An Eventful Week

Well, we've had quite an eventful time since my last post.  An excellent Pitch and Stitch on Tuesday where Anthea finished her Christmas stockings for her youngest two grandchildren

and Denise basted the quilt she is making for her grandson.

There were also a few new Modular Knitters there - it really is quite addictive.

Then on the Medallion Day we were all mad about Lynne's latest Di Ford quilt

I really don't know how Lynne does it - all those tiny little pieces:

Inspiring and daunting in equal measure.

I have been working on some Christmas crocheting from my new 200 Crochet Blocks book.  I am still really only a beginner, so I was very pleased with myself, although also annoyed with the book, when I spotted a mistake in the pattern.  Clearly there had to be 12 triples, and not doubles, in the centre.  I thought I'd check on line for amendments and saw that there were already two or three there.  By now I was truly indignant and bursting with self-righteousness.  I decided I had to add the error I had come across to the list.  As I was filling out the form, and saying that the pattern had said Double crochet instead of Triple crochet, I thought I'd better check the book to get the abbreviations right. 

So, double crochet was dc, and treble crochet was tr.....but,  what's this? - dtr ?  - double treble crochet?  Never heard of it.....better refer back to the pattern "1 dtr into next st, 2ch". 

Fair enough, the book appears to be right.  Apologies to Jan Eaton - it really is a very good book and I am quite happy with my four blocks (although they're supposed to be the same size!)

Finally, we have started having our open fires again - not every night, it's still fairly mild, but every now and again.

However, we were very surprised when the phone rang on Tuesday and Flanners, who lives in the farm cottage, said, "Fire at the Farm".  What?  "Fire in the barn at the farm!." 

We raced down there and sure enough the wood pile was burning away in the barn.  With the help of neighbours running back and forth with buckets of water until the fire engines came, it was all put out, didn't spread and lessons were learned.  Never stack wood if you have been using a blow torch on it to remove metal screws - even if it looks like it has stopped smouldering, the fire can be worming away inside.