Walking, sewing and things

I was tired this morning so stayed in bed a little longer than usual. John made tea and I enjoyed reading my book and sipping tea, all snug and warm in bed. Normally I'm up and doing by 7 at the latest so I really enjoyed my lazy start to the day. Once up we decided to take Scamp for a walk over the common. The weather has turned colder and there was a brisk wind so there weren't as many people as usual out and about. Scamp loves a good run and chasing sniffs when we walk on the common and today was no exception. Once off his lead he tasted the new grass growth before sniffing his was along the path.

He's very shaggy at the moment but he has a grooming appointment later this month. He wasn't in the mood to rush around today and was grumpy when a puppy tried to get him to play. He's 13 years old and likes a slightly slower pace of life than bouncy puppies.

Our walk was very enjoyable. Once home we had lunch before I got my machine out. I finished quilting the blocks on the baby quilt and then started on the vine leaves on the sashing. This proved more difficult and I ended up unpicking quite a bit. The tension on the machine was playing up and I wasn't happy with the end result. In the end I decided to clean any fluff before continuing but even with that the tension was iffy. I decided to try some different thread and oddly this worked perfectly without having to make dramatic changes to the tension. Even odder was the fact I decided to use different threads in the top and the bobbin which normally means I need to tweak the tension but no alterations were needed. I'm about half way through the sashing at the moment and will get it finished tomorrow morning. I'm hoping to be able to add the binding by tomorrow afternoon.

I also started a little deconstruction. A few weeks back I wrote that I needed to decide what to do with the hexie quilt top. I like it but I don't like it.

I decided to split the blocks and rearrange with other fabric. Thank goodness for seam rippers as they make the job much quicker and easier than using scissors. I seem to have spent a lot of time unpicking things recently. It's not my favourite pastime but there is no point in completing a quilt if I don't like it. I haven't finally decided what I'm going to do with the blocks but I have several ideas I'm considering.

Yesterday I finally finished visiting all the participating blogs in the Salt and Sand blog hop. There was a lot of quilting eye candy and it gave me a lot of inspiration I particularly liked Elizabeth Coughlin's Pesky Gulls , Crafts and Math's Sea Scape and Sherry's Palm trees and sand. I think I'm hankering for some beach time. If you left a comment on my post for the hop I apologise if I haven't replied yet. I'm just catching up with emails but I'm doing them in batches as I hadn't looked at my personal emails for a few weeks.

I need to catch up with my hand stitching as I'm way behind. I didn't complete my monthly goal to finish up the Pride and Prejudice blocks. My apologises to you Sherry and I will catch up over the next week. Richard has been chasing me to finish stitching the new binding on his star trek quilt. I haven't even finished one side yet and each side is 80 inches. It's a long way round this quilt. As soon as I publish this post I will be back to my stitching for the final half hour before bed time. 

Take care

Lyndsey