Thank you all for a great weekend

I've had a really good long weekend, and it has been entirely due to other people. So to everyone who has helped, thank you.

Friday was great, lots of people visited the gallery and were all so enthusiastic, and helpful. For such a miserable day, weather wise, it was really unexpected. It was enhanced by hearing of Trogdors first racing run. After the first qualifier Trogdor was 1st, how amazing is that for a first outing. Over the day he did loose a few places, but was still 7th at the end of the day.

Saturday was a quiet day all round, a lot of chatting at the gallery, and no racing due to the weather. Still I got a lot of sewing done and found it generally relaxing. Actually in some ways it was the first day the gallery worked the way I expected. I had though that once I had everything set up it would be very relaxing to look after and I would have time to sew, mostly it doesn't work quite that way.

I wish I had pictures of the weather Sunday, but I was too absorbed just watching it. It's funny how much snow changes things. People were much nicer in the snow, for the first time I got a cheery greeting as I put out my sandwich board rather than being grumbled at or even shoved in to the road. Everywhere was so peaceful. I loved watching the huge clusters of snow blowing towards the gallery door. I only realised when it stopped that I really should have taken pictures. maybe sometime it is better to just enjoy these things. When I was publicising my show I came up with a list of people I would really like to invite, some I couldn't find current contact details for though. One I was particularly sad to have missed turned up! He had chosen just the right time to go hunting for us and found out about my show. So in between other visitors we got to catch up and swap contact details. How amazing is that? I think I would add that as one of the success factors for a show.

Monday brought me another visitor I had been keenly waiting for, and more snow. When I invited her I hadn't considered her children skills, but those turned out to be very useful, when two other friends arrived with their children. The kids were kept entertained while the parents had a chance to look around. I was really thrilled that some of he children really seemed to like my work. They played with 'See Sound' and listened very patiently to my rather woolly explanation of how it all works. They experimented with how it behaved to different noises. What really made it for me was the idea that one of the children was going to send her gran a postcard with a nude on it, some how that is just amazingly cool.

As there were a lot of people about to keep and eye on the gallery I was able to go and look at some graves. One of the friends of Kensal Green took me to see my hero's, the Brunels. It's a very solid functional monument, I think it suits perfectly. I was thrilled to find out how much of the family are there together. We then visited James Barry, I didn't remember the name, but the story did come back to me. If you're in the same boat do follow the link it's a great story. It was so good to be shown the cemetery by someone who is not only very knowledgeable but also massively enthusiastic. I has already decided that I was going to take a tour sometime, but this has brought it home to me how important that is. The tours run every Sunday, leaving from the large Anglican chapel at 2pm. The first and third Sunday includes a tour of the catacombs, so the next catacomb tour is the 6th April. If you take that one you will end up in the gallery where my show is.

Through out the day I was getting texts from the drag strip...through the first round...though again...into the semis...... At each step I knew this would be the final result, the weather was horrible for racing. I was wrong, they managed to run the meeting to completion and Tet has his first pot, he came second in his first outing with his own car, isn't that just a fantastic outcome. I can't quite believe that after all this time he is finally on the podium, and it being his car is just amazing.

Finally, some more pictures of my show, by a friend who came along on the first night. If you look hard you will find I failed to escape all the pictures.

What a great day.

Who would have thought that a very cold and windy day would be perfect gallery weather. I've been busy all day and it's been wonderful. Thank you to everyone who braved the weather and trains to come and see my work, you have no idea what it means to me.

As well as the gallery going really well, the race car seems to have made a good start. It passes scrutineering, and ran well in it's first run. Very well in fact, number 1 qualifier that round. It managed a respectable second run too, and only slipped to number 4 qualifier. Given this is the cars first outing and Tet is used to a Pro tree not the sportsman, this is really amazing. Hopefully they will get some more runs over the weekend, but given the weather forecast I am not going to hold my breath.

All in all a fantastic day.

Not what we had in mind.

Ho hum. O2 have changed their mobile email in some way so I can't blog on the go. I am writing this on paper to type up at home (actually I am typing right now :). When I get home I will have to try and find out how to fix it so I will be able to blog from the NEC again this year.

We have been trying to race. I was fairly calm when I found out that we were supposed to have rain on Sunday. I have a lot of quilts that need hanging sleeves, a job I find very dull. Perfect for the rain during racing. I've found that by folding down one of the back seats in the Capri I can make quite a reasonable workspace, which is also fairly easy to keep clean a dry even in a very muddy field.

There was a shower on Friday during which I got most of a sleeve on to a bed quilt. This was fine as we also managed a good amount of racing (more would have been nice but still). The Ugly stick is now behaving fairly well and we were hopeful for the rest of the racing. Sunday however seemed to have other ideas. We have had pouring rain all day, at 15:06 they cancelled the racing for the day.

