Well the boxes arrived...

Well the Gracie duly arrived and my husband promptly left on a series of jobs, leaving me with a pile of unopened boxes and a dining room full of his junk.

I amused myself ordering fabric from eBay. Got some nice calico and batiks that no one else was bidding on and about 8 meters of some horrible red stuff that cost almost nothing and will probably do for some major practice sessions.

On the quilting line I made a scrappy string quilt, to use up some of the left-overs that were staging a bid for world domination, and helped my 12 year old to make his first quilt. If the camera ever works again I'll take some photos of it, he did a really nice job.

A nice family holiday in Cumbria then took precedence, as did the flu we all came down with but finally we were ready to tackle getting the dining room ready.

Persuading my husband to part with years of accumulated computer bits, electronic gubbinses and assorted 'stuff' proved surprisingly easy and several trips to the dump later the room was as clear as it would ever be. Time to start building.