Crime and Four more blocks

We had an early awakening yesterday morning.  My cell phone rang before 5am, it was our security company telling me that we had an intruder on our property.  Apparently a neighbour had phoned them.  Within 2 minutes there were at least two cars from the security company as well as two or three  police vans here.  All trouped through the house and searched our large and dark back garden, but no sign of anyone and we didn't see any signs of attempted break-in.  All left, and about an hour later I heard someone walking across the roof of our carport going towards the street, we think someone had been hiding on top of our roof out of sight, probably scaled the wall using the burglar bars on the kitchen window as a ladder!

Later in the day our neighbour spoke to P and said their dogs had been barking and they saw someone on the wall between our properties and called in.

Getting quote tomorrow to have electronic alarm beams installed in back garden.

And in spite of being tired last evening did manage to stitch up four more JT2 blocks.  I was feeling to lazy to print out the paper-base for the first one below, decided to stitch it without base...hmmm... wasn't any quicker in the end as all the pieces cut were oversized for paper-base, and had to re-trim every piece carefully.  The colours are all purples, not blue!

 

 

Disaster and recovery!

I'm writing this with some relief today, as after 12 nerve-wracking days, I finally managed to restore my regional Guild's web-site that I have been the designer/manager/programmer of since it was started in 2007.   I had originally created it in basic html, and then a year or so later set it up in Joomla! 

And I must say that I've had no formal training in this, just buy the book, read as much on-line as possible, and hope to goodness that nothing too technically complicated arises!

Joomla! is a marvellous open source content managed system for web-sites.   A couple of years ago I tried  unsuccessfully (with some "expert" help) to update the Joomla version, as the community had developed some great features.  As I am soon to hand over my baby to another keen quilter I decided two weeks ago that it was time to try again to have the latest version running it.  That's when the disaster struck!  Seemingly total wipe-out!  But all was safe, just needed to have the hosting Systems Admin (very nervously) remove ALL the files on the server, then I uploaded the files previously saved locally, fiddled a bit with the MySql tables, and was astonished to see that even the new info added just before The Disaster is all happily in place.  I'm sure How I Did a Recovery is not written in any manual or wiki anywhere


I'm hoping that there is another quilter/knowledgeable Joomla user, or someone who knows one, out there who might be prepared to share How To Do a Version Upgrade (without losing all the current data!).

But did manage to sew one Just Takes 2 block, and take a photo of the baby jerseys knitted ages ago but only recently sewn up.

I didn't crop all of it - just left some of the cutting mat, so you can see it is 12.5" square!

March Block Lotto blocks

These were fun and easy to make, named "Steps" blocks.  They are each 6.5" x 9.5" and will give me 9 drawing chances in the lotto.

Some small finishes

I'm still plodding away at Just Takes 2, managed to complete Part A today, almost a year after the instructions were published!  This is about a quarter of the whole quilt!  Have done a few blocks from the next section, but the applique takes a..g..e..s!!  And I'm determined to hand stitch them.

Other than the hand applique, this was the first hand-pieced block, all the others have been machine pieced.

Great niece!

This month's colour for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge is Orange .  Today is not a sewing day, but itching to get started with orange.

Having got my mother hooked on making fabric from my left-over scraps, and her taking a whole lot of scraps with her to Australia two months ago (she's back tomorrow, yay!) to give herself something to do, she's now got my eight-year old niece making the most fabulous pieces of made fabric.  My sister sent some photographs of S in action and her work, and she's been waiting for me to put them here (my sister takes way better photos than I do!).  I asked S on Thursday what her favourite colours are, so now need to find lots of pink and blue scraps!  Mam - hope you've left some scraps for S!

Serious concentration here (do her feet even touch the floor!):

 Keeping her fingers away from the needle:

 Nice straight seam (and I don't know what she is actually sewing here!):

 Ta-da!

 And these are her made fabrics, and my sister is so proud of how neat the backs are:

 
And don't you just love those teeny tiny four-patch centres!

Cymru am byth! **

Happy St David's Day!   Today is the Welsh National Day.  We used to get a half-day off school, after dressing up in costume and a big group picture taken!  Well, actually... my mam had one costume (she had sewn and knitted)  that fitted a 6-year old, and my three close in age sisters and I each got about two chances to wear it to school!

I don't have pictures - but go and look and these links!

Traditional Welsh quilts   most of them were made from woollen fabrics

Web images of St David's Day

St David's Day at Wikipedia

St David's Day at schools    (those Welsh Cakes look good - think I might make some today!)


** Wales forever!