Zelah's quilt is finished!

I think this is a good start to the New Year.  I have finished Zelah's quilt!

In the end I decided not to do any hand quilting in the plainer blocks so I just hope it holds together given that I did most of the quilting with invisible thread.  I used a Borders Made Easy www.quiltingmadeeasy.com border pattern.  These are designed for machine quilting.  You simply lay the printed piece of paper which has sticky on the edges, on to the fabric and stitch.  Brilliant!  The whole thing only took a couple of hours.

I then pieced the binding in several colours taken from the Fossil Ferns fabric I had used for the border.     This tied everything together.  Now I just need to embroider my initials and the date.  I'm tempted to put 2010 since 99 per cent of it was made then.  Although Zelah could do with the quilt in this terribly cold winter she will have to wait until either her grandparents go to visit her from here or she comes down on holiday.  I am not prepared to post it because, although I have never lost anything yet, you do hear awful stories about quilts getting lost in the post.  Scrap quilts full of fabric with 'stories' behind them cannot really be insured

Christmas trees

Happy New Year everyone!  On the ninth day of Christmas I have been looking at our Christmas tree and its ornaments.  In 2009 we did not dare have a tree because two of our cats were still kittens and this year we thought quite carefully about what they might and might not attack.  Actually it has been fine and only a couple of ornaments have been removed by paws.

First we realised that if we put the tree in the conservatory we could shut the cats out if necessary although we their access to the garden it through it.  So in the end we shut the doors to the sitting room as it got dark (and cold) but haven't pulled the curtains so we can still see it with its lights on.

Then we decided that there should not be any fine dangling bits.  The tree is a bit smaller than those we have had in the past.  This was partly because of the height of the conservatory roof and partly because we only have small cars to bring it home from the garden centre.

Like most people we have accumulated lots of ornaments over the years.  We have close friends who lived for many years in Luxembourg but used to come to Cornwall for Christmas and frequently brought us lovely examples of German and Luxembourgish ornaments.

We have two of these made from  glass with hand-painted wild flowers.  Also a German glass ball from a company that produces them annually.

And some made from nuts and seeds:

Then a long time ago I decided that Christmas tree ornaments are easily transported souvenirs.  We had one Christmas in New Zealand

where the pukeko bird is a frequent symbol.  This is made of paua shell (abalone).  We spent New Year that year in Sydney where I found this in the Opera House souvenir shop.

I learnt that there are Americans who are serious collectors of Christmas ornaments so we have one or two I picked up on stopovers in Los Angeles.  But the biggest Christmas industry I have found was in Salzburg.  Despite it being mid-summer there were shops full of Christmas decorations and Easter eggs.

I bought two wooden ornaments, one with a train on it because I was on a train-based holiday in the Tyrol.

The colour is actually quite yellow but the camera and Photoshop Elements could not deal with it.

One of my sisters lived in Moscow for three years in the nineties.  When I visited her we had a wonderful morning at a huge open-air market on the site of the Olympic village.  There were amazing collections of arts and crafts from all the former Soviet republics and it was extremely difficult deciding what to buy.  In the end I spent most of my money on a huge book but I also got two tiny dolls: Saint Nicholas

and a peasant girl.

I also took a lot of photographs of carpets and quilts which I must scan (this was in the days before digital photography).

This is just a selection of our ornaments.  There are also English ones and some whose origins I have forgotten.  Of course we have to have a cat

Having not had them out of the box last Christmas it has been good seeing them all again.

Christmas Day in Penzance

Happy Christmas everyone.  OK, I know it is now Boxing Day but somehow finding time to upload the photos I took was not the highest priority.

We have spent every Christmas since 1986 except two in Penzance but I think this is far and away the coldest.  In the days when we used to drive down, always with two cats in the car as well as most of the food in the days when Penzance did not have a supermarket, we never got stuck by snow or ice, but I don't think we would have made it this time.  We haven't really had any snow in this second lot, especially when my sister in Shropshire has had it as low as -13 degrees, but it has been very cold indeed.

Christmas Day dawned brilliantly sunny.  We eat Christmas Dinner in the evening and we do not do family Christmases so we always try to get a breath of fresh air.  There have been times in the past when we have taken sandwiches for lunch and gone for a walk on the Coast Path, seeing seals and finding the air almost balmy.  Not 2010.  However, we did go for a walk on Penzance Promenade (the one in the painting The Rain it Raineth by Norman Garstin) where it is fun to watch people in the large hotels eating their Christmas Dinner.

