You know that a room’s starting to get comfortable when the cat moves in, so here’s the current state of play in my sewing room, which is being tested by Willow, my gorgeous Tuxedo cat to use the American description for a black and white cat. He sees himself as the James Bond of the cat world and he’s definitely always ready for dinner. Curled up here, the view of the brick wall of the house next door may not seem much to you and me but he can see the sparrows drinking from the gutter (yes, it’s raining again. Boo hiss!) He can see the pigeons and seagulls landing on the roof and most of all he is comfortable.
I don’t speak fluent cat but I can understand that he feels that he’d be even more comfortable if I just spread a quilt to cover that plastic box and didn’t use the sewing machine. So I shall sort through the bag of old quilts under our bed and find one and display it prettily and wash it regularly and he will be happy and I will be happy because he is happy and all will be if not actually well, because I really am fed up with this weather, then definitely very good.
Here are some pictures to give you an idea of how it’s coming. Yes, there’s a lot still to sort out, as you’d expect when it’s been a general dumping ground for twenty odd years, but I can now use my sewing machine whenever I want to without having to get it out of a sewing table that’s covered with my daughter’s university stuff and it’s marvellous. So marvellous, in fact, that I’ve also added a picture of the latest finished quilt. It’s embroidered with seaside motifs and made using the ‘Crazy 8’ quilt templates from Creative Grids. (I didn’t get paid to advertise them, but they’re amazing. No seams to match up and they use big enough pieces to show off lovely fabric.)
The fact that it is coming on well tells you that the weather wasn’t good here over the Bank Holiday. I did manage to sit outside, but a heavy cardigan and a quilt over your legs isn’t my idea of late spring. Still, it’ll be meteorological summer on Saturday and the weather looks set to pick up from next week when the kids go back to school after their half term holiday.
Has anyone else noticed how quickly the year’s going? Or is it just me maturing? Certainly, my birthday next week is one of the significant ones with a ‘0’ on the end of it, but one thing the last years have taught me is that I am lucky to be alive and that my family are alive too and that life is, overwhelmingly good. I can say that if you want company on a Sunday morning round here then charging your flat car battery because we haven’t used it for a while is an excellent way to find it. You hear so much about the cruelty in the world, but eight people stopped and offered to jump start the car or just to see if we needed anything while we couldn’t get out in the car. That’s what it’s like round here, and particular thanks goes to the lady across the road who was gardening, paused for coffee and cake and brought my husband coffee and cake too as he sat on the wall and read and made sure that passers-by didn’t trip over the cable that snaked across the pathway. Meanwhile, the house had a really good airing and I cooked lunch.
It’s Tuesday morning as I type this and it’s raining again. I’ve just finished the first draft of a new Lucy Williams book which has been enormous fun because I’ve been linking her in with Amy Hammond’s world. I’m trying to do this with the books more and more because I think it’s fun getting glimpses of major characters from other series just going about their daily life. Obviously, if you’re Peter Cunningham and Luke Grant then that includes finding trouble, but they also get drawn into Lucy’s more domestic, school mum world. I won’t give too much away, but let’s just say the inspiration came when my husband was clearing the gutter that the sparrows drink from after rain. He was up a very long ladder a neighbour lent us (See, I said it was that sort of place.) I don’t do heights well… No, actually, I’m fine about heights. It’s falling off things that I don’t like one little bit. Landing on the ground far below isn’t good either…
Now I can go away and research all the things I need to know, but first I shall write the last story for my Christmas collection, which literally is ‘By Special Request’ because so many nice people told me which characters they’d like to see again. There’s still time for one last story, so if anyone’s got any ideas, this is the last chance for this year!
So, onto the books that are on special offer this week. There are three from the Amy Hammond series which are, A Prayer for Peace, To have and to hold and Let the Dead. They’re quite early on in the series and I like them because it’s where you start to understand why Amy suddenly starts finding trouble. You can also find the first two collected in an anthology called ‘Why does she keep finding trouble’ and the third one in an anthology called ‘The trouble with falling in love with a retired spy’ so if you don’t qualify for special offers you can still buy them at £2.99UK or your equivalent. That’s as fair as I can make it and I’m gradually doing anthologies as time allows because I’m well aware that more than a third of you don’t get access to the special offers.
There’s also three under my Eleanor Neville pen name that remind me of a very special time in my life when my children (and I if I’m being honest) were heavily into historic reconstructions and tournaments. The knights were gorgeous, and I’ll always remember my daughter dancing with them in a castle and having an owl fly to her hand one wet day. And them mucking about and teaching my son and daughter to fight with wooden swords. Those years, we must have been the only house in the neighbourhood to have a makeshift quintain in the garden made from an old rotary drier and a pillowcase stuffed with old clothes. Anyway, Knight’s Move, Knight to Pawn and Pawn to Queen are set around that world but with an added assassination attempt on the government. I think they were annoying me more than usual at the time! There’s a little bit of bondage and domination, but nothing drastic, just because it struck me as being excellent blackmail material.
Which is an odd note to finish on, but have a great week and fingers crossed that the weather will be better and I’ll be down on the beach again next week. Those poor kids on half term…
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