Yesterday I had a lovely day over at Busy Bees. This was the all day Pineapple Block course. Andrew gave me a hand lugging my stuff in. This is the only trouble with quilting - it is not really a very portable hobby. As well as a heavy sewing machine, you have large, awkward cutting mats, big square rulers, bags of fabric and tools and a packed lunch. Anyway, we all got ourselves settled and away we went. Sue, our lovely tutor is an excellent teacher. Clear, warm, inspiring and watchful - able to see when people can get on with it, and when they need help. We started out by tracing the block designs onto our Stitch N Tear, then Sue demonstrated the principle behind foundation piecing (the technique we were using). Then back to our tables, sort out our fabric and tentatively make a start on our blocks. By the end of the day, I had a beautiful block finished and trimmed, and Sue had also gone over in detail how we could finish the quilt with sashing and borders, and even ideas for putting blocks together using colour combinations. She had also brought in some examples, a finished quilt top, some individual quilt blocks and a very pretty cushion.

Just as importantly she had brought in a big plate full of her mum's home made pineapple loaf cake, which we all enjoyed with our cups of herb tea during the day. In the afternoon she gave us each a copy of the recipe, so I've come home with a thorough grounding in foundation piecing, plus a useful recipe! What a great day. As with other courses I've done there, it was a real pleasure from start to finish. A really nice bunch of other women doing the course, a fantastic tutor and the pleasure of learning and spending the day uninterrupted in doing a deeply pleasureable and interesting activity. As so often on these courses, it was also fascinating to see how exactly the same block could end up looking so different when made up in different fabrics.

Came home and we had a quiet, peaceful evening. This morning, I did the annual RSPB Garden Birdwatch, an annual mass participation survey of British bird life. This afternoon, we went down to Ikea as we wanted a new rug for the hall and also some new doormats - because of the dogs, we seem to get through these quickly. Andrew took Andy and Boola out for a run this afternoon - they all had a great time.