There are always a few people like us although I think yesterday there were not as many as usual.  One dog was having a Christmas Day swim

The tide was right out so the dog and his owner walked/swam some way out.  Not so good for the owner who ended up with his wellie completely full of water.  This part of Penzance is all reclaimed which means that as the tide comes in some interesting patterns appear in the water.

The esplanade (for that's what it is) has been reclaimed more than once from what were originally dunes or Towans as they are called here.  It is difficult to imagine what it must have been like two hundred years ago but winter storms do batter the prom. and dump sand, stones and seaweed over the road quite regularly.

The sight of these rivulets turned my attention to the patterns of lines created by the low angle of the sun.

The Jubilee Pool was looking wonderful although it is not easy to take photographs when you have to poke the camera through the railings.

There were interesting arrangements of lines at the Pool, too.

I took a lot of photos and will use them as the basis of some design work in the Moleskine Notebooks that I got as a present.

The other thing we noticed was strange signs.  It is just that when it is quiet and you really start looking you see things that you would normally walk straight past.

We know John le Carre is a local but we did not know his characters frequented the Jubilee Pool cafe.

A bit difficult to read but the Ritz Bingo hall appears to have moved to France.  At least the sign is suggesting you swim there!

And finally the harbour wall rises to nearly ten feet tall as you approach the wharf where the Scillonian berths. That's the ship that travels to the Isles of Scilly.  The wall plunges vertically at this point.  Would you really want access we asked ourselves?  But obviously walking along it has been a youth sport at some time.

The views across Mounts Bay were glorious.  That is the Lizard in the far distance with Prussia Cove just behind the point on the left.

Then it was home again to concentrate on that important element of Christmas: eating.

The cats knew there was pheasant about and they know the leftovers are still in the fridge.  I made this hanging over ten years ago.  We put it up each year but one or more cats then swings on it until it is right at the end of the baton.  I will have to see if I can find a wonderful photo of Nui doing this when he was young and scan it.

Quilting with cats

A few days ago I decided it was time to tidy up the part of my studio that is in the bedroom.  As a quilter I have learnt never to throw anything away but I am beginning to think that if I have had something for a number of years and not used it, it should be junked.  However, tidying up is easier said than done when you have two two year old Siamese cats.  (The older one isn't bothered - he's seen it all before.)  So this is what happened.

The stand of cane baskets contains various thick threads - just what we love.

Any fabric or UFO is fair game for a toy which will then be dragged around the house.  Pania is particularly fond of wadding, so much so that I have to keep most of it in the studio where she has no access to it or in a closed hat box on top of the wardrobe.  The problem really arises when I have a large quilt that is already assembled as I do at the moment.  I have put the whole thing in a plastic bag that held a duvet which had been to the cleaner.  I then put the bag on top of the wardrobe where it seems to be relatively safe - probably because it is too heavy for them to pick up.  Here is what happens with smaller pieces.

But the top of the wardrobe isn't an impregnable place as Hinemoa has worked out how to climb up the clothes if the door is left open, making her way onto the top shelf and then up onto the top.  From there she can walk across to the bookcase where I keep my stash and an assortment of jars of threads, embellishments etc. just like all quilters.  So when I had finished cleaning the shelves I went off to the shops without checking that I had shut the wardrobe doors.  This was the scene that greeted me on my return.

The things on the floor were in an open container on the top shelf.  She reaches over and hooks out things  (you can just see a piece of gold ribbon hanging down in the top left of the photo).  Once on the floor the two of them select a nice piece or two to serve as Toy of the Day and then proceed to drag it round the house.  I know I should abandon having open containers on the top shelf.  There is a second bookcase on the opposite wall.  As that one is next to my sewing table it is even easier to reach into it and there have been numerous occasions when they have helped themselves to plastic bags containing works in progress and then upended them on the floor during the night.  For the first year I made them sleep in the study but in the hot summer nights (yes, we did have summer once) they spent hours scratching at the door to be let out so I got no sleep. In the end it was easier to give in and let them loose.  Fortunately they did tire (a bit) of all this nocturnal activity especially once it got cold and the alternative was a bed.

And this is where they were when I got back the other day.  Butter wouldn't melt in their mouths.

December Journal Quilt

I have just finished my December journal quilt and photographed it and uploaded it to the cqgb Yahoo site .

