What was I meant to be doing?

Yet again, I have had a week when what I was meant to be doing (on paper) was not what I ended up doing, not that those things were not valid in their own way;) I did get 2 customer quilts done before Nella pointed out that she would like to spend some time with me in the last week of her Easter hols. The custom quilt had to have a few thread tails sewn in and the red flying-geese one was a bit of a challenge because the customer wanted the echo quilting to look exactly as it did in the magazine that the pattern came from. Horizontal straight lines were not a problem but diagonals are very difficult to do on a longarm without a lot of palaver. I started off just doing the diagonals that I could reach but that involved a lot of stops, starts and sewing in thread tails. In the end, as it was not a huge quilt, I decided to do the diagonals on my domestic machine with a walking foot and that was far easier. 

It looks like I have finally sold the cast iron Raeburn stove that I bought years ago that has just sat unused in my garage. The new owners live 300 miles away and want a courier to collect it so I had to track down a pallet so it can be picked up using a fork-lift. I seemed to do a lot of time consuming wee jobs like that – I went to the Vet to pick up cat anti-flea medicine to be told that I had a supply that should last until June but when I double-checked at home there was none and I know that was not my error. I sent my old phone off to be sold for scrap but the company tried to wriggle out of the online quote that they had offered then wanted £8.95 for my broken phone to be sent back to me special delivery. 

Evri seems to have lost another parcel – I ordered a new cutting ruler to tackle the marathon cutting involved in the Tula Pink butterfly quilt but it is still not here after 3 weeks so now I am way behind with the Facebook Group involved in the quilt-along. Meanwhile I got totally embroiled in researching old Pentax cameras and lenses that I can mostly only import from Japan and have now watched ALL of the Youtube videos and read ALL of the reviews. Honestly, it is like a form of addiction when I start looking at Tech online. I need a new quilt project to get me off second-hand camera forums;)

I am in Norfolk this week, splitting my time between visiting Nella and my folks. I might borrow a pressure washer to scrub Nella’s backyard then go to a garden centre to buy some fairy lights and plants. I brought a piece of the quilted coat with me to work on but I don’t suppose I will even look at it…

Lost and Broken

No need to be alarmed – the title does not refer to a sad music album that I have written! It has been a week when I seem to have lost and broken more things than usual. I hunted high and low for some Swiss Army knives, blaming everyone else in the house for hoarding them then eventually found them at the back of a drawer where I had put them. When I was unspooling some thread off a Bernina bobbin it jumped out of my hand and disappeared under a really awkward cupboard. I looked everywhere for a quilt that turned up underneath a mattress.

The most annoying thing was that I dropped my phone which was inside a case and bag, smashing the glass on the back which disabled the camera. I had to hang around in Aberdeen for hours while I waited to get if fixed which cost me £100.00 (Apple wanted £459.00!) When I looked at it at home I realised that the back glass had been replaced with a metal panel and the camera was still broken so now if I try to trade it in will be worth even less. I ordered a replacement from Music Magpie which is working well. I could have put up with the broken phone but then would have had to keep a camera handy – it is easy to forget how reliant we have all become on the convenience of smart phones.

I did not seem to get any of the “homework” that I had set myself done this week. I have Nella home for the holidays and helped Fergus to tidy up his CV. I eventually got a customer quilt done – a super Triple Irish chain wedding quilt for recipients in Ireland, quilted with shamrocks. I am tempted to go down at least 2 unnecessary rabbit holes, either piecing a diamond or triangle quilt using up my stash and / or designing some digital sashiko style motifs to work on a panel featuring Japanese motifs with a Zoom pupil. The Tula Pink butterfly quiltalong starts on Monday and I have no idea how I will keep up with that, do customer quilts and get Fergus ready to move to Glasgow!

Brainpower Required

As a person who owns several cameras, these days I take very few photos which does not adequately document my week. I had a huge customer quilt that took 2 days and a DIY quilter who spent 2 days here custom quilting. 

