Happy Birthday To Me!

 You don’t want to know how long we had to wait after 40 candles were set alight for the wax to harden enough to remove. The children organised it all.

 They gave me some wonderful fabric

 Which I had a hand in chosing. I thought these Feeling Goovy ones from the Fat Quarter Shop would make a good 40th birthday quilt as I was born in 1971

 These were on sale

 Love the sewing machines!

 Anne Marie made a gorgeous 9 Patch mat. It reminds me of Spring. Thank you also for the chocolates, red fabric and the Norway/English brooch.

 Ulla sent scissors, whooper swan soap, chocolates, a gorgeous rook book made by Kaija and lastly a Kalevala necklace which inspired the stunning wallhanging below made with vintage and natural dyed threads. Thank you so much Ulla.

 Annie sent one of her beautiful porcelain plaques. Big hugs Annie thank you so much.

 Thank you Tracy for these cheerful cupcakes, the matching notepad, necklace and card.

 Thank you Stephanie for the colourful dresden in the fabric range I really liked but never bought. I love it! Thank you also for the Autumnal notelets- my fav season.

 Thank you Simone for the cute teapot, salad servers, Delph bookmark, beads, lavender bubble bath, and Dutch cookery book. On the right you will also see the 3 mats she made Lovely Husband and the children. Each was perfect for them. It was so much fun to meet one another in the real world, but more of that next time.

 And lastly thank you Suzie for the coin purse and matching organiser, the reel nail file face pack and chocolates. I hope you are feeling a lot better soon.

 Thank you all so much for helping celebrate my birthday.

 Here is my main present -he arrived yesterday.

 This smiley face belongs to Bungle. He will be 6 on the 1st July.

 Precious needed a snuggle hound after Angel died. Already they sit together.

 He has good manners with them at food time. All in all he is trying hard to learn how to fit in a house for the first time in his life.

 I looked up his history- greyhounds have tattoos in their ears. His Irish mother (3/4 of racing greyhounds in the UK come over from Ireland) is listed as having 13 offspring but as only he and a brother are listed for racing purposes, the number is likely to be far higher as there are a lot more than 2 in a litter usually. In other litters only 7 and 4 are listed, so possiblyaround 21 are likely to have been born but some showed no interest in racing so weren’t registered or tattooed. Of those 13 registered, only 9 ever raced, and Bungle here only had 7 races in 2 months. There is a high wastage in the Greyhound Racing industry and there aren’t enough retirement racing kennels run by the industry. Charities are doing what they can to help the hounds. If you are looking for a dog then do consider a greyhound. Many are taken into foster care so they are used to homes before finding their forever home.

 Bungle wasn’t even 2 years old when he was retired from racing and in a strange country.  The next 3 years are a blank. He was brought in to a pound aged 5 and luckily a rescue picked him up before he was put to sleep. He had been with the rescue since August waiting for a home. Big lads are harder to home than dainty girls even though they are more laid back.

 I think he’s pleased to have found a home of his own.

 It will take him a while to settle in properly as there are so many new things to get used to.

 He follows anyone who is doing anything and has a soft spot for Precious. I’ll let you know how he gets on. He reminds me of Scooby Doo characterwise as he loves his food and playing with toys. The other thing I found out is that his great gran is the same as Angel’s was. Now how special is that?

 Suzie had a birthday last week too. She likes knitting so I knitted her a sack to put yarn in.

 I lined it in heavy duty cotton so no knitting needles can fall through.

 Of course there were leftovers, so a needlecase to put her bodkin in. Inner.

 Outer.

 There was a little more left over so I made a pincushion.

 Oh yes I had already cut out an apron from the main cloth.

 There was just enough leftovers to make a hanging plaque of her name, and some fabric for lavender bags. Happy Birthday Suzie!

 Here is Tiny Town block 4 which I am making with Anne Marie.

 I am going to make it using heat and bond and blanket stitch from now on.

 I am using Moda’s Simplicity range for most of the appliques as I have some left over from another quilt.

 It’s a lot of fun to make.

Next time I will share Amsterdam with you. I have whittled photographs but will need to whittle again. There were over 800 to choose from! Best of all I met Simone for the first time and she showed us a lot of places we would never have found including another blogger Annelies ‘s fabric shop.


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