OK so I did get a lot done, but we had paid to race. It did also give us a rare chance to socialize with the rest of the team. A plan was made to meet for pizza and then go bowling, both close to our hotel, what could possibly go wrong. Well, as soon as we tried to pull out of the hotel car park there was an interesting squealing noise. Not a problem with torrential rain the fan belt had probably got wet, it would be a miracle if it wasn't wet. This was quickly followed by more crunchy squawks and we decided ti was time to stop. The fan belt had shredded itself and wrapped around the fan in the process. Great, still we had a spare and most of the tools we required, the next door garage kindle lent us a big torch and soon we were on our way again. It was funny that having left the track clean we now were oily and grimy. Still we were back on our way, but no not quite that simple, for some reason the car was running very rough and kept stalling on us. The hotel is on one side of a dual carriage way, to get back to it we needed to turn around twice, once pretty much at the pizza place. So we thought we might as well press on, if nothing else there would be other people there with transport to help us sort the car out. So we find the first roundabout and turn, then quickly find a traffic jam, someone had managed to drive into the wall at the side of the road, they were fine, but the traffic wasn't. It is exactly what you don't want with a sick plane. Bizarrely even with the set backs, we got there and had a good time. The car wanted it's timing adjusting and was then prepared to get us home. I even won the bowling, I can't remember the last time that happened.

I have had a cunning idea. I don't have a lot of space in my house and I have a lot of bed quilts. Some of the hotel rooms we stay in have a good amount of space around the bed. Are you seeing where this is going? Yup I have a plan to photograph a couple of quilts each time we rent a decent size room. My quilts are a bit big for the hotel beds but it is better than i could manage at home so I am pleased. It also means I am getting better value for money from the room. It does surprise me the range of rooms you get for very similar money. Size, quality of bathroom and toiletries vary enormously. The room this time was a good size, but no toiletries supplied at all. There was a vending machine in reception for you to buy anything you had forgotten. We couldn't figure out a way to get any heating in the room either. Still the quilts look OK, which is the important thing, and it is close to the track and all the local facilities. It also has an American Diner next door which I would like to try sometime.

So here are the pictures I took this time. The upper one is 'My Fat Quarter of Paradise'. As you can see it is a big quilt and doesn't really fit a double bed. Still I think it looks pretty good on the bed in the hotel. I like the way the neutral decor works with the quilts, very handy. I bet they didn't think of it when they planned the rooms.

The second quilt is 'Road to Mondrian', I have now bought the fabric for 'Road to Mondrian 2' but I don't know when I will have time to make it. I should say the room walls weren't actually that strong a colour, maybe it is something to do with the camera focusing on the quilts. These pictures also gave me another chance to play with my new flash. I think I need to spend a bit of time with it to get the best from it, but it does very nicely remove the shadow of my wide angle lens, which was a lot of my reason for wanting it.

The 4 Link Ugly Stick.

I feel I have to start by saying I didn't name the Ugly Stick, and I don't think she is ugly. This is what has been eating our time over the weekend, and in fact last weekend as well. This is Tet's drive for the year. A Super Pro ET - Super Comp Dragster.


This is the latest addition to the Paul Marston Race School. Seen in front of the soon to be gone barn. She has just been brought over from America and seems to be taking to her new surroundings pretty well. Of course having behaved well in testing she then proceeded to have a strop the first real race. Friday morning she started blowing fuses. It turned out that her throttle stop had shorted out. This was bad news, not only had it missed us the first round of qualifying but it meant that Super Comp was going to become a lot harder. The class requires you to cover the standing quarter in 8.90 seconds, this car can easily do it in 8.20, so is too fast without her stop. Still in the old days it was done by lifting and this was Tet's chance to show he could do it that way too.

After finding and elimination this fault we headed back out for the second round, and got shut down on the line. We had a water leak. Not in an easy to get to place either. one of those simply remove the engine to fix, sort of leaks. Still we managed to get it done by the end of the day and the starter kindly allowed Tet to make his last licencing pass at the end of racing. The parachute does work and he knows how to deploy it.

Above is the early morning burn out , from Saturday. As you can see the weather was perfect for racing, we didn't get a spot of rain all weekend. I love the look of the burnout with this car. You can see the smoke slowly curling off the tyres. By the end of the weekend Tet had also found the optimum length of burnout to put the most heat in the tyres. We were thrilled when Tet made it through the first round of eliminations in Super Pro, and unsurprised that he didn't in Super Comp. However the Super Comp race was fantastically close, not bad for doing things the hard way.

This was one of those moments when you get bored standing in the pairing lanes. The car herself is very bright and shiny but the helmet was giving a perfect reflection of the lane. Again you can see the wonderfully blue sky, so different to last year. I think there will be a quilt inspired by this picture, and a during the weekend I came up with several other ideas too. I think having multiple diverse hobbies is really useful for keeping ideas flowing for quilts.

There are more race reports here;

Drivers perspective by Tet
Crew Chiefs Perspective by Robin
EuroDragster - look for 12.00

The worlds biggest neglige?

At the weekend I finally got to see my car cover in action. If you would like to take a look there is a picture up on Eurodragster.

It seems I have made one of those serious mistakes that you regret as soon as you have done it. I've moved to the new blogger. I now have to accept new terms and conditions to be able to post pictures. I don't so I can't. I guess that means I now have to move my blog :( I really didn't need that.

Anyone want to recommend their blog hosting site? If you do and are feeling really kind could you use the contact me form to let me know. Blogger seems to be using an email address I don't check very often. I will try to fix that, but I don't know how much luck I will have.

Sorry Kate, I was planning on putting up the card you sent me too. It's a great card and very exciting. I like this getting art through the post.