I considered starting on my Tula Pink butterfly quilt kit but that would require my full attention so I decided to dip in and out of the Art & Stitch manual. I think I am absorbing it more easily and it was pointed out to me that I don’t actually need to know it off by heart – I can in fact, consult the manual if necessary. My nemesis seems to be drawing on the computer using the Bezier tool. I hate it but feel that I need to conquer it in order to explain how it works, even if I never put it to use. Concentrating does use up a lot of brain power and I was able to keep going with a date and nut snack boost mid-afternoon. 

Since my QGBI Zoom lecture is done and dusted my next milestone is to prepare for a teaching weekend at Quilt Direct in Devon, mid March. I re-wrote the Northern Lights notes and calculated how much fabric would be required to make the whole quilt. The original Bifrost was made in 2015 and it was interesting to look it up on my blog history to see what decisions I made during the construction. I have no idea why but the photos I took at the time were terrible – low resolution and blurry. I don’t know whether I took them with a small camera or an older iPhone but it has made coming up with a slideshow rather hard!

Freya was here for the week to continue her dentistry saga and it was lovely to have a companion for walks when she wasn’t working. Nessie was delighted to have someone else pay attention to her. 

This coming week is going to be a holiday week since my sister and her boys are coming to stay. They have not been to Scotland for a while and it has been ages since I had guests other than the kids’ sleepovers. I had to find quilts and towels, make a meal plan and activities list and hope they don’t mind cobwebs and clutter that we don’t see any more…

Triumphing over Tech (in the end)

I spent a lot of my week testing out the Tech that I needed to use to do my Zoom lecture and demo for the Scottish branch of the Quilters Guild of the British Isles. I was using the MacBook Air that I got from Music Magpie and a usbc hub since the MacAir hardly has any ports where you can plug in gadgets. It turns out that there is more than one version of a basic usb port! I wanted to use 2 Camlinks in order to livestream images from my 2 GoPro cameras but they needed a faster port than usual, 3.0 instead of 2.0. Having ordered a new usbc hub I had to return it because the ports were too close together and the 2 quite fat Camlinks could not both fit. Let’s just say, the Postie was kept busy with my Amazon exchanges until I got the right gadget;)

That was not the only stumbling block – I could not get a microphone to work reliably until I realised that I had one that could connect to the Mac via Bluetooth. Despite that, when I practise Zoom with my sister there was no sound. I was so paranoid that I also did a practise run with the Region co-ordinator and Nella. None of this was helped by the fact that the wifi was also being temperamental. To my horror, when I logged onto the meeting 15 minutes before the start there was again no sound but in the end it was suggested that I leave then rejoin the meeting and after that everything ran smoothly. I had a face camera, a slideshow and 2 work stations with day 2 other cameras. What a relief when I got through the whole presentation and people seemed to have enjoyed it:) 

That was my first big commitment of the year. The next one to concentrate on is a teaching weekend at Quilt Direct in Devon in mid March. I was asked by one of the Zoom participants if I was going to enter FOQ this year but I said that I was not going to push myself to a deadline when I need to concentrate on my teaching commitments without getting my knickers in a twist;)

In addition to all of my Tech trauma, I managed to get 3 smallish customer quilts done. The forthcoming one this week will be another big one at 100” square.

I had intended to make a short Art & Stitch video this week but I went a bit off-piste wondering if an old drawing tablet might be useful (it wasn’t) and I tried to get to grips with computer drawing using a Bezier arc/line tool which I found almost impossible. 

At least I have found my planner useful… it was really good having decided what to eat each night, even though I have a lot of risotto left over since Fergus decided McDonalds would be more appealing. Because it was scheduled in, I went swimming twice and things actually felt a little less chaotic. I need to keep up the good start;)

Time to Redeploy a Planner

While my kids were still at school, Life was pretty busy, getting them to where they needed to be, running a business and entering quilt competitions but at least there was a schedule. These days, I don’t have many time commitments so I can please myself how much work I do. The trouble is that I make myself try to get too much done, all at once, so I hardly ever allow myself any down-time. I felt so harassed that I dug out a planner that I used to have in 2019 up until Life came to a grinding halt when Nella was ill. I don’t know whether keeping a planner again will help but I think it is good to see what can be done realistically when it is written on paper. The thing is – I do keep a notebook where everything I think of gets jotted down but it is a bit messy and difficult to see what are appointments in amongst the scribbles.

