A workshop with Jenni Rayment

Today Sewingbuddy, Pat and I attended a Quilters Guild workshop with Jenni Rayment.  I have done a short workshop with her before and know them to be enjoyable, informative and one that leaves you reeling with ideas - this was no different.

From the moment we started - with a "what do you want to be called today?", I replied "Esmerelda" and so got the afore mentioned name tag! - it was go, go, go!








The intention was to create a fiddled and tweaked circle - something like one of these!











Well, by the end of the six hour day, the three of us had tweaked and attached our tweak to our backing fabric - leaving the binding, the edging and the quilting to be done before making it into something - not much then!






Would we go again?  You bet ya! ( I will show you a picture of my efforts when it is finished - let's just say that its not blue!)

Dieting wise Sewingbuddy and Pat did their best to distract me with their constant offers of jelly babies and wine gums.  I did accept a werthers original from Jenni but refused the biscuits and chocolate cake on offer.  So I have had fruit salad and yoghurt for breakfast, a sw Caesar salad for lunch, with the last slice of Weetabix cake plus two hi fi bars as snacks.  Dinner will be roast beef and vegetables and some form of bar for a pudding.  Less than 24 hours to go until the first weigh in!!

What to do on this sunny day?

With nothing planned or in the diary, the world is my oyster.  With so many choices ahead of me, what did I do first?  Why, finish the bag from yesterday of course!  The bag isn't perfect, by any means, and I have certainly learnt what not to do next time, but the finished bag doesn't look too bad!









Once that was done (and, by now, it was approaching mid day!) it was time to hoover around (needed to unblock the hoover first from all those threads!) before taking advantage of this lovely weather and walk the dogs, nip around to church to pay the gardener and pop to the butchers to buy some pre-ordered skinny sausages (we ordered them Thursday night at WI).

After an all day breakfast for lunch (SW version of course), I then ventured out into the jungle and started some weeding.  I have a side border where, before too long, the gooseberries and raspberries will take over and I need to get rid of these stinging nettles and weeds.  Sadly I also had a bright idea many years ago of putting a weedmat down - this has now disintegrated and weeds come through, but getting the weed mat up is harder that you think!

 
 
 

As you might imagine, Daisy and Millie gave a helping hand - now liking the warm soil and shade of the plants - never mind the mess on their fur!







Whilst I discovered the new buds on the gooseberry bush and the blossom on the plum tree - all is well with my world!

Anyway the deed is now done and I will give it a few days for the worms to do their job before raking it over again.  Meanwhile there are a few more weeds that need my attention.  Mind you - I really must check the gardening gloves next time - these had holes at the end of the fingers and my finger pads are now stung - ouch!





Tomorrow is another sewing workshop - the last one booked for this month - and so the bag needed to be packed before settling down for the evening and, erm, double erm, more hexagons (I am over half way now - just!  Don't get me wrong, I love EPP - but I will be glad when this particular part of the bag is finished!

Dietingwise all is well in my world.  I had fruit salad and yoghurt for breakfast, the all day breakfast for lunch and will have poached salmon, new potatoes and veg for dinner - with a slice of Weetabix cake for afters.  There's even enough room for a small (we are talking tiny at 15g in weight) bar of Green and Black's chocolate tonight - mmmm.  I am desperate to know how its going but have purposefully left the scales in the car so that I cant weigh myself - its doing my head in but all will be revealed on Monday!!

Help - I'm having a "mare" of a day!

Today was a bag sewing workshop in Lincoln with Sewingbuddy - and it started really well.  Lovely sunshine, a nice cuppa stop at Tesco's and the shop open when we arrived really early so that we could get ourselves sorted.  I really should have stopped there - the rest of the morning went downhill rapidly!  A lot of the bag required homemade bias binding being sewn and I was eager to try Sewingbuddy's new machine foot - and promptly made a pigs ear or it.  I tried, I really did - getting grumpier by the minute and being too proud to accept help from Sewingbuddy - even when she offered to sew it for me!





Consequently, by lunchtime, I was far behind, having undone much of my work and ended the day with the outside pieces of a bag. 









Sewing buddy had done her outside and was starting on the outside,











whilst another participant was at the same stage.

I guess I know what I am doing in the next few days then!

Food wise I have been angelic - fruit salad and yoghurt for breakfast, 2 slimming world bars during the day and a SW Caesar salad for lunch with a piece of SW Weetabix cake for afters.  Dinner is spaghetti Bolognese followed by a yoghurt.  I also have a tiny (15g) bar of Green and Black's chocolate to nibble on tonight as a treat - I REALLY need it!

A strange, yet beautiful day

Today was always going to be a tough one but it started well, with a lie in, a sunny start and an enjoyable church meeting - one of those where the coffee and chatter often took over from business!  then it was on to the key event - the funeral of a lady called Barbara Oke.  She was 85 when she died, and had been ill for some time, but her death brought a large number of people together on a sunny weekday to pay their respects - a measure of how much she was loved.  I knew her through school - she had been a governor for 35 years and was often the first person to ring you and offer her words of support.  Barbara would challenge you, if she felt it necessary, but she would do it in a quite manner that brooked no argument!  The funeral was also a chance to meet up with a couple of ex colleagues and find out how retirement was treating them all.  Worryingly they, and a couple of others that I knew through work, remarked how well I looked - the question is how bad did I look when working?

On the way back home, through some lovely countryside which always looks well in the sun with the rapeseed filled fields, I popped into B & Q for a pole to hang the wallhanging behind the bed - hopefully that task will be done on  Saturday - before starting to complete my WI duties ahead of the meeting tonight.  so, raffle prizes and tickets have been sorted, a slimming world friendly cake made and plants wrapped for the birthday gifts.
 

