EQ8 and All Things Vegan

Mo and I headed to the city yesterday for the Vegan Festival.  She had spied a flyer at a local cafe months ago and remembered it was on during the weekend.  I wanted to get there early look around before it got to busy, she was keen to have lunch there.

Mo toyed with doing the Vegan thing last Xmas holidays but she just lost too much weight so we ended up making her add meat to her diet to try get her weight back to a healthy range.  She is gradually reducing dependence on meat only eating fish, she still has some diary and eggs and is keeping her weight steady.  It probably helps that due to problems with her knees (to do with a growth spirt) she isn't running as many km as she was and the physio has limited her distance runs and introduced road running to help mix it up.

Mo had a ball checking out all the food, she got a vegan t-shirt and we tasted quite a bit of food both sweets and savoury.  We both had Mac and No Cheese for lunch which was amazing and bought home a couple of sweet potato and lentil pies for lunch today a couple of raw sweets and some yummy baked goods.

Do you EQ?  I decided to update to EQ8 it this week and take advantage of the early special.  I'm really happy with the improvements that I have found so far.  I have started designing my next BOM using the program and I am toying with the idea of a row by row this time round with each alternate row Appliqué.

I have never designed a row by row in Eq7 so I don't know if the same feature were present, but I was amazed at how easy it was to do in EQ8, have different sized rows, add and delete rows.  Insert pieced rows specify size and no of blocks with little effort.  I would have thought I would need to do a custom set but this was all achieved in quilt layout with little fuss.

I can't wait to start appliqué design, there are new shape makers that are going to make designing appliqué easier.  Hoping to get some more time this afternoon to play around.

Port Clinton and back to the old routine

School went back this week.  I wasn't there to get them going Monday morning as I was still at Port Clinton, where I had spent the weekend at a sewing retreat.

Mo went off on camp to the Coorong.  It was almost the first hot weather for spring and I was expecting her to come back like a lobster, but she was good with the sunscreen and although very tired not much worse for wear.

The weekend retreat was lovely and relaxing, although the beds were a little hard the accomodation was really nice and it was lovely to wind down stitch and talk at night.  The drive was a little nerve  racking as I am not use to driving distances on my own, but I had an audio book going so it wasn't too bad.

Port Clinton really doesn't have much just lots of shacks and its quiet.  When I went walking and everyone just says hello or waves to you as you walk by I'm used to everyone ignoring you when you walk.

The low tide sends the water all the way out leaving mangroves and mud flats it took me back to spending time at a friends shack at Stansbury further down the peninsular.

The retreat was held in the old School House which was fun, we did what I think was described as improve fabric collage and embellished the it with embroidery stitches.  Using cut up Kantha quilts as background.  I used some of my liberty prints as well as some from the scrap basket.  It was all very civilised and relaxing.

It was hot in the city when I returned, it meant waiting till it cooled down and hubby and I went for a twilight walk Tuesday night.  The sea breeze was wonderful down there.  

OMG Where did September Go

All cheer for the school holidays and we have slowed down finally.

September is THE month at my work.  It is extremely busy and even with the extra hours I now work I did extra hours on top and to add to the stress our system (internet) went down for a week in the last week of September.  Our IT support kept telling us that they would have someone come in so I headed into work everyday only to have to use my personal mobile data to login and no-one turned up.

We had no office phones, my boss was doing seminars with clients for 2 of the days and had to field all the phone calls that were diverted to his mobile.  By the end of the week we were both fed up with our head office IT people and we both ended up blowing up at them.  Our main concern is that something has slipped through the cracks, all the urgent stuff has been caught up .... we think.  I still have a stack of printing and scanning to catch up on.

I had a finish this week Jen Kingwell's Spring Fever is done.  Since taking this photo the skinny blocks with 2 flowers on them have been added to.  They just weren't right and when I looked at Jen's finished quilt there was more detail than were in the pattern instructions.

I am hand quilting this one and started stitching last night if I keep up the pace it shouldn't take too long to quilt.  

Mo went for a job interview on Thursday and got a Christmas Casual job down at the local shopping centre.  She was on a high after the interview, and although she was really nervous she said she did really well.  We went shopping today for work wear... I dread having to find prescribed clothes for her, as she is small and still in kids sizes but we managed to get a black shirt (ladies 6 ... still a bit big but looks ok tucked in)  and black jeans (only her second pair of jeans she has owned) and we were able to get them in girls wear with an adjustable waist ... she has super long legs for her height so the adjustable waist is a must.  

Maestro has been away camping and has coming home this afternoon worn out but having had a great time.  We 3 have been enjoying the quiet of not having him around over the last 4 days because he really is very noisy with a booming voice, gaming and talking on Skype with his friends.  

I'm heading away next weekend for a sewing weekend with the girls and I can't wait.