Sunday, May 27, 2007

Not what we had in mind.

Ho hum. O2 have changed their mobile email in some way so I can't blog on the go. I am writing this on paper to type up at home (actually I am typing right now :). When I get home I will have to try and find out how to fix it so I will be able to blog from the NEC again this year.

We have been trying to race. I was fairly calm when I found out that we were supposed to have rain on Sunday. I have a lot of quilts that need hanging sleeves, a job I find very dull. Perfect for the rain during racing. I've found that by folding down one of the back seats in the Capri I can make quite a reasonable workspace, which is also fairly easy to keep clean a dry even in a very muddy field.

There was a shower on Friday during which I got most of a sleeve on to a bed quilt. This was fine as we also managed a good amount of racing (more would have been nice but still). The Ugly stick is now behaving fairly well and we were hopeful for the rest of the racing. Sunday however seemed to have other ideas. We have had pouring rain all day, at 15:06 they cancelled the racing for the day.

OK so I did get a lot done, but we had paid to race. It did also give us a rare chance to socialize with the rest of the team. A plan was made to meet for pizza and then go bowling, both close to our hotel, what could possibly go wrong. Well, as soon as we tried to pull out of the hotel car park there was an interesting squealing noise. Not a problem with torrential rain the fan belt had probably got wet, it would be a miracle if it wasn't wet. This was quickly followed by more crunchy squawks and we decided ti was time to stop. The fan belt had shredded itself and wrapped around the fan in the process. Great, still we had a spare and most of the tools we required, the next door garage kindle lent us a big torch and soon we were on our way again. It was funny that having left the track clean we now were oily and grimy. Still we were back on our way, but no not quite that simple, for some reason the car was running very rough and kept stalling on us. The hotel is on one side of a dual carriage way, to get back to it we needed to turn around twice, once pretty much at the pizza place. So we thought we might as well press on, if nothing else there would be other people there with transport to help us sort the car out. So we find the first roundabout and turn, then quickly find a traffic jam, someone had managed to drive into the wall at the side of the road, they were fine, but the traffic wasn't. It is exactly what you don't want with a sick plane. Bizarrely even with the set backs, we got there and had a good time. The car wanted it's timing adjusting and was then prepared to get us home. I even won the bowling, I can't remember the last time that happened.

I have had a cunning idea. I don't have a lot of space in my house and I have a lot of bed quilts. Some of the hotel rooms we stay in have a good amount of space around the bed. Are you seeing where this is going? Yup I have a plan to photograph a couple of quilts each time we rent a decent size room. My quilts are a bit big for the hotel beds but it is better than i could manage at home so I am pleased. It also means I am getting better value for money from the room. It does surprise me the range of rooms you get for very similar money. Size, quality of bathroom and toiletries vary enormously. The room this time was a good size, but no toiletries supplied at all. There was a vending machine in reception for you to buy anything you had forgotten. We couldn't figure out a way to get any heating in the room either. Still the quilts look OK, which is the important thing, and it is close to the track and all the local facilities. It also has an American Diner next door which I would like to try sometime.

So here are the pictures I took this time. The upper one is 'My Fat Quarter of Paradise'. As you can see it is a big quilt and doesn't really fit a double bed. Still I think it looks pretty good on the bed in the hotel. I like the way the neutral decor works with the quilts, very handy. I bet they didn't think of it when they planned the rooms.

The second quilt is 'Road to Mondrian', I have now bought the fabric for 'Road to Mondrian 2' but I don't know when I will have time to make it. I should say the room walls weren't actually that strong a colour, maybe it is something to do with the camera focusing on the quilts. These pictures also gave me another chance to play with my new flash. I think I need to spend a bit of time with it to get the best from it, but it does very nicely remove the shadow of my wide angle lens, which was a lot of my reason for wanting it.

2 comments:

Penny said...

Those quilts look really good, and they look like they were chosen to go with the wall colour.

Hopefully you can sort out the problems with the fan belt. I thought of your mechanical skills this weekend when I was having a problem with the tension on my sewing machine: I'm sure it wouldn't have fazed you!

CONNIE W said...

The quilts show up well with the neutral background of the room. They both are pretty.