With everything in hand I then took time out to do some of the jigsaw puzzle.  As you can see I am nearing completion - just some of those fiddly "joining" pieces to go.

Tonight, as I said, its the WI meeting - this time it's at the local farm shop where we are being shown how to make sausages by the butcher.  Should be interesting!

The humanity of life

Today was an errand day - groceries and WI raffle prizes / birthday gifts - so it was an "up and at them" day.  Trust me to wake up before Daisy woke me!!  First stop was for some soil - it will soon be good Friday and time to plant the potatoes - and some lovely plants for the WI birthday gifts.  A nice young man loaded the car for me.

Next up was the grocery shopping.  I had a £10 off a £70 spend but didn't expect to reach that target - um, well, I didn't - it was £69 something.  I asked the lady behind me if I could buy one of her items for her - and she agreed - it was worth the £1.15 to save the £10.  However she then gave me the cash and we had a good laugh about the situation.

Then it was onto Boyes to buy a couple of zips and some cotton for the workshop on Friday.  As I went into the shop I was behind an elderly lady who was walking slowly and was bent over.  A young man greeted her as a long lost friend and she visibly stood straighter - her laugh was infectious. 

In short, what with Sewingbuddy tracking down some sugar free jelly for me (Tesco had empty shelves) and a lovely chat with a fellow dog walker, I seem to have been surrounded by lovely people today whose kind and pleasant nature has left an imprint.

Dietwise, things are still on track.  Breakfast was Eggy Bread with berries and half fat crème fraiche, lunch was Pea and ham soup - home made of course - and dinner is Shepherds Pie with Carrots and Broccoli.  For pudding I discovered a Muller Light yoghurt in my favourite flavour - Blackcurrant and Liquorice - so I am trying that tonight.

Craftwise - it's those darn hexagons again.  It would appear, on facebook, that I am not the only one to not finish this bag.  There are a small number racing to finish it before the next workshop in August - I am in good company!

Playing dodgems in the swimming pool

So, today was the start of the new SW regime.  Referring to the plan that I created yesterday revealed that breakfast was wholemeal toast with baked beans and fried eggs on top (Fried = frylight not loads of oil!).  Not too shabby for a diet I feel!  Fortified I then set to cutting and sorting out fabric for a workshop with Sewingbuddy on Friday.  It sure took some thinking about - and I am now a master of making continuous bias binding (not a skill that many people would need to put on a CV me thinks!).  That job done, I then set about making a project back to store the pieces in.  Let's just say that this is a prototype - I could point out the faults but I haven't got enough time!!!!!  It does the job though - so that's a good starting point.

By now it was time to try my luck at the pool.  Many schools have broken up, with the rest breaking up on Friday.  When I arrived, it looked okay but, by the time I got changed and went into the pool, it was chaos - why do grown ups feel the need to tread water in the middle and just chat - for AGES!  Anyway I persevered and did my 50 widths - but it wasn't fun at all.  I think that we are just plain spoiled when the kids are at school!


Back home, lunch was a lovely sw friendly Caesar Salad (my new favourite lunch) and a hi fi bar before heading out to mow the lawn - I was joking earlier with Sewingbuddy that I had lost Daisy in the grass - but its not far from the truth.  After a walk with the dogs it was time to bed down for the night and sew more hexagons - I sure know how to live but this UFO will not defeat me!!  I have sewn 58/195 so far and tonight another 14 will be added to the grand total.

Dinner tonight will be a sw version of French Style Country Chicken - well, I am using turkey instead of chicken and half fat Crème Fraiche - with mashed potatoes, carrots and lettuce.  I am not sure about pudding, since I am not shopping until tomorrow, but it will probably be another sw bar - the dark mint one tastes like an after eight mint mmmm.

By the way - forgot to say - I passed the 200 mile mark today - 1/5 of the way to the 1000 miles in a year challenge - slightly behind schedule but YAY!

Back to basics!

This morning started extremely well - I jumped (well, not literally you understand) onto the scales and have lost 7lbs since last Monday - holiday weight / water clearly but I will take that one!  The Monday Morning Gang was certainly a happier meeting with that news.  Nevertheless, Paula and I had a heart to heart - the upshot of it was ........... well, that will come later.

The next part of the morning was spent grappling with the IKEA bookcase.  I have put so many flat backed pieces of furniture together in my life that this should have been an easy task - hurrumph!  You try taking those plastic "wooden" bullets out when they are in the wrong place!  Two hours later the job was done but !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

By now the sun was out and it was a glorious day (it became overcast by around 2pm) and so a lovely walk with the dogs up at the beach was required.  I really love seeing Daisy running - she leaps as she runs - almost like a lamb gambling.  But then it was onto our outing - Paula and I had decided to re-join Slimming World to keep us both focussed on the task.  We could, of course, wait until Wednesday to go to a local one but we wanted to strike whilst the iron was hot - so off we trotted to Grimsby.  The only shame was that I had planned to go swimming this afternoon so missed that but I am free tomorrow so can go then.  I even managed to pick up a copy of Bella for us both - saving us the £10 joining fee - every little helps as they say.

So, the menu has been planned for the week and we are both focussed.  As the song from Cabaret goes - "Maybe this time ...."

Tonight?  Well, another row of hexagons of course!  Really, I am avoiding the main task which will need to be sorted tomorrow.  On Friday Sewingbuddy and I are going to another workshop and I need to sort my fabric out (tick) and then cut out the pieces.  Sewing buddy reckons that it took her 4 hours - gulp!  But then the lawn needs mowing, the fence and "she cave" painting etc etc etc!