Speaking of posties

Yesterday morning a great swathe of central England woke up to snow.

No big deal I hear you Canadian and Scandinavian girls............... well probably not in Canada or Norway but here in the UK you might recall that our favourite topic of general conversation is the weather, too cold, too hot, too wet, etc etc etc and we see all varieties of weather but seldom any real extremes. To hear the media you'd think we'd had 8ft drifts not a measly 2 - 4 inches at most!

Much to the disgust of my two youngest particularly, Taunton had precisely none. Gloucester, where we used to live and it's neighbour Cheltenham near where Siobhan lives had a good covering. So much so that a lot of the Gloucestershire schools were closed for the day (probably because the teachers couldn't (be bothered to?) make it into work) and the kids had an impromptu holiday.

My two were appalled........ 'It's not fair, in all the time we lived in Gloucester we never had a day off school because of the snow, I'm not going to school then!!!!!!!'

Of course my reply was 'Oh yes you are, I have to go to my school, you will go to yours!'

As is usually the case over here the minute we have a sniff of snow everything grinds to a halt. The BBC headlined the 'adverse weather conditions making travel hazardous' . You Canadians must be laughing into your thermal knickers at us! Jane in Rugby is a Canadian and can't believe how all our systems grind to a pathetic halt at the first flake.

However as you can see from the picture above at least the post gets through and this postie still has his shorts on. My little lad always wears shorts to school each day regardless of the weather - he just detests hot legs, but he will get an incredible shock in September when he goes up to senior school and is not allowed to wear them. Maybe he's destined to be a postie!?!

The quilting group I go to each Monday morning is held in a converted victorian warehouse next to the river in the centre of Taunton - we have the use of an upstairs room with skylights which make the lighting excellent for stitching. However as we're a small and chatty group we wouldn't dream of taking machines in - it's a strictly 'hand-stitching' zone. Therefore on Sunday nights I usually have to pull together some hand work to take in and do the next day.

This week I couldn't lay my hands on anything specific and just cut a square of white-on-white that my friend brought 5yds of back from her last trip to the States and some bits and bobs of mauvish-pink and pale green to have a bit of a play.

Here are the results so far along with some matching pieces I flung together once I got home. I might make a whole quilt with these eventually including various applique blocks and pieced sections - we'll see. I do think the white/green/pink a little restrictive and would quite like another colour to pop in here and there to add variety but can't make up my mind which to use - any ideas???I particularly like the chevron effect with these flying geese.

And I even tackled a QST - (which I hate) for the centre of this star block. Getting brave eh?

Tomorrow marks the second weekend of the Six Nations Rugby championships here in the Northern Hemisphere. After our dreadful efforts under the previous manager Andy Robinson (8 losses from nine games) a new era has dawned under a new manager. Jonny (Sarah's hero) Wilkinson is back injury free and we comfortably beat Scotland in the Calcutta Cup match last Saturday. This weekend England play Italy at Fortress Twickenham. The men kick off first at 1.30pm and then the ladies team, who currently hold 'their' Six Nations crown, follow afterwards at 4.15pm. For anyone wishing to watch only the Ladies game entry to the ground is free once the men's game is finished. Some friends of ours whose daughter Cat (short for Catherine) played with Sarah at Regional level last year have kindly taken Sarah for the weekend and will head off down to London tomorrow with the intention of watching the men's game in a convenient bar and then watching the ladies game live in the stadium. Sarah has never been to Twickenham before (what mean parents we are) and is so excited. She found out today that her best friend had beaten her to become Head Girl at their school and she was very disappointed so this will give her a real lift as well as the opportunity to watch some really class ladies rugby.

This little fellow (taken from the BBC website pictures) certainly hopes we beat the Italians in both games too :o) (Or at least his dad does anyway!) And so do we - GO ENGLAND!!!!