frayed at the edge

A grand day out

First, of course, I have to start by revealing the Christmas cake, after it was unwrapped!

mmmm - rich and delicious!!  Several times between now and Christmas, I will drizzle brandy over it, so it will be even more moist.  In the past there have small disputes over the icing of our Christmas cakes, as I don't like marzipan, but this problem has been resolved - no marzipan under the icing, and marzipan fruits on the top for Malcolm!!

While we are on the subject of cakes ..... of course there was cake yesterday at patch'n'chat - in fact there were two -

 

a border tart

 

iced ginger bread

Yes, I had a piece of each!!  We could have eaten them in style, as the table in the shop has been laid to show off Christmas place mats

If you would like to make these mats, do check out Borderland Fabrics' website, to get in touch with the shop to buy the fabrics.

 

Now on to today - we set off this morning for the village of St Abbs over on the east coast.  It was a beautiful morning and we had a lovley run over.  We were heading to another event organised by local wool shop Woolfish - a cornucopia of all things woolly.  Malcolm came in to have a cup of coffee, but then he left me to immerse myself in all the wonderful woolly goodies.  (he went for a walk along the clifftop - taking lots of photos for me, which you can see tomorrow in Shadow Shot Sunday!!)  I haven't yet taken photos of the things I bought, but of course I did take photos of some of the stalls.  First is the exceedingly colourful stall of my lovely friend Lindsay 

Every time I see Lindsay she has made all sorts of different, interesting things, and they are always beautifully presented.

The next lot of loveliness was on the stall of Janis Embleton - all sorts of super handwoven delights

And then I succumbed to the most beautiful hank of pure silk lace weight yarn from fyberspates - I will have to knit something very special with it

Unfortunately the llamas and alpacas weren't there today - I know I showed you photos of them when we were there in the spring, but you can never have too many photos of such lovely animals!!  
  

 

 

Up from the depths ......

........ of the knitting basket!  Now that the shawl is finished, I thought I should see what UFOs were lurking at the bottom of my knitting basket.  Fortunately there were only two - and I have now finished one of them

 

Fingerless mits, knitted in beautiful sock wool which I bought from my lovely friend  Helen .  I can wear them covering most of my fingers for warmth, but if I need to do something, then I can roll the edge back

 

I should have put them on at eight o'clock this morning, as it was rather chilly when I went out to take this photo of the moon

 

We went up to Selkirk this morning, where this turret caught my eye - but Rapunzel was nowhere in sight!

 

We had lunch at the Lochcarron Visitor Centre - the last time we were there it was raining too heavily to take a photo of this quirky piece of topiary - today it was lovely when we went in for lunch - but I thought I would wait until after lunch to take a photo - and, yes, it started to rain as we came out!!

 

On the way home, we stopped in the carpark at Homebase to take a photo of Ruberslaw, the hill behind our house - fortunately the sun had come out again!

 

When we were on holiday, my friend Lorraine looked after the house and watered the plants for me - but I forgot to bring this one in from the studio - oops!  But I think it still has a certain appeal .....

 

There are very few flowers left now in the garden, but this little rose managed to survive the heavy rain

And finally ..... the mystery has been solved as to why an Argentinian blog kept showing up in my stats.  The writer got in touch to say that she surfs the Web to find tutorials to include  - and she did say she would remove mine of I didn't want it included.  However, as it is a link to me, I don't mind at all - unlike the time when someone had photos of one of my quilts on her website, without saying it was mine!!  Do pop over and have a look at the Argentinian blog - there are some good links (it's not all in Spanish!)

And finally, finally, I started the baby quilt this afternoon - but which fabric did I use - you'll have to wait to find out!!
 
 
 

 

 
 
 

Practice makes perfect ......

....... I hope!!  I went out for a walk this afternoon and took along my new camera to try to get to grips with the myriad settings (my poor brain was hurting by the time I got back home).  Here is a selection of the ones that didn't go in the recycle bin!!