I have in fact got all sorts of things done work-wise but I have not brushed Nessie every day, gone swimming, caught up with friends or done any fun sewing! That is not a good balance between Life and Work…

The BIG job that I had to do this week was a custom red and white quilt. The blocks were too big on-point to quilt in one go so I decided to use triangle blocks instead. These had to be precision placed so everything would line up. I also had to fit in a border and corners, do stitch-in-the-ditch and a million one-inch circles. It all took almost 20 hours!

It was a relief to go from that to all-over basting a quilt that a customer wants to tackle herself with straight line walking foot quilting on her domestic machine. 

I had to finish making and photographing samples for my Zoom lecture for the Scottish branch of the QGBI next weekend. I also had to write instructions in case anyone wants to make the whole quilt. This involved working out fabric quantities which I did not do in advance when I made it;) Two slideshows will accompany my lecture; one of step-by-step photos of the construction process, the other showing the development of the original ”Help ma Boab!” quilt.

The other major task was to sort out all of the “Tech” that I plan to use for my lecture. I have a lot of Tech but I needed to round it all up, charge it up and work out how to place it. My plan is to have a laptop so I can speak directly to it and show slides but also a wireless mic so I can move around and 2 other cameras (with lights) at my cutting table and sewing machine! The Go-Pro cameras also need battery packs because they use up their batteries too quickly. Of course, it should all be straightforward but isn’t – despite having the correct cables the laptop would not pick up the mic I wanted to use so that took a lot of time faffing around until I found the solution. Afterwards I had a whole lot of reorganising to do. My plan is to practise on Tuesday so I can sort out any glitches.

I hope this week is less frenetic – I have even managed to write a meal plan to take out the stress of deciding what to cook at the last minute. One thing to be positive about is that we have now passed the darkest 10 weeks of the year and there are signs of Spring:)

In the Pink

I was 56 on Monday which means it is almost 16 years since I started blogging! I have been thinking… do I have a good work / life balance? Am I creating enough? Am I having fun? Does any of it even matter?! I certainly don’t seem to travel as much, mostly due to Nessie, costs and probably the state of the world. I am trying to be more focussed as I am easily distracted and that can be overwhelming.  

I “allowed” myself some time off for my birthday and had a lovely lunch out with a friend but I still felt guilty for not being busy all day.

I guess I made up for it for the rest of the week. I tentatively started the pink iris panel with its computerised designs. The advice had been not to move anything on screen and there was actually only one place where the designs overlapped a tiny bit. It was tricky, not placing the designs using markers and there were often undefined areas on the fabric where it was difficult to see if there was an actual petal. It does look good though and I would like to do it again if I can source the panel. It only seems to be available from the USA at huge shipping costs. Speaking of which – the Tula Pink butterfly quilt kit that I ordered from America cost me £68.00 in post followed by the same again in customs so I probably ended up paying the equivalent of the £300.00 that Cotton Patch UK charges for the kit!

I plan to make another short Art & Stitch video, mostly so it sinks into my own brain. I have read the manual and watched all of the available tutorials but the programme still confuses me sometimes. I am trying to learn it inside-out to become an expert well before my teaching retreat in June.

In February I am giving a Zoom lecture and demo about “Help ma Boab” to Region 16 (Scotland) of  the QGBI. Apart from checking that my tech all works, I need to write clear instructions on constructing a block. I had my usual rough notes and some photos but I had to start from scratch in order to write a pattern. I suppose I don’t know at the start of a quilt project that it might become one that I need to recreate;) I discovered that the blocks are far more complex that they seem at first. First there is the reverse appliqué hole, then the rickrack and silver lamé attached by tiny, accurate blanket stitches. Then there is the cutting and placing of the vinyl circles, decorative machine stitching where all of the thread tails need to be sewn in, followed by kantha-style hand stitching!

