Back to sewing - finally

As you can imagine I have been rather "down" since the family went back and I have felt the need to do something for myself. With renovating the house and Richard always busy working on it, I don't feel as though I can go up to the den and sew because I feel guilty at leaving him working on his own. So, all that has been happening is that I have been doing "stuff", not of any importance and feeling thoroughly fed up. We have talked about this and he said he would love it if I went up to the den and did my quilting, he would much rather I was happy. Of course, I knew that's what he would say, but bless him for making me feel better about it. So...... I have started sewing again and I didn't realise just how much I had missed it. Would you believe I've even forgotten how to do a lot of the basics so it's back to the books again. I couldn't even thread my sewing machine without getting the manual out, that's how bad it was. I have been putting together a little lap quilt which has a cat theme as you will hopefully see from the photo, but the main fabric, which I have taken a photo of, doesn't do anything at all, unless I did a lot of "fussy cutting" (to those of you who don't know that term, it means cutting out each individual picture you want) and of course I would waste so much fabric. Sharlene, if you are reading this, what do you think, I think it would be much too busy to put a border of the lovely cat fabric and I'm just thinking of backing the quilt in. Such a shame not to see all those lovely cats on the front though.

We are off to the UK on Tuesday and I will not have access to a computer because we are staying with my mum and dad, but I am taking a lot of sewing with me and mum and I are going to have some fun sewing together, something we haven't done for a while. I'm really looking forward to it. I am even going to go to some fabric shops and quilt shops, those we don't have in France, at least anywhere near to where I live. I really miss them. Not that I need fabric of course, but it's good to see the latest designs and to stroke the odd fat quarter. :-) Oh well, a little might find it's way into my bag. Oops, who said that??

We still haven't had any rain here and it has been hot again today. Most of our trees have lost their leaves now and the pond is almost dry. The cracks in the ground you can get your fist down, so it will be interesting to see how many of the trees manage to recover from this drought.

Well, I can hear my sewing machine calling me again so I think I had better go and see what I can be doing. I won't be on here again for a few weeks so I will catch up with everyone when we get back. Take care one and all and talk to you again soon.

Oh yes, the other thing is, the swallows. You will see from the photo that they are all gathering, getting ready to migrate. They do this for a few weeks and we were talking with our neighbour, David the other evening and we decided they collected on the telephone wires to "chat" to each other and decide when they were going to leave and what route they were going to take for their hundreds of miles journey. They will gather in their thousands before they set off, an amazing sight.