 

the church looks different in the low autumn light

 

 

lovely ripe elderberries

 

 

wonderful gnarled dead branches, blanketed with moss

 

 

these sheep were happy to pose

 

 

these ones took one look at the camera and trotted off!

 

 

I love autumn colours

 

 

a reminder of why I live here!!

 

 

sheep enjoying a meal of windfall apples

 

 

I may pick a sprig or two for Christmas!

 

I also got a bit arty, and took some B&W photos of the church on my way home, as the sun had come out and there were some good shadows - you'll see them on Sunday!

 

 

 

 

Stitching sunflowers

Do you remember some weeks ago I made a quilt top with some of the left over fabric from Oliver's quilt?  Well, this afternoon I decided to quilt it!  First I had to decide how to quilt it, and as the bright colours made me think of summer, I decided to use a sunflower.  This meant I had to make templates - first a circle for the centre on the flower, then another with the petals added.  I used card from a cereal packet (we quilters were recycling/upcycling cereal packets long before it became fashionable!)

I then marked sunflowers randomly on the quilt top, including some half-flowers on the edges and in the corners, using a chalk pencil

Next I layered the top with some lovely fleece that I bought yesterday at Borderland Fabrics - I would call the colour buttermilk

I stitched round the flowers using a lovely variegated yellow thread - this photo shows the stitching on the fleece

 

But I wasn't just stitching flowers this afternoon, I was also taking photos of them!  I picked these three flowers from a late flowering fuschia, then had fun arranging them, first on their own

and then with this tiny fan, which was given to me by a lovely Japanese lady whom I taught how to quilt when I was living in Indonesia!

And lastly, for all the fans of Annette's cakes, of course I have a photo of yesterday's wonder - one of her light as air sponges, with jam and cream ... yum, yum!!

 
 
 
 
 

Autumn colours

Yesterday was a lovely day, so we decided to go for a walk in the park.  Of course the new camera had to go too, so that I could continue to explore the wide variety of settings (although sometimes I have to fall back on the 'intelligent auto'!!).  We sat outside the little tearoom for a cuppa (the tearoom closes for the winter next weekend!) and I was able to take this photo

 

These tress are just starting to change colour, but when we walked further through the park, we saw these lovely trees ........

 

...... with a beautiful mix of autumn colours.

 

Back home, I went out to the studio to do some sewing. Although it was a bright sunny day, it was a bit chilly, so I lit the woodburning stove for the first time this autumn/winter

 

 

Now that the chicken blocks are well on the way to being finished, I decided to make a start to the sashing strips - there is quite a lot of work to be done on them!  Of course I first cleaned the sewing machine and put in a new needle.  Then I assembled some of the fabrics needed for the sashing

 

I chose the four fabrics on the right, from which I cut lots of strips

 

I sewed the strips together in pairs, then sewed the pairs together

 

It was good to be sitting at the sewing machine after such a long break - even if it was just basic sewing!!

 

Some of you may have noticed that my comments on your blogs show me with a different ID ..... blogger/blogspot keeps telling me there is an error in my ID when I use 'frayedattheedge' .......
hopefully it will sort itself out soon! 
 
 
 

 
 

All grown up

I got a very special present from Malcolm for my birthday this year (it's also my Christmas present!) ..... a proper grown up camera.  Since starting the blog, I have become much more interested in photography, and although my little compact digital camera has served me well, I thought it was time to step up to a serious (and very scary!) camera.

 

To help me get the best from it, Stuart gave me this book

 

Every evening I have been reading the instruction manual - it might as well be written in Martian for all the sense some of it makes!!  I have also been taking photos of anything and everything to find out what all the settings do.  Today's batch is a definite improvement on some of the first efforts!!

 

a beautiful climbing rose in the front garden

 

a late flowering clematis in the back garden

 

dried flowers in the kitchen

 

Hopefully tomorrow I will be back for Shadow Shot Sunday, having missed it last week because of those naughty little gremlins!