What a wonderful feeling to have completed them all before we get to Christmas.  We have had so much snow in Cornwall this year, compared with normal, that I had to put it in this last quilt.  Although I am not daring enough to drive to the beach to see where it lies, there are plenty of photographs on websites and in the local press.  You will recognise some of the fabrics in this quilt as ones I used earlier in the year so I am keeping to my resolve to only use things I already have.  I gave this one its wintery feel by quilting it with metallic thread and then hand stitching snowflakes, using silver stranded cotton.

It is interesting how after a time, you can find yourself repeating themes and/or techniques.  This quilt is very (too) similar to February 2009 when we also had snow.  That one is snow on the moors and was completely hand-stitched.

I have now reached the point where I think I should take a break from journal quilts so I have decided not to do them in 2011.  I must get Zelah's quilt finished and I have hardly started the one I am doing for my nephew as a wedding present.  But I also have a lot of ideas for art quilts that I need to get out of my head, into some kind of drawings/art work and made.  I think my life has become a bit dominated by journal quilts which speak to me because I like to work small.  So hopefully 2011 will see something different.

And still there is ice

It has been quite a week here with all the snow and ice.  I knew our road was a frost trap from last year but I was somewhat surprised to find myself scraping ice off the car at 2 pm yesterday.  (Didn't think to photograph it but will tomorrow.)  It just won't melt and we have had the heating on all day for several days, having decided that at our age that's what you do.  I go round telling people that your heating bills are much higher if you don't go to work.

This morning I went into the garden to feed the birds and realised that the frost on the plants was very beautiful so I grabbed my camera.

I love the way the undersides of the leaves are a different colour.  It makes a beautiful abstract print so I shall print this one out.

This is a cyclamen struggling to survive.  I noticed that another cyclamen that is in a pot within reach of the outlet of the boiler is looking very bright.  Because it generally does not get very cold down here I always chance it by trying to over-winter things.  If they survive I save myself some money on plants in the spring and if they don't I do not feel I just threw them away.  But this parsley looks as though it has found its way to the freezer ahead of time.

There are lots of interesting patterns to be found in 'iced' plants because you see the lines so much better.

Because the garden looked so good this afternoon I went for a short walk up the nearest rural road.

In the past this valley has been very inspirational to me, including providing the idea for one of my journal quilts in 2009.

This was in spring when the Cornish hedges (banks of stones covered in vegetation) are full of flowers and there is gorse along the top of the hedge.  This afternoon almost all the ice had melted from the verges but the road was still somewhat icy so I did not go as far as I usually do.  I found these in the driveway to a farm.

Snow in West Penwith

It is most unusual for us to have snow down here but this year is an exception.  Yesterday we woke to four inches or so on the ground and more fell during the day.  As soon as I pulled back the curtains I grabbed my camera to take the view out the window.

Like many of my neighbours I rushed out with my camera late morning just as the sun broke through.  I thought I might get some shots that I could use for Christmas cards although whether I have time to make them is another matter.

This is the stream that runs down the other side of our lane.  I particularly liked the snow on the bare branches  and took several photos that I could fiddle with in Elements to create designs.

Birds were sitting in the topmost branches - see top right, silhouetted against the sky.  I think I should have gone out a bit earlier than I did as a couple of people told me they had got lovely shots of the trees in the field on the edge of the village where people go to exercise their dogs.  This area is not nearly as picturesque as the villages we lived in up-country and in conditions like this I am not prepared to risk driving to get to the beauty spots.  As we get so little snow only the main A routes are gritted and it very hilly.  So I contented myself with walking round the village and taking photos of snow-covered roofs 'for the record' as they say.

At the same time I found one or two interesting detail shots.

These agapanthus heads were in a nearby garden

and these calabrese were in the allotments.

Later, having cleared a path from the front door to the studio, not least because the washing machine lives there, I then made it into the garden.  The sun had gone but the pond was quite interesting because the pump is still running and has left a clear spot which in theory could provide water for the birds.

Overnight we had more snow which means it turned very icy.  I have learnt to rely on BBC Radio Cornwall at times like this and  there are lots of photographs on their website if you are someone who holidays down here and want to see what is like out towards Lands End.  www.bbc.co.uk/cornwall  The last time I can remember it being this bad was, I think, in January 1988 when the palms on Penzance Promenade died and roads to the west of Penzance were all closed.  The group of cottages where our holiday cottage was is at the top of a very steep hill just outside Penzance.  Fortunately we had gone back after our Christmas break but they were snowed/iced in for several days and the farmer had to pour the milk down the drain.  Yesterday I was talking to one of the neighours when we heard a clanking sound and turned round to see the milk tanker going along the road out of the village with chains on.  First time I have seen that!