I've been distracted the past few days because Pippi's been at the vets under observation, and the house has seemed so empty without her. She began acting strangely on Tuesday, very lethargic and anxious, trembling muscles, reluctance to change positions as if she were in pain and the most woeful look on her face. She was obviously very uncomfortable but we couldn't see anything wrong with her.
 
So off to the vet's she went and I expected to pick her up next day but she had only marginally improved and he wanted to keep her longer. He did discover that her tounge was horribly swollen which suggested a beesting in the mouth, but that didn't account for her other symptoms. I walked around the yard and found a patch of toadstools that she'd been playing with, digging them up and scattering them around, so who knows if she had a reaction to them?

 I picked her up on Friday as she was improving, and had begun to drink and move around  again.She was sooo happy to see us. I think she thought she'd been abandoned there, poor thing. She's still stiff and a bit uncordinated and very hungry as she didn't eat anything while she was there- that has got to tell you there was something badly wrong with her. She loves her food, does Pippi!

 I always tease Keryn about how soppy she is with Dolly, but I missed my dog so much I think I'm nearly as bad. I couldn't settle to work properly because I kept wondering if she was alright and thinking about how upset she must be on her own.

When I picked her up the vet said "She's a very well behaved staffie" and added that most of them weren't! So now I keep cuddling her and saying "You're a Very Well Behaved Staffie!" Dear Pips, I hope she's back to her old happy self soon.

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 The blue and cream top is in one piece and folded away to await the border design- I'm still puzzling about the applique and wondering how complicated I want to make it....

I'm a sucker for Whitman's tins, and couldn't resist this one in the op-shop for fifty cents. (I really don't like the chocolate though, so I'm glad I didn't have to eat this lot). I've been making sets of four flying geese for my new star project, and sorting them into ziploc back in groups of five. I thought this tin would be nice to store them in, but...

It's full already! I have enough made for 59 sawtooth stars, and I want to make 80 before I start to play around with them.

I think I'll move them to this tin, which should fit all of them comfortably. I bought this years ago, and I made the boys  eat all the contents, because I only wanted the tin when it came down to it. I have seen ones for sale second hand that cost more than I paid for it full of chocolate, so they were a good investment.

So pretty, but I haven't seen any like this in the last few years.

Kathie has been talking about a project she's resurrected, and it made me laugh because I have one like it too. Hers is very scrappy, but I started mine as a leader-ender and I wanted all the little pieces to be a dark brown or blue, with light shirtings. The pieces are only 1 1/2" wide, so they make the perfect leader-enders, and they've been mounting up steadily too.

  I have enough for 25 blocks, but I'm not ready to sew them up yet. My version will be very much more subdued than Kathie's; isn't it amazing how we can  make all these patterns  look so individual? I love patchwork for that reason.

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 I didn't hang around on this project, and got the blocks in one piece pretty quick. I really detest those long rows when sewing things together on point, so now I put the blocks together in smaller sections and I usually just have one long row at the end to manage.

 I also dislike trying to press the long seams in one direction, so that the blocks seams are bent over on themselves. So at the intersections I fold them out like this, and let the seams change the direction they're pressed. The points on the edges stay nice and crisp, and it's much easier all round.

 I think this is going to have an appliqued vine border, so the top will have to go back to the drawing board now, but I'm pleased with the progress so far.

 I was looking through some books the other day and something in this one caught my eye.
The photo is fairly indistinct, but the pieced blocks are sawtooth stars, lots and lots of them. They are a sort of russetty madder and the backgrounds are made from warm almost apricot lights. Having a bundle of fat quarters in that colour I decided to make a few stars and see if I can completely use them up.

 I'm just making the geese sets at the moment, and have about forty done so far. Irritatingly, I haven't used much fabric, and worse, discovered more fat quarters when I was going through the stash on the weekend. Oh well, it feels good to cut all this stuff up, and I've still got another forty or more sets of geese to make- I might come to the end of this colour one day.

The photo below is not true to life, the backgounds just look pale  brown, but in real life they are quite pinky apricot. They are also what Keryn and I call "glowy", meaning they don't sit nicely in the background and tend to dominate the colours around them.Time and again I reject them for that reason, which is why I'd like to sew them up once and for all, and never buy any more like that again.

It's funny that we have our own 'stash language' which we both understand immediately. We were shopping the other day for a cream fabric and the shop owner was trying to interest us in various bolts that she thought would work. We kept saying things like "Oh, that's too glowy" or "too strobey, too spotty, too linear, too bitty....." Eventually she just shook her head in bewilderment and left us to it. We know what we want  and most of the time what the quilt wants, but I'm sure other people think we're dreadfully fussy.

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