Of Bluebells, Quilts and Purple Hair

Hello my lovelies. Let me apologize in advance for a rather photo heavy post; it's been about 3 weeks since my last one, so the pictures have accumulated somewhat. I hope you all had a wonderful Easter. Both my babies were home for the holiday, so all felt right with the world. The roofer finally came (!) and I made a quilt out of multiple pairs of old jeans. I've been gathering them for a while: some were outgrown, some worn out and some oil or paint stained. I cut out 5 inch squares from where I could, reversing the worst to hide the stains, and spent a merry couple of days sewing them all together, backing them with red, starry fabric and doing some hand quilting. I admit that this was entirely an exercise in distraction - I didn't want to leave the house in case the roofers downed tools and disappeared, but their radio was driving me crazy, so I drowned it out with my sewing machine!

 

I also started to make scrappy quilt blocks out of some fabric that E bought me one year. I admit that I struggled a bit with these - if there is a shape equivalent of dyslexia, I'm convinced that I have it. I just cannot hold a shape in my head (jigsaw puzzles are a dead loss), so I'd cut out the triangles, line them up ....... and then sew the wrong edges together! Whichever way it could go wrong, it did and my unpicker was working overtime. I feel that this project may take me a while.

Sorry, I forgot to rotate the photo: 

 Other happenings over Easter:

Our wisteria flowered:

 Our own little Easter bunny enjoyed having L and E home again:

 We went for a walk to the castle and then back home through the woods to look for bluebells:

 The blossom finally arrived:

R bought a mig welder on ebay and we had to drive to St. Albans in Hertfordshire to collect it. I'd never been there before and it was a lovely place. We had lunch in the centre and then had a little wander round. The cathedral was beautiful.

 E decided that she wanted afternoon tea!

 My bulbs did turn out to be Narcissi: 

 I balled up some yarn to make the Pavement Sweater. The colour is called 'Lettuce'!

  R and I went to see Twelfth Night at our local cinema. It was a very gender fluid performance and we thoroughly enjoyed it. After last time's 'picnic of shame', I made sure that we were better prepared food and drink wise .........

.......... homemade veggie sushi, complete with chopsticks, dips and G&T in a tin (thanks for the tip Leanne!):

 .......... and L dyed her hair purple! It really suits her and who wouldn't want a purple-haired barrister?! 

Finally, after months of injury and being too scared to go running in case it flared up again, I plucked up the courage and went this morning. I went on my usual circuit which I used to do twice without any bother. This time I took it slowly: I did it once and stopped to walk 3 times. It wasn't pretty and it was rather frustrating when I think how easy it was a few months ago, but it was a glorious morning, I was out there and it felt wonderful.

Well, that's all for this week. Well done if you made it to the end! Wishing you all a fantastic week.

Toodle Pip for now. x