A belated Merry Christmas to everyone! We had a lovely relaxing day with family yesterday. DH’s mum had been in hospital for some urgent, unplanned surgery in the two weeks prior so it was nice to have her home and on the mend.

Well December did not go as planned. Unfortunately I have spent the last month dealing with a very bad flare up of arthritis, mostly in my ankles & wrists, and I am only just able to walk about a bit better the last two days. So needless to say I did no Christmas decorating, no sewing at all and a lot of watching TV – finally watched all five seasons of Poldark! But today I am finally up and walking and feeling able to sew and generally get moving again.

I was given some really beautiful fabrics for my birthday and for Christmas by DD.

These two for my birthday.

and this gorgeous Strawberry Thief bundle for Christmas!

“Strawberry Thief is one of William Morris’s most popular repeating designs for textiles. It takes as its subject the thrushes that Morris found stealing fruit in his kitchen garden of his countryside home, Kelmscott Manor, in Oxfordshire” (Wikipedia)

Sarah Fielke is doing a beautiful quilt -“Stop Thief’ inspired by Strawberry Thief fabrics so since I was given the fabrics I had no excuse not to buy the pattern so that will be one of my quilts for 2024.

On the home front we finally got on to a good tradesman who came and built two walls of bookcases in DDs room in just 4 days! Such a relief after so long and I’ll happily get him back in the future. Now it needs painting to DH is working on that this week.

This week ahead I’m packing up some donations, making my sewing lists for 2024 and setting up my planner. I’m hoping for big things around the house this year, lots of quilt finishes ( finally), more regular blogging  and a great holiday/cruise in August.

“Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful.”

William Morris.