March Already

It seems like February has flown by, I suppose because it's such a short month. It is also my birthday in February which always used to fall in half term, but mercifully I am now free of those considerations. It's also slightly depressing to now be in the final year of my fifth decade! Cripes! how did that happen. Mr Hare (my toyboy because he is 6 months younger than me) loves to keep reminding me of his relative youth compared to mine. He did take me out for a special birthday dinner.

 

 

Still, I love the fact that the garden is just beginning to stir back to life. I love this particular hellebore

 



and the snowdrops

 

 

The previous owner of the garden planted lots of camelias, obviously not knowing anything about gardening. Our soil has a neutral pH and they really don't like it, plus they are all planted in full sun ( not a problem at present!) so they do suffer from sunburn.  I have to give them lots of ericaeous feed and I severely pruned this one as it looked so sick last year. This is the result- a big improvement.

 

I am now on holiday for the next 3 weeks (yay!) as I have to use up my annual allocation by the end of March. Unfortunately, because of the fire damage we won't be able to go away except for the odd shopping trip to London. I have lots of plans in my head as to what I'm going to do but I'll be lucky if I achieve a quarter of them. First and foremost, I'm determined to do some catching up with friends.

 

 One of the plans is to clear out the greenhouse and start sewing some seeds, but it is still so cold that I'm not sure I'll get any of it done. I usually plant heaps of garlic in September to harvest the following June, but last September the garden was like a bog so I haven't done it. The garlic bulbs are sitting there nagging away at me.I always buy far more seeds than I actually ever plant ( a case of my intentions always being greater than reality).

 

I am also hoping to do a lot of sewing. I have so many WIP's as I am much better at starting projects than finishing them! I think it's a sign of being easily distracted by the latest, more interesting project, rather than sticking to one thing before starting the next.

 

I did manage to do a fair bit of sewing in February ( mainly because it was too cold to do anything else!)

 

 

 

I made these for a new Bee I have joined- Care Circle at do.Good Stitches. I applied ages ago and had forgotten all about it, until I got an email from Rachel and  I'm delighted to be involved.

 

 

 

 

These were blocks for Sue Bone in the Simply Solids Bee (they are bright!)

 

 

 

 

These blocks were for Linda in the Star Block Quilting Bee (lovely Kate Spain fabric)

 

 

 

This Carpenter's star for Teresa in the Honey Bee FQR Kinky Bee ( lovely Art Gallery fabric and a new process for sewing HST's )

 

For my own sewing, I finished all the scrappy trip around the world blocks for Helena's quilt and made a start on the back.

 









 

And I experimented with these blocks for a quilt:

 

 

 

Probably somewhat foolishly, I also started sewing these EPP blocks after seeing ( and totally falling in love with ) this quilt by Rita of Red Pepper quilts MIL  http://www.redpepperquilts.com/search?updated-max=2013-02-17T12:36:00%2B11:00&max-results=8

 

 

Here are the first 3 blocks

 

 

 

The problem is , I know I'm totally insane to start this because they take forever to sew and I need to make at least 250 of them! I know I'll get distracted and they'll end up in a bag somewhere to be discovered at a later date ( this is because I have so many other projects like this haunting me but not haunting me enough to finish them).

 

Maybe I'll make 2013 the year of finishes( I wish!).

 

There seems at last to be some progress on the roof. The insurance company still haven't accepted liability but we are having a meeting next week to go through the tenders for the building work and hopefully appoint someone to get started.It has been a very cathartic experience but one that has focused us on what is important and what is not.