Archie The Wonder Dog

Furtle (v): to have a rummage or delve into the contents of something Hello! November has turned out to be quite a productive month, which is a good job as I'd fallen a bit behind in October with my scrappy trip blocks. I finished off the last block from October (it did get finished while it was still October, but not in time to take its picture for the Furtle): Once that was done, I decided to prep the final eight blocks for the top rather than just the four for November while I was in the mood for stamping and had something to watch on telly: And I've made the four blocks for November: But, as you can see, none of them have taken themselves to the iron.  In fact, the three blocks from the last post haven't done so, either.  I may as well wait until I've pieced the final four blocks and press twelve at once. Won't that be fun?! I'm well on the way with the first December block and am hoping to have that finished in the next day or two, depending on how long it ...

Hello! I don't know how the end of the month has snuck up on me so quickly, but it has! This month has been another hand piecing month, with three blocks finished (none have taken themselves to the iron) and the fourth well on its way - it should be finished by the time the month ends so I'm still on track to have all fifty-six blocks made by the end of the year.  Here are the three blocks I've finished: I think I've almost finished filling the new cupboard in the sewing room (yes, it got built and yes, I love it! I can also get an awful lot more in there, which is good.  I'll take pictures once I've got everything in and labelled and a map drawn to help me locate, say, the cocktail sticks!) and am mainly left with all the faffy bits which don't have a natural home. The urge to shove them all in a box and call it done is growing, but I shall stay strong.  Apart from anything else, there's a certain someone looking for an excuse, any excuse, to give me a ...

Welcome to Fettle Those Finishes! For those of you wondering what on earth 'fettle' means, it's one of those words which can mean different things. You can be in fine fettle (good health and feeling perky), you can fettle clay before firing (less of a dialect word, more of a technical one, that) and you can sort out/mend something or get it ready.  You might 'fettle that cupboard once and for all' (give it a good sort out), you might 'fettle the tension on that sewing machine' (fix it) or you might 'give it a fettle' (get it ready). For this, I'm using the 'sort out' definition as we're going to give our project list a good sort out and hopefully get some things crossed off. Flummoxed?  I do hope not! As the Finish-Along is returning in 2021, this is just to tide us over until the end of the year. I'm going to concentrate on the things I stand a chance of finishing/making good progress on between now and then: 1. Scrappy trip bloc...

September has been a hand piecing month, combined with a spot of box packing and moving.  I've made three more scrappy trip blocks: And I've emptied half of the sewing room and all of the Cupboard Of Doom ready for its removal on Saturday (or perhaps before if the chaps are free). It will hopefully be rebuilt in a different, less doomy, form the following weekend but given that there's no plan drawn up (because until we see how much room the stair bulkhead takes up, we don't know how much room can be reclaimed into the room and how much needs to stay as cupboard), I'm feeling a little dubious about that.  The only thing I need to do before they arrive is cover everything left in there in dust sheets.  Well, fleece blankets as that's all I have - there are quite a few which were Archie's up in the loft so I'd best get up there. And that's it for me! I'm off to write the Fettle Those Finishes! post for tomorrow - I decided it would be easier to hav...

  Hello! I hope you're well? This month has been a hand piecing sort of month - it's amazing how much progress you can make on something when you actually get it out of the tin and work on it, isn't it?! I've finished the block I'd almost finished in the last post, which is the last of the July blocks: And I've made my four blocks for August: And on Saturday, I finished the first of the blocks for September (yes, while it's still August!!): I've done little else (definitely no housework, although I am getting to grips with the new blogger interface (a new page a day plus a page which is updated daily will do that)), but I do have a date for the extraction of The Cupboard Of Doom (the cupboard in the sewing room which houses the stair bulkhead and which is just over a metre deep, a metre wide, and 5'4" high (the mixed measurement systems are because my sister-in-law can stand in the cupboard and her head touches the ceiling and I know how tall sh...

Hello! Time is definitely returning to normal, I think. Although the afternoons and evenings (particularly the latter) seem to be travelling very quickly, so maybe normally-moving is a way off yet?! This month has been quite a busy month for sewing.  About halfway through it, I realised that there were six months left of the year (do I get a prize for that revelation?), that I have twenty-four low volume scrappy trip blocks left to make and that the first goes nicely into the second and I could have all the blocks made by the start of 2021 if I got a shift on. At that point, there were sixteen days left in July, so I had four days to make each block if I was going to stick to my newly-set target of four blocks a month. So far, I've managed three and am a good way through the fourth (I might have finished it before this post, but I've spent far too long wrestling with my elderly laptop and coaxing it into working) and here they are: At the start of the month (I...