Hassells in the Highlands

It’s hard to believe that an entire year has passed since the last Fat Quarter Quilters’ Quilt Exhibition. I was so hoping to be here again for another one, and I was.  Lucky me! Prepare yourself now for a lot of pictures of quilts. I want to show off my friends' work (and a little of my own). While some of my friends feel that I am a prolific piecer, I have not done a lot of piecing this year by my own standards. Instead, I decided early in the year to focus most of my attention on practicing my free motion skills with Daisy on other people’s quilts. However, that did not mean I didn't make anything ..... Not everything we make are quilts. This is a rug I made.  If you read the post, “Daisy Makes New Friends,” you will have seen a handful of the quilts Daisy and I quilted for others.   After that post, I quilted a few more for friends - mostly FQQs.  I would love to show you close-ups of the quilting on these, but this post is already full enough of pictu

In an effort to offer comment on another handful of Scottish observations before we leave, here is Round 4 of Bits and Bobs. SHEEP We have never lived in so rural an area before. Thurso is not so big. It has the Atlantic Ocean on one side and the rest is surrounded by fields of sheep and cows. It has been wonderful to be sewing in my upstairs room with the window open and hear the sheep bleating in fields nearby. And now that we have been here over a year, we have seen the full cycle of sheep life. All this time, I thought I would write a whole post on sheep, but I was waiting for the spring when the lambing started - and for more knowledge and/or understanding of what I was seeing. But since that didn’t happen, I don’t want to leave Scotland without a few comments. 1.    Did you ever see sheep eating on their knees?   Seriously. My friend Leah grew up on a farm and raised sheep and she had never seen sheep eating on their knees. It is the funniest thing. Their hin