooked dinner there wasn't much time for sewing. Here are a couple of photo of the pictures that I really like. The first one is Man with a pipe by Paul Cezanne.

The next one is The Skiff by Pierre Auguste  Renoir.

This picture by Edouard Manet titled A Bar at the Folies-Bergere. This is the last major work he completed. There are several puzzles in this picture with the main problem being the mirror image doesn't match what is being reflected

I liked this one, also by Edouard Manet, Banks of the Seine at Argenteuil. Manet was visiting Monet in 1874 and he painted this picture of Monet's wife Camille and their son Jean as they watched the sailing boats.

Finally this one, Bathers at  Asnieres by Georges Seurat was very popular with lots of people standing for ages to look at it.

On Sunday I pulled out an unfinished project, a new Christmas quilt that I started last year. In fact I started it for the Christmas in July blog hop but I didn't get very far with it. 

Above is how far the project had got at the time of the blog hop. I put the pieces away for a while and when I took it out again I couldn't work out what I was doing so I put it away again.
Today I said enough is enough, this quilt needs to be finished. The quilt has two main types of blocks. I got on and  made up all of the first blocks.

The second group of blocks includes a star and for this I was using green and white. I'd already made some of the star blocks but I need to make the rest and to do this I had to trim the HST blocks. I got some done but the rest will have to wait until tomorrow 

At this point John offered me a glass of wine and I gladly accepted. I couldn't find my 2 and half inch square ruler and so trimming the blocks was proving a little tedious. I'll have another look for the ruler tomorrow as it will make the trimming go more quickly. I am making the quilt from a pattern but I decided to increase the size. This is what caused me some confusion since for some reason I'd forgotten that I'd planned a larger quilt. 

I also completed Tiny Tuesday block 2 and added the settings for block 1 and 2. I decided I wanted to use black as my background colour.

I need to check out block 3 and that will get made at the weekend. 

The rest of this week is very busy but I'm hoping for some sewing time on Thursday. Meanwhile I've been fitting in a few rows of knitting each day to help move that project along.

The weather here in the UK is due to go a lot colder and  last week we had the first frost of 2019 here in London. At least it wasn't a heavy frost so it didn't take very long to warm up the car.

I'm off to bed now as I want to read a few pages of my book before I go to sleep. I'm finding it hard to fit any reading into my day and I have so many books on my reading wish list. 

Lyndsey