The Sewing Dilettante

Last week felt about a million years long, and not in a good or fun way. With a couple of big work deadlines looming, I plied myself with way too much coffee, set out an ambitious but totally achievable list of goals, and watched in silent horror as I simultaneously went a bit mad with caffeine and failed to meet any of my targets! Progress felt infinitessimally slow. At least I had some fun sewing to take my mind off it. Or so I thought. I was about half way through making two Churn Dash blocks for Sarah's Siblings Together quilt when my trusty Pfaff went haywire. I did everything I could think of to get things working again, but I quickly came to the conclusion that the problem was beyond my (very limited) capabilities. So, off it went to the shop. Which, in itself, wouldn't have been such a bad thing. I had been meaning to get it serviced for a while, just for general maintenance purposes, but I had also already signed up for Judith's Slouch Bag workshop today. *Sigh...

Not just to bed, but forever it seems, replaced by our more usual summer weather: rain. Oh well. I'm not going to complain. We've had more beautiful weather in the past few weeks than I've experienced in the whole ten years I've been living in Ireland and Northern Ireland! And, knowing how fleeting the sun might prove, we managed to pack a lot of summer fun into those weeks, including BBQs, picnics, beach outings, cycles, walks, trips to the zoo, and about a million pieces of this: Pavlova! I ate my first piece of pavlova on a holiday to Zimbabwe in 2007, and it entered ever after into the annals of epic desserts: deliciously light and airy, it manages to be both decadent and virtuous at the same time. It's the perfect summer sweet - not dense enough to tip you over the edges of excess after plates of burgers, hot dogs, and potato salad, but just sweet enough to finish things off nicely. I love mixing a little bit of lemon curd in with the whipped cream to give...