Retreating

I come from the North East of Scotland. It's my favourite place on earth. It's a bit bleak and rugged for some but it's my home and I will always love coming back here. This was my view while I was having lunch last week. For the past three years me and four others have been coming up to just outside of Cullen to the West Manse Quilt Retreat.

It's a beautiful old manse in the middle of nowhere.

There is a workroom which comfortably holds five to six quilters. We all have our own spacious workstation.

There are three double rooms and one twin, I always share the twin with my chum Irene, we are used to each other's snoring! How cute are these rooms?

Lunch in the conservatory. The food is brilliant and you are never ever hungry!

Patchwork is everywhere.

View from the lovely lounge where we would gather in the evening to peruse quilt books, natter and have a glass of wine.

I posted a pic of this tuffet on Instagram, lots of likes for it!

Garden.

Oh yes we did some sewing in between the eating! Anne made this amazing nautical quilt.

Irene worked on her flipping flowers.

Anne took along her version of the flipping flowers.

The other Sheila made this fab mini quilt, yes I know it's not mini, but the centres are vroom vroom minis!

Log fires in the evening.

But it was this wee chap who always steals my heart, wee Finlay. Star of the show! I did do some sewing but didn't get very good pics, that's maybe another post.

Tatty bye for now.

Barcelona, the pedrera, the one where I wimped out on the roof top

Yep, love the Pedrera, that Gaudi was a genius! But oh man I could not do the roof top ... So had to peek through some windows to get pics of the roof.

Barcelona, Park Guell

See that Gaudi, what a man, Park Guell was amazing even if it was raining ...

Barcelona, the one where I didn't go up a cable car!

Och what can I say Barcelona was fab! Totes brilliant. We went to Sagrada Familia which was epic. I can't really say much about the holding it was just too breath taking. This pictures are just to remind me about all of the quilt inspiration I saw there.

Getting sloshed

See these ladies?? Best * mates * ever!!

I knew I needed a break but maybe not quite how much I needed a break. Anyhow after a fab few days in Barcelona I headed up North for a class in Parrs rulers. The night before my bestest, Irene, Wendy and I headed to our fav Aberdeen bar the foundry. It's cheap it's cheerful and we love it.

The last time we went I mentioned on Facebook that they were doing the slosh but I never knew how to do it. Queue horror from loads of chums. "You never did the slosh??"
Well no, my mother would have been mortified if any of us did anything like that at a wedding.
Another fab chum Kirsten took me in hand and in the middle of her office much to the hilarity of her co workers she taught me the slosh. Actually some of them joined in!
So this time we were primed, Irene went up and requested the slosh, I went up and did not just one song of it but two!! It was fab.
Well some of this may have been consumed:

For those of you who don't know what the slosh is have a look at this, it's a Scottish tradition.