Barbara Maynard Memorial Trophy!

Whooppeeee!!!! I have won the Barbara Maynard Memorial trophy for my jubilee card made for a WI competition. I never dreamt that my wacky wobbly black lines of stitch would go down so well!

....but I did make the crown with sensibly straight stitches...I LOVE the huge sparkly di-di I found for the top of the crown. The red, white and blue parts are confetti fabric I chopped up. I covered it in tulle and free machined over it with invisible thread. The crown was made seperately from gold lurex on pelmet vilene and sequins added with tiny seed beads to hold them in place.

and look at this. Full marks!!! WHAT? Never, in my life at school did I ever get full marks for anything so I was totally knocked out...I just need a gold star now to make it complete!

Best of all, the trophy was presented to me by Adam Benson of Country File and he kissed me on BOTH cheeks!!!!! No photo...BOTHER!!

I have been teaching free machine quilting to a group of 16 quilters in Wing. This is a sampler of what students could make during the day. They produced some wonderful work and it was like being at playschool in the morning as they all got started and I gave them warming up exercises.  Finally, I am offering dayschools in my studio for four people at a time with lunch included. The day starts in a fun way to get complete beginners off to a flying start.

Playschool for grown ups!

I had a birthday a week ago and was thoroughly spoilt by Hilary and Alicia with chocolates and flowers.... Tony and I went wirth them to see 'Salmon Fishing in the Yemen'. I laughed and laughed. I love going to the cinema to be entertained. Tony was not so impressed.

We went to Frankie and Benny's afterwards for drinks and just as we were finishing, Happy birthday music came booming out and I was presented with this little dish of chocolate brownie and icecream, compliments of the house.

I shared it four ways. Yum!

Just as we were leaving I was presented with three helium filled balloons too. Wow! I've never had those either.I think I must have lead a very sad life. Here I am wearing a reel of audio cassette tape on my head. Hilary insisted on giving me some old tapes to re-cycle. She wants me to come up fun ways of using them up so she can dump her entire collection of 10,000 tapes on me I think!

Happy days!

Oh dear! I just had to share this with you. I was making a gingerbead cake and it was all going so well until I went to turn it off and turned the knob the wrong way! Out flew the batter and splattered around the kichen. I grabbed the know and yanked it the other way and shot the machine into reverse. YIKES! More splattering. After doing it THREE times I finally gained contol.

I washed the worktop and as I was standing at the sink I heard an ominous thud.....

as an egg chucked itself on the floor in utter disgust!

but Rosie came to the rescue. Phew!!

This is a footprint in the sand from a weekend at Skegness that I never got round to blogging about....

and finally.....Rosie's fur that I have been saving in two carrier bags was pushed into all the bramble bushes around the fields next to the house and was gone in 24 hours. Awwwwww....think of all those smelly, cosy nests in my neighbourhood!!

See you soon I hope!