February starts next week – as well as keeping on top of the projects that I have started for Art and Stitch / Qmatic consolidation, I need to pick up the pace and get back onto customer quilts. No wonder I have to write basic things like, “Brush Nessie” on my do list or they just would not get done!

Fireworks and Fluff

Unless I have a list to cross off, I feel as though I have achieved nothing in Life. That list can include walk / brush dog just so I feel I have earned the right to exist in the world. Of course, the Universe could not give a toss whether I make my bed, water my plants or brush my hair…

I completed the experimental non-slip sofa cover which does a pretty good job. The red is nowhere near the shade of the original sofa which needs a really deep treatment of leather cream. Now, I should really make another one for the other sofa but it really was not a thrilling task. The worst thing was the amount of red, fuzzy fluff that got absolutely everywhere.

Despite my Q-matic system occasionally going on strike because I have not yet fitted the new cables, I managed to get 2 customer quilts done. 

The other major task I have set myself without deviating into any other projects is to become an expert on all of the ins and outs of “Art and Stitch”. I have been carefully working my way through the manual, getting more familiar with it all. I still don’t understand why things don’t always work out how the instructions explain it and I freely admit that I find drawing with Beziers (nodes and vectors) bamboozling! With perseverance, I hope to get there in the end.

I can’t believe we are in November already. Freya came for a visit and we went to the popular fireworks display in Banchory. It was muddy and crowded but we got a place right at the front and enjoyed the 30 minute spectacle and large bonfire. Instead of queueing for food there we had hot-dogs and soup at home which was far more civilised.

Storm Chasing

I am making myself study Art & Stitch so I know it inside out! Sometimes I find that it is not as co-operative as I would like in that things you think you have done before and learned, don’t always seem to work the same again. 

I planned to make my way to Norfolk on Thursday but there was a storm warning so I decided to set off on Wednesday to try and beat it south. I was not able to leave until after lunch so I only went as far as Glasgow and stayed with Freya. As the weather warnings got more serious, I decided that if I woke up during the night I would just get going. I left Glasgow at 2.00am, not really considering that it would be dark until 7.30am. It was very wet in the north but the roads were pretty empty. I stayed on the west of the UK which took me 2 hours longer than normal but I made it without any difficulties. 

By Friday the storm had spread to parts of England and it was even wet in Norfolk. Freya had booked a train after work as she also wanted to come down for Nella’s birthday week but the train kept stopping for long periods and did not go beyond Peterborough. She had the foresight to book a hotel overnight and continued her journey by bus the next morning. 

Back home in Aberdeenshire the storm kept raging for 3 days straight with a Red, danger of life warning. Roads flooded, trees came down, the power went off, the sea turned foamy. I dread to think how soggy my workshop might be – apparently water is seeping up from under the floor!

Hopefully, the weather will settle down on Sunday and I will take the girls and Nessie to the seaside. I am not sure what else we will get up to this week as Nella has managed to change her Uni course to Textiles and will have a far fuller timetable:) 

No Biggie

After another epic drive north I spent the next day trying to get reorganised. My workshop could do with a big sort out but I am trying to remind myself that it does not all need to be done at once. Indeed, the universe does not even care whether I do it at all. I have a mega customer quilt to get done before I leave to teach 2 groups in Glasgow next week. It was frustrating that the Qmatic system kept stopping with an error message that there was a problem with the sewhead. On closer inspection, I discovered that the wiring sleeve was disintegrating through wear but I managed to fix it with insulting tape and have ordered some new parts. Tempting as it is to speed the quilting up on a big quilt, more haste gives less speed if something goes wrong. I am having to keep a close eye on this one as there is a lot of back-tracking and if there is a hiccup it can be tricky to find the right place to restart. 

In the garden I picked another batch of blueberries and managed to find some non-waspy plums so even though the kids are all away I should make a crumble.

It would have been easy not to make the effort to drive almost 3 hours to Stirlingshire to attend a Scottie Dog meet-up but I am glad that I did. Nessie behaved impeccably and did not join in with the cacophony of barking. She won the waggiest tail competition and charmed the judges with her fairy wings, taking second place in best of show. 

