I've been hacked

First of all apologies for any of you who have received emails supposed to be from me directing you to a Chinese website. My email has been hacked and my contacts list stolen. I have sent them a very strongly worded email and have removed all my contacts - possibly shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted but at least it will stop it from happening again.

I have been quiet of late as I have been trying to finish my entry for the Festival of Quilts which I am happy to say has now gone off and will hopefully have reached its destination by now. I am not entirely happy with the finished result, mainly because the size constraint meant that I had to add a border that I had not really wanted. Still at least it is finished. I am showing it here with a couple of close ups so that you can see the stitching a little more clearly. The worst part was trying to get it to lie flat as it is so heavily machine quilted but I did get there in the end.

I was not so lucky with my Spring Blooms swap as the quilt I sent to France was, I believe , stolen. All that my partner received was this ...

I have blanked out my partner's address but the torn bit of the envelope, top left is where my sender details were. She just got the empty envelope and a letter of apology from the Royal mail. This is what she should have received.

What is really annoying is that I sent a birthday present to a friend who also lives in France at the same time and that has gone missing as well. If you see the above quilt or this bag on your travels please send it home. What I have just realised is that Ros also has a bag like this but with a different button so please don't jump on her if you see her with hers!

I am busy trying to make another quilt for my swap partner. I did warn her that it would not be started until the end of July. I have actually got the top done so it shouldn't take me too long to finish. Hopefully I should be able to show it in my next post. I have learned that from now on anything I post will be via a service that allows me to track it even if it costs a little more.

I did spend an enjoyable day yesterday at a workshop with Susan Sheldon who is a member of the Living Threads group. They do a regular programme of workshops and so I decided to do something a little different for me and try some goldwork. I doubt that I will ever do it again in such a traditional way but it was really useful for learning about the properties of the various gold threads and I did come away with some ideas on how I might be able to use them in a more contemporary way. In case you can't work it out they are meant to be cherries.

My birds have returned and brought others with them to use both the birdbath and the new feeder that I decided to buy. In fact the feeder had only been in place for twenty minutes before a family of six goldfinch came along. The only problem that I now have is trying to keep pace with how quickly the feeders empty. It is lovely being able to watch them whilst I am having breakfast though. So those of you who told me to be patient were right, thank you.

And finally I could not resist including these two photos that I took just before the hot weather broke, one from my front door and one from the back. They sky was so dramatic and just kept changing by the minute.

Until next time, happy stitching

Maggi