Step into my office.....

I was told by "Gary the Builder" that Toby likened the new kitchen to "Kate's personal Mecca". Apparently it has all the mod cons a girl could need - wifi, TV with cunning link to the Sky + box, running water, food, heat and light, so much so that I never seem to be in any other part of the cottage.

At first I disputed this notion as ridiculous. I am often doing other things elsewhere I thought. Then this morning I got up and I saw the state of the kitchen table....

The visitor

Our friend, Sophie, came to visit on the weekend. For the last eight months or so she has been working in Hobby Craft. She has now left HC as she starts her new teaching job in September. But her visit to us at the end of last week brought with it an impressive bag of wool that I had asked her to get months and months ago. I think that I am going to make a lap blanket with the multi coloured yarn, but no idea about the other four that go together wonderfully but have yet to have a future purpose!

I was slightly overwhelmed by the sheer number of handmade things that Sophie had with her. She first came to stay in February 2009. We had just got Rex and I was at my lowest ebb having just started therapy. Sophie and I got talking about our various woes, it has often amazed me that once you start talking about your own depression that suddenly you have a whole host of good friends who are also having similar problems - bingo, instant support network. That was how it felt when Sophie was staying that time. We talked and talked and I stitched and stitched (crochet...I'm really not a knitter) and Sophie claims that I inspired her.

Now, I find it hard to comprehend that I could inspire anyone to anything, even more so when I have inspired someone to be more creative than I could ever imagine being. So I had to snap away at her efforts. I really liked this lovely little keyring.....


.....then there was the crochet string shopping bag (which was expertly deployed at the spa on Friday morning to carry home wet swimwear)....


....and not to mention the knitted baby blanket, which got finished whilst she was here.


All in all a very impressive visitor to the cottage. And now it is my turn to be inspired. I have decided to do a beginners workshop in knitting. But before then there is Kelly's baby quilt to make as her last day in work is next Tuesday, and I have dusted off my Sew Hip! mystery quilt as 12 months on I think that it is time to get some projects finished off before beginners knitting gets me inspired to start more things that languish unfinished.

Cookies for Kelly

I am really fond of Kelly. She works in my local day spa (such a grand sounding name I think that looks very odd when I write it down) and has been trying to make my troll like feet look pretty for the last year. In that way that people confide in their hairdressers, I confide in Kelly. She listens to all my gripes and grumbles about everything, we talk about our lives and I like to think that we are friends.

Yesterday she was really not herself. So this afternoon I have been baking cookies to take her tomorrow to cheer her up. It is the first time that I have baked in the electric oven (looks like the Aga but most certainly is not) and I am happy that they have not burned but I fear that they may not be as good as the ones that I bake in the 'Aga Khan" (as I like to call it). It is satisfying to bake 3 dozen cookies and then very virtuously give them away. I hope that they bring her a little ray of sunshine into her week.

Post holiday blues...

It's always hard coming home from holidays.

I find it hard getting back to normal, falling back into the routine that existed before the blissful two weeks of lazying in the dappled shade working on being more pale and interesting than I was before the holiday.

So did the books get read? Some. I made it through the murder and almost finished the first of the Andrew Rawnsley books and now that I am back the unread numbers are consigned to a large pile underneath the bedside table. If they are still there collecting dust in October then they will be going back to Normandy for a week!

So now that I am back I have a huge pile of things that I want to get done - quilt for the lovely Kelly and her impending baby, some quilted place mats for the kitchen, a quilt to snuggle up under on the sofa. And who knows what I might suddenly add to that list by the end of this week.

Oh, it's good to be back.