Back from Tunisia

Ok, call me stupid but I have just returned from Tunisia and, when I booked, I actually believed the average weather charts which said it would be around 34 degrees. It was in fact around 44 - 45 degrees which for me is way too hot to do anything than lie in the shade or dip in the pool. In fact by mid afternoon it was too hot even for that. Fortunately it turned out that in the air-conditioned lounge there was a quilting demonstration each day........
.... so you have no design wall - why not trail threads over someone else's sofa back?! There was one woman from Stafford who kept sidling past having a good look and who is now on her way to her local craft shop because she now knows what to do with the FQ's she kept looking at ('such lovely colours'). The waiters are still trying to figure out what I was doing with a towel and a travel iron on their glass coffee table. And of course, once I got on a roll, I couldn't stop.. here I am at Monsatir airport...


... and again at baggage reclaim in Manchester on a Christmas quilt by now because the flying geese top (sans borders which still need to be bought) got finished on the plane!Because we had booked leg room seats, I had to put my box up in the overhead compartment for landing, but kept some squares and my needle and thread down. For those who constantly ask me how I manage to get so much done I can tell you that one can handsew five and a half seven inch fourpatches in the time between the seat belt signs going on and the plane arriving on stand!

This is a picture of a picture on the landing of our hotel ....( really I told you we did nothing sensible you could take pictures off! Ok we went to the Marina a few times to eat but it was too dark then for piccies!)... because even Dennis said it would make a good quilt. ( I think he is getting the quilting equivalent of Stockholm syndrome).

One final tale - we were in the swimming pool and we over heard some rather small but loud south ('sarth') Londonders trying to work out what 4 feet nine was in meters, presumably in relation to the pool depth markings. Dennis and I just looked at each other becuase (a) he is Mr Calculator Head and is known for blurting out impossible calculations at will without even realising he has done it and (b) because I am a mental arthimatic dunce.

"No, come on," he said, "Even you can do that now. That's a quilting calcualtion. Go on, try."

Now bear in mind that in order to do anything in my head I have to do Carol Vordeman like contortions and break it down into easy stages (Countdown - its a TV programme you don't mind missing if you are not British and don't get that reference!)

So I go, "OK. there's thirty nine inches in a meter. Twelve inches are a foot, so three feet is a meter plus cutting space. So six feet is two meters and that's loads more than four feet nine so the answer is two meters, that's plenty."

I think Dennis finally understands how every time I make a quilt my stash actually grows a bit!