I have picked up a forgotten project and while Qmatic stitches the customer quilt I am adding some more hand-stitching to my quilted coat. It is one of those projects that I could declare finished enough or just keep going ad-infinitum.

Another Busy August Week

My main mission for the week was to catch up with customer quilts that I had not done in the lead up to FoQ. I like to keep on top of them as I find having a queue of quilts a bit stressful!

True to my word, I have been making an effort to test out my cameras so I get to learn all of their features. It does not mean that I have necessarily made any decisions to trade any of them in but the exercise has been worthwhile to become more familiar with them. I have also tried sorting them into designated bags for which I made heat-pressed labels.

Nella and I had a big day out in Edinburgh by train. I don’t think I have ever been there at the height of Edinburgh Fringe Festival before and it was very busy. We had pre-booked to visit 2 exhibitions. I really enjoyed the Grayson Perry exhibition at the National Gallery. I had no idea that he had created some huge tapestries. They are designed using a computer then digitally woven in Belgium in a modern version of tapestry making. The ceramics and maps were also fascinating.

At the National Museum we saw a special exhibition called, “Beyond the Little Black Dress” and Nella was thrilled to see examples from some of her favourite designers. I particularly liked one that  looked as though it had been constructed from 3D leather boxes. I wonder how that could be done as a quilt?

Tuition and Updates

There was a major Bernina Q-matic update out this week so I sorted out the latest version onto my system as soon as it came out. I walked a pupil through the same process but we ran into some difficulties, despite following the instructions. The issue turned out to be that you have to use an under 8GB usb stick which nobody has these days. We figured it out in the end. It looks like there are quite a few changes which I will have to get to know and possibly make some instructional videos to explain them. 

I had a DIY Quilting pupil here midweek and we spent the day experimenting with computerised quilting, ruler-work and freehand. 

I seem to be developing a quilt idea without having worked out exactly where it is going (as usual). I ordered a rainbow collection of plain fabrics from Doughtys and a rainbow selection of flock vinyl for T-shirts also arrived. I got Nella to design me a set of SVG format concentric circles using Adobe Illustrator and I cut them out using the Brother Scan-n-Cut. I now have 7 sets of increasing sized circles without the maths-brain to work out quite what to do with them:)

Nella arrived home from Uni by train and we had to come up with an itinerary for our trip to Barcelona next week! It has been 4 years since I have travelled abroad so I feel like I have forgotten what to do. Annoyingly, the flights there and back are ridiculously early which is a tad stressful but hopefully we will pack a lot in without getting overwhelmed. To me this means we should aim to spend a lot of time in cafes…

Computer Casualty

When I was editing my latest Q-matic videos last weekend my computer told me that its memory was full and so was its external hard drive. Immediately I started deleting stuff that I thought I did not need anymore but it made no difference so I contacted Apple support. After wasting several hours trouble-shooting it was deemed necessary to take it to the Genius Bar at the Apple Store. I spent 6 hours there on Monday! It turned out that it had got clogged up with too many backups so the computer got wiped then reinstalled. Hopefully everything was saved on iCloud or at least stored on the backup – I guess I won’t know until I am searching for something.

That stressful experience of the Mac Meltdown took me a while to reset the rest of my week. I eventually rescued and sorted out my videos which was a relief. I celebrated by making a couples of cakes – lemon drizzle and an everyday fruitcake:)

I got a customer quilt done and spent the rest of the week trying out some ideas for my possible quilt idea, including some couching with cord and different threads. I have a scrap of an antique Indian tribal bodice that I want to recreate in my own way. That piece of fabric is sort of what inspired Rainbow Warliors so we will see what happens next.

I ordered a disco-ball plant pot so felt the need to make it a macrame hanger which took about 2 hours more than it should have after I got the hank of yarn in an utter tangle. I need a plant for it but have an awful habit of letting plants die so maybe I will put an artificial one in it, especially if I mean to hang it up. 

