A laugh a minute

Friday afternoon saw me rushing away from work on time.  A quick fill of diesel and straight out on to the A19 heading south. Yorkshire was a bit of a traffic jam - my father used to call it shock waves. There is just so much traffic that when one person speeds up too much, catches the car in front and then has to brake, it sets off a shock wave and all the cars behind start braking. Eventually the line of traffic comes to a stop. Really annoying. Nothing was going to spoil my fun though so I sang at the top of my voice to the radio all the way down to Doncaster where the traffic thinned out.  The M25 was free flowing by the time I got there and I arrived in Farnham just after ten. A little glass of wine, a bit of chatter a lot of giggling ......

Yesterday I woke early enough to watch the sun come up on the longest day of the year but then went back to bed! Love the rhythm of the seasons and the ancient festivals that connect us to the past but a girl needs her sleep.

The gorgeous scent of lavender wafted around us as we ate breakfast in Karin's small but gorgeous back garden. An aspirin cured the hangover. One glass of wine - what a wimp!

Can you see the tiny little bunch of grapes dead centre of the picture below? Believe it or not these will be edible by the end of September.

Armed with my trusty, hands free quilt show bag we made our way to Sandown Race course.

We had a good look round, an enormous cup of hot, very delicious coffee and then we set to on the stalls. 

Above is some beautiful linen which I am going to make into cushion covers. I'll sell some of them,  but will have to keep a couple because the design is so lovely. I might make some little guest hand towels too.

Some fabric from 'Worn and Washed' which will make a quilt about 50" x 60" and some pure white fat quarters to go into a little collection which will eventually become a little curtain for some shelves which are built into an alcove over the stairs. The interest will come from the different fabrics and embellishments rather than the colour of the quilt.

We decided we should make our own worn and washed collection from stuff we have already (old bed linen and shirts) as well as doing a bit of charity shop searching. Karin's son Michael very kindly donated a shirt he bought but was a bit small. I just hope Karin remembers to tell him he has donated it.

I got some heat transfer paint which I used for the first time at school a couple of weeks ago when our art student teacher did a workshop with my textiles class. Endless possibilities here. You just paint/stencil on to paper and then iron this on to the fabric. We used leaves and flowers to make positive/negative stencils. 

At Sandown we ate our lunch in the area that you have to pay £150 just to go in on a race day.  It was just the same as the area you can go into for free. We are funny old things us humans aren't we? 

We could see the London Eye in the distance and traffic going in and out of Heathrow (one plane every ninety seconds!), but we were in the midst of this huge area of green, watching some exquisitely coloured damsel flies and parakeets, clutching our precious fabrics. We were both careful to buy only things that we couldn't get at our local quilt shops because we really think we should support these fabulous places. Sometimes you get a bargain but mostly it's just the extra variety that sets the heart a-quiver. 

We had a spicy chilli with salad and garlic bread for supper and watched a really weird French film about someone who went to a psychotherapist about her marital problems and mistakenly went into a tax lawyers office to unburden herself.

Loaded with various cuttings from the garden I came home today to find that John and Steph had run the laundry through for me, vacuumed and dusted and left some flowers. Will has cleaned the hens and filled up the food and water.

I have lemon verbena, lavender and an aloe vera plant to go in my little patch. I popped down to see John and Steph to say thank you and am pleased to report that Ben is much better.  He was digging a patch of garden with his daddy.

Tonight will be an early night for this very contented quilter. It was a fab weekend, driving round the area I grew up in, seeing the places where Karin and I spent our teenage years but I'm glad to be in my little home with my precious family. Double glad that I have the means to revisit all those lovely places. Triple glad that I can honestly say we laugh until our sides ache about all the things we have shared for more than half a century. Scary isn't it?