Life has been busy lately, and I haven't been spending a lot lof time on the computer. Real life seems to get in the way.  I've had three trips to Adelaide in two weeks, and a lot of running around to various other towns, and that seemed to take up most of my spare time.

The trip to Adelaide on Saturday was to take my DD Seonaid to the airport, where she and a friend boarded a flight to Kuala Lumpa, to connect with a flight to Amsterdam! 

She and her mate will be travelling around Europe and Britain for the next two months, which is so exciting, but I will miss her so much.  I hope she finds time to blog along the way, it will be the best way to preserve the memories, and to keep her family and friends informed.  I'm jealous that she will be spending time in London; I would head straight for the Victoria & Albert Museum, but I guess she will have other priorities.  One day I will get there, I hope.

Of course, any trip to the airport has to include a stop at Ikea, right next door.  I've added considerably to my Ikea stash lately; the biggest purchase was the trestle table. 

I've been eyeing these off all over blogland, and decided that the time had come to invest in one of my own.  The trestles aren't cheap, but it's very easy to adjust the height for a cutting table.  I am experimenting with having it on a slight angle, and I think it's working well to reduce the stress on my hands.  There's room for a little chest of drawers underneath, and the platforms on the legs themselves provice more storage space.

I also picked up this clip-on lamp, like the one Bonny uses.  It adds  a powerful lot  of light to the side of the needle where it's needed most, but it's not in the way at all.  My biggest gripe is that they are $9.99 in America, and $29.99 here.  And they don't stock the lime green that I really wanted.

That lazy susan on the table is also from Ikea; it's very handy for trimming down little pieces, I use that almost every day. ($7.95, what's not to like?)

As far as sewing goes, I've put together the Doors & Windows blocks, all 120 of them, and now I"m trying to decide on borders.

I'd like to do clever pieced borders, but by the time I get the middle bit together I just want to go for finished, and get onto the next project.  These blocks were made from a mottley collection of black and dark green strips, so I'm quite surprised at how light the top looks.  I think it will have a light border as well, just so that the dark colours don't predominate.

I need to grasp the whole concept of Leader-enders, because once I had a few of these blocks together I just had to go flat-out at finishing them all.  I just can't seem to leave things to mount up steadily in the backgound, they shout to be the main project.  Oh well, another top nearly done is no bad thing.

My new leader-enders (don't laugh) are these pieces, stored in an Ikea Kassett box. 

They are green and cream versions of the block I did a while ago. 

I loved putting them together so much that I decided a green and cream version would whittle down the overflowing drawer of greens, and give me an easy project on the side.  I cut all the triangles for 27 blocks in about 20 minutes, with the Go cutter, how brilliant is that? 

Alas, it's time to go to work, so the rest can go into another post.  It would be nice not to wait two weeks between posts......