A week or so on, and the shingles are thankfully easing up on their effects. Sure, I still have to wear my fleecy pyjama tops because they are SOFT, but as they look quite like casual tops anyway, I don't feel like a social outcast from Cardiff when I go to the supermarket. (For the unaware, there was a 'name and shame' campaign a while ago about undesireables from certain parts of Cardiff going to their supermarkets in their pyjamas and onesies ;-) I am not one of these, honest. Although I do think that in comparison to some of their 'normal' clothes, pyjamas and onesies are probably considerably more modest. )

In the meantime, I have not been sitting around demanding Henry ap Troll peel grapes for me as I disport myself on a chaise longue with the latest novel and a few cocktails. Much as that idea is appealing on a superficial level, 'Idle hands are the Devil's playground' was my Nanna's favourite maxim and sadly I cannot delete that phrase from my memory bank. Now, those of you in the know will know that I use EQ7 to design my quilts and whilst I absolutely adore the software as it's so easy to use, it does, like any software, have a few (thankfully a very few) issues. One of these is that SOME colours in the Bella Solids range and quite a few in the Moda Marbles range, do not come 'true' when on the screen. As I am a bit anal about getting colours absolutely 'right', this means I tend to test all the block which have this problem. So, given I simply was not up to attacking piecing and quilting with my usual energy, I did a couple of such test blocks. These are two from my 'Sparks and Cinders' design, and I am really very happy with the results.

It's also been a busy time on the pussycat front. Both our lovely blue tabby girl Gandi (Narviks Propaganda) and one of our 'home-grown' black tabby girls Mabel (Halubka de Velogny) have had kittens by the large, lovable but very stupid red boy, Andrew (Invicta de Velogny). Here is one of Mabel's boys, who is a real thug!