I decided to have a relaxing Saturday making a By Annie gadget bag. Of course it would have been cheaper and easier to order one from Amazon;) Firstly I had to quilt a piece of Soft n Stable on the longarm the day before then figure out the under-illustrated instructions. They were not that complicated really – I just could not follow them! The finished bag is really nice but I would change a few things if I did it again. The main thing was that the layers were far too thick and I broke a few needles. Getting the binding on was really tricky – I think it could have been wider and I did not enjoy finishing it off by hand. We will see if I can face making any more as potential Christmas presents but now that I have worked it out I really should;)

A Productive Week – Mostly

It has been a snowy week which is a bit of an affront for March but not unusual for NE Scotland. I wrapped up in thermals and woolies because we had no heating (again) at the start of the week and it was actually warmer in my fridge-like workshop. After all of the excitement of the Glasgow exhibition I made myself catch up on admin which I swear takes me 20 times longer than the average person;)

Suddenly, I found that some quilt ideas were bubbling to the surface. I wrote some notes about the ideas, realising that I probably have several options and don’t necessarily have to work on them all at once. I made a note that a quilt should not exceed 60” square but we’ll see how that pans out! I am trying to tell myself that I do not have to make a super complicated competition entry but I do need something to put in a show just so people know I have not “retired”. 

One of my ideas is to make some sort of reverse appliqué with silver lamé underneath, like big shisha mirrors. I had to search for fabric backed lamé online and was concerned that it was no longer in existence – turns out it is called “Emperor Foil” and I found plenty. I have also ordered 25m of gold and silver rickrack braid – need I say more? Anyway, I made a couple of samples which also involve hand stitching. At its most basic a 60” square project requires 100 x 6” blocks so I will think about that a bit longer. 

I decided that I needed to make a couple of small things so I made a handful of USB key fobs because they are so quick and easy. I then felt the need to make another mini camera bag but could not remember how to attach the zip heads onto continuous zipper tape so I had to go away and investigate then make a youtube video all about it. I also made a video about using decorative thread in the Bernina L890 loopers after failing to understand the instructions in the manual. Because I was on a roll with filming, I made instructional videos all about the Bernina Q-matic Mask feature and how to design lettering. The issue with filming is that it can take ages to set up, remembering how everything works and charging plenty of batteries. Mind you, editing takes even longer because I just keep the camera running even if I fluff up or get into a muddle. I should do a blooper video one day with all of the huffs and swear words.

My entire weekend seems to have been taken up trying to sort out my computer. I know the videos take up a lot of space but I should have plenty of storage, yet my Mac Mini says it is full and so is its 2tb external hard-drive. I have trashed so many files that I have probably lost something important, cleared all cookies, attempted to upload everything onto iCloud, and run a first aid check but it is still full, grinding to a halt, cannot update and keeps crashing the wifi! I have wasted hours on this so will see if it is possible to take it to the Genius Bar at the Apple Store to sort it out. I had planned to simply do some stitching on my coat and finish editing my videos but that hasn’t happened – sigh…

Tinkering with Tech

I probably spend as much, if not more time, researching and messing about with Tech than I actually DO anything with it. I have become a serious Nerd about tripod ball heads, cold shoe mounts and “overhead rigs”. What this really means is suspending a camera above a table in order to get a birds-eye view of a project. The main issue is that even small cameras will weigh down articulated camera arms. My solution was to attach a straight arm to a pole clamped onto the table and use a tripod ball head to change the camera angle. 

I made 2 videos this week that I have yet to edit on sewing scrap strips with the Bernina L890 to make new patchwork “fabric”. It all takes longer than you would imagine to make a short instructional video – to practise the technique, make sure the film and sound gear is working, then edit out the pauses and bloopers.

I also had a haphazard list of things to do at some point this week, some of which actually got done. I had bought a mini Dyson second-hand to hoover up fluff around my sewing machines but it did not have a charger. I got a non-branded one from Ebay but the battery kept dying, I was ready to chuck it out when I came across a Youtube video advising me to wash and dry all of the filters. So far, the issue is resolved! 

