Day of rest

Yesterday was hectic, it was great to see so many people at the Shop Hop, but boy it was tiring. It is difficult because a day like that is very inspiring but I do come home to tired to work on anything tricky, and too excited not to sew. I settled on working on a strip quilt. I was lucky enough to win second place in the Shop Hop Challenge which got me a gift voucher for Patchwork Corner. I put it to good use helping to buy the precut 2 1/2 inch strips. I bought 120 strips in total, half black and half batiks. This will be plenty to make a king size 'Ripple Effect' quilt. Last night I managed to sew all the strips together and get the batik cut into squares, not bad considering how tired I was. I figure this isn't and entirely frivolous exercise (although it is fun and a great reward) as I will quilt it up and offer it to Jenny as a sample for the shop. It helps me to feel less guilty about taking some time off when I am really very busy, which is good as I know I need these breaks.

For those of you who haven't been on a shop hop, they are great fun. For two days the shop is full of demonstrations, bargains and refreshments. I got roped into helping with the demonstrations after spending all day there as a customer. It really is just like drag racing, stand around too long and you become crew. This time I was showing people how to sew scarves from knitting yarns, with the aid of water soluble stabilizer. They are really quick, easy and a great place to practice your free motion quilting as it doesn't really show when you are done.

Doug made the traditional cream teas for us, but invented a rather unconventional way to whip the cream. He adapted a small bendy whisk to fit his electric drill. Very clever and most effective. I dutifully sampled each batch and I can confirm the whisk works. Obviously I only partook in the name of science, so I assume they were all calorie free.

Among the other demonstrations was one for a gadget to make Suffolk Puffs, or Yoyos. I can't say I was terribly interested but after watching it a few times I started to see potential in these very regular little puffs. I think I will be adding one of these gadgets to my supplies and seeing how I can make use of them. They look like they would be interesting for building texture with left over scraps.

Now off to load up the machine and get on with some quilting. If all goes well I might even get a chance to play some more with my strip quilt before the end of the day.