Every now and then I get asked to write the blog for Tudor Rose Patchwork. I’m not a great blogger, my daughter knows more than I do and she’s only 14. But then you expect a 14 year old to be a technological wizard.
I might not be a technological wiz, but I can craft. In fact I love to create and make. So much so that I decided to treat myself to a week off work. The children were still and school and the husband was out at work and I had the luxury of 5 days to please myself crafting. The washing machine did go on but there was not one garment ironed – apart from the quilt I was working on.
As well as having my sewing machine out to work on my quilt, I had yarn on the coffee table to crochet, my Pfaff Creative 1.5 embroidery machine was running 1400 stitches per minute and I finished a beaded parure.
According to Wikipedia, a parure typically consists of a combination of a matching necklace, earrings, brooch, bracelet and often a diadem or tiara. Well mine was a mini or demiparure: necklace, earrings and bracelet. It was a huge project but the feeling of joy when I completed the last beaded toggle was immense.
So you have an idea of what my living space looked like. The dining table, which when extended seats 14, was piled high. It was so nice being able to leave everything out ready for the next day, knowing that I was coming straight back to it and not having to put things away until who knew when.
I loved being able to leave the embroidery machine set up. It does take up quite a bit of room and I don’t have a dedicated crafting space so leaving it on the dining table for a week was marvellous. Christmas is coming and I treated myself to a few Christmas designs. I now have a set of 8 pristine, white napkins, each with a different design and in a different colour. 
My daughter chose purple as the colour scheme for our Christmas tree this year so we now have 5 white and purple embroidered felt decorations. And finally, I nearly burnt out the engine creating lace bookmarks and a lace lantern.
It was a really wonderful week. The downside, all the house work to catch up on.