Last Friday night in the Harbour

Just a whack of happy snaps taken on a exciting boat ride in the Cape Town harbour at sunset.  We were part of a parade of light-decorated boats for the Round the World Yachts leaving the next day.  A howling south-easter reduced the numbers to about half of the 60 expected boats.  Lost our way in the dark coming back, nearly ended up in the container terminal instead of the yacht marina.

Yes, this is a pirate ship!

The masts of the yachts in the Round the World event

Pirate ship again - they were really partying hard

A very nice luxury yacht!

Block Lotto for November

After getting home from the retreat, found the sneak peak instructions for the November Block Lotto "XPlus" in my inbox.  Quick to construct, actually took more time to choose the fabrics for these four blocks.  Go and find the free pattern on the "At a Glance" page - to use the pattern you don't need to sign up or join in, unless you want to! 

And opened the envelope from Pink Castle containing this month's solid fabric bundle:

Sewing week-end

Two weekends ago my daughter C and I joined 20 other ladies at a wonderful retreat venue just outside Cape Town, between Malmesbury and Riebeek Kasteel.  Goedgedacht Farm is an inspiration, with great accommodation and food.  Lots of sewing, talking and laughter!  The weather was pretty warm on Friday, slightly cooler on Saturday and Sunday, but bearable in the barn with its thick walls and solid wooden ceiling.

C worked on the borders of about 40 of these blocks and on making +- 55 wonky pinwheels from leftover half-square-triangles (bonus HST from Celtic Solstice), and added a round of purple to all of them, and then green to few.  Not sure that she will sew again, but she did a marvellous job of these!

And whilst she was sewing up a storm, I managed to add sashing and cornerstones to complete one quilt top:

a second to "needs a border" stage (but note to self to add another row, to the top in this picture) - blocks won from Block Lotto:

and add some progress to two other UFOs - Little Houses: finished with a facing, and just needs to have more of the irregular edge bits poked out

 And Simmy's Curvy Squares -  see the pins....the power went off about 30 minutes before we were intending to stop, so this is how it will stay for a while.