I have an exhibition coming up in March – The Creative Craft / Scottish Quilt Show in Glasgow. I have a generously sized space but the quilts that I want to take are all large and will soon fill up the wall space. I wondered whether I could make a slideshow of the rest of my quilts and play it on a digital photo-frame. Most of those have small screens which would not have much of an impact. I was rooting around in cupboards upstairs looking for a backpack when I came across the old family iMac computer. It had become very slow and semi obsolete but I wondered if I could use it for a slideshow. I fired it up and experimented with moving some photos into an album and as long as I can find something to balance it on at the show I will be able to show my quilts off on a big screen. I have already googled vintage tea trolleys, antique plant stands, bar stools and fake Greek columns…

When I managed to avoid spending hours pointlessly researching on the internet, I have done some stitching on the crazy coat. I have got the pockets done, even though the prairie points are not facing the way that they were in my head. I made a bit of a hash of trying to do lazy-daisy stitch until I watched a tutorial where the Stitcher used an embroidery hoop, After quite a while my “daisies” became a bit more uniform. For me hand-sewing is awkward and anyone watching would wonder how I could be so cack-handed. Some of the stitching looks awful but I am working on the premise that nobody will squat down to peer at the bottom of the back of my coat to scrutinise;)

Try It and See

One of the reasons that I like Amazon so much is that it is possible to order something, try it out then return it easily if it is not suitable. It is also a very good place to go and look at reviews for stuff. Youtube is also helpful – to a point. I find that there is so much information that after a while there are too many conflicting opinions. For some time I have been hankering after a better monitor for my Mac Mini desktop computer. I had a small, basic Dell but I needed to use external speakers, an external webcam and had to press buttons underneath to change the HDMI port if I wanted to watch TV on the Amazon Firestick. I could hardly see the subtitles from across my room.The other annoying thing was that the text was always a bit fuzzy. 

What I really wanted was a Mac Studio display but it is more expensive than most other monitors. I spent ages researching which monitor to get instead of the Dell but I decided that I really wanted the Mac one. I could not find how I could watch TV on it since it has no HDMI ports. There was no clear information on Youtube as to whether an Apple TV or Amazon Firestick device would work properly so in the end I headed to the Apple Store for advice. After asking all of my questions we came up with a simple solution on how I could use the monitor to watch TV and not have to get up change the volume. I can sit on my sofa watching TV over the internet and use a wireless keyboard / mouse to choose different programmes, adjust volume and pause the action. 

One of the major tasks that I had set myself this week was to come up with a couple of L890 projects to make and film. I thought I could make ruffled denim strips into patchwork and possibly use the coverstitch to make rope bowls. It was not particularly successful trying to make denim ruffles since the fabric is too heavy to gather just by altering the differential feed. A ruffler or gathering foot on a domestic machine would give more pleasing results. Similarly, I wondered if using 2 or 3 coverstitch needles would be a speedy way of rattling through rope bowl construction but after experimenting for a while I decided that a basic zigzag on a domestic machine did a far better job. Although I did not have anything to show for a full day of trying things out in my workshop, it was a worthwhile exercise of discovery. Sometimes you have to have a go at things to find out what ideas works and which ones do not;)

Another time-wasting / useful activity this week included tidying out my tech drawers. Really it allowed me to see how many different mini tripods I own and which items needed recharging. As usual I have forgotten which cameras and mic combos I like to use to film videos so I will probably need to remind myself for at least half a day and maybe I will make a note of what works best. 

I spent a day at Aberdeen Sewing Machines teaching the staff there how to get started with the Bernina Q24. They were delighted by how quickly they could get quilting on a real quilt. I will go back in a couple of weeks to see how they are getting on.

At the weekend I bought another dodgy old lamp that will need some replacement parts. I took Nessie for a partial hair-do but have to go back next week to finish it off because I had let her hair get too long – she hates being brushed so it was a tad tuggy. Freya came to visit and celebrate my birthday by making me a cake and going for a walk on the beach. 

I have added a bit more of my awful hand-stitching on my patchwork coat. I did not originally plan to add so much hand work but that seems to be the way it is going now. I might use the L890 to apply some chain-stitched lines. I still have some Indian ribbon that I have never used so I could add some of that. It will definitely be a “maximalist” type of coat – I just hope will I like it and wear it!