Tuesday, August 29, 2006

Final edinburgh catch up and new quilting books

Well the laptop and internet seem to be Ok tonight but now I have lost the lead to connect the camera to the USB port. I'm sure it was on my desk when we left for Scotland.... but no doubt it will reappear. Yesterday the power lead for the sewing machine vanished which was exceedingly irritating as I had been itching to get back on it all the time I was up in Scotland despite having taken handsewing. After much searching, the lead was finally located in the kitchen and the deduction is that the cleaner had mistaken it for the lead for the portable CD player which I use when sewing and which she carries around the house as she works, but had not returned it. Or perhaps it was her subtle revenge for the number of the threads and lost pins she now has to hoover up?

(Don't you think that Mr Dyson must get really annoyed that despite using his products I, and most others, still talk about hoovering? Is that just an English thing? International readers please comment!)

So no photos of bagpipers but I will pretty the site up with photos of books that arrived yesterday.

Well I say that but it seems blogger.com is not uploading pictures tonight so you'll have to click to see the pictures of:

Color Play by Joen Wolfrom and Journey of an Art Quilter by Barbara Olson



Actually even these were a problem as the Royal Mail decided to leave them with a neighbour (helpful) and not tell us ( not helpful) so we had emailed Amazon to complain that they were missing and got the offer of another copy ( helpful) and have now had to rescind the complaint ( embarrassing). I think I should have stayed on holiday. Talking of which....

.... I made a visit to Mandor's fabric shop in Edinburgh - a small quilting department but with about 30 fabrics on sale at £2.99 who cares?! I had to set a cash limit as I feared entering an out of control purchasing mood ( which would be fine but for the fact that I am planning one in advance when I go to the Great Northern Quilt show on Saturday) but for £50 I got 18.5 meters including some long lengths for backing. Is it just me or do other quilters also feel that buying backing fabric ( not to say wadding) is a bit of a boring necessity compared to exciting colours for the front? ( I know - I need to learn to make reversable quilts - just one skill of many on the list). plus when I got to my Mum's she had taken in a delivery of 174 batik FQ's bought on sale at the Fat Quarter Shop in Texas. ( The shop is in Texas that is. I bought them in my study if you see what I mean.)

For book lovers among you, other authors we saw at the festival ( see links for their books) included Tim Waterstone, Paul Rusesabagina ( of Hotel Rwanda fame), Douglas Kennedy, and Claudia Roden ( two cookbooks of hers - see this link and this one - will be arriving soon depending on the whim of the Royal Mail postie) Marti Leimbach (I've read this book already - light but interesting becuase whilst it is fiction a lot is based on her expereinces with her own autistic son) and PD James ( whose novels I still haven't tried) and Seamus Heaney, with whom my husband was delighted to chat to about a poetry reading in Galgorm in 1968!. His talk was interpreted into British Sign Language which I know a bit as my Mum interprets into BSL and it was fascinating to see how that langguage was at time completely unable to express the accents of syntax of what he was saying yet at others one hand movement could describe a concept more succinctly and vividly than even a Nobel winning poet.

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