The front facade of the of the HQ of the fleet – Edificio del Armada Nacional – this is one of my favourite buildings here.

But instead of quilting, today I whipped up a couple of quick gourmet-from-scratch recipes and had some friends around to lunch. It went well, although the lead up included finding I’d bought strawberry flavoured yoghurt instead of plain for the dressing for the cucumber. Leftovers ensure dinner tonight is no problem, so I will do some more quilting later. There is still rain around – a wet saturday might see the whole thing finished…. but the Tree of Life thing hasn’t gone away after all, and I have to fit that in, and present it ready for hanging on the morning of monday 16th, ie barely 10 days away – and right now I’m wondering whether to ditch what I have done and re-do the surface design before quilting, or plough on, but not happily – there is about a 30 – 48 hour window of time in which to make this decision. Gut feeling tells me it would be a better thing to do a new surface design … and I will publish either one or two pics when done, I promise! One thing successful procrastinators like myself need to be able to do is pull a rabbit out of the hat at the last minute.

Not bad considering the several interruptions – 36 squares added to the total makes this the handquilting halfway mark. But it’s book club this morning, and that will take up to lunchtime, so it will be afternoon before I am quilting today – but on the other hand, DH is away for the night, so there will be more time without interruption later, too. I have just read Alexandra Fuller’s “Let’s Not Go to the Dogs Tonight” A white African childhood coloured by the alcoholic mother – a dysfunctional family in the turmoil of history – sounds terrible but is fascinating and really well written without maudlin longing for a doomed way of life – that of white farmers in black Africa.

This is coming along nicely – but with still 2/3 (ie 100 squares) hand quilting to go, though, this is where I find it hard to hold concentration and plough on to finish this part of the work – and it’s where recorded books really come into their own. Although I read “Life of Pi” by Yann Martel a couple of years a go, that is long enough ago for so much of the book to be new and freshly enjoyed. An english visitor on the weekend, familiar with things like quilting bees and guilds, asked did I have a circle of quilters here – the short answer is no , and mostly I don’t miss that, but with the qualification that at such times, just quilting your way through a couple of hours of quilt-based yackety yack, is another good way to get through the work with apparent ease and no loss of focus. It struck me this morning that if there were a way to record the several online chat/email groups I belong to, that would be a perfect background, too. In each of them, there are several writers whose opinions I always find interesting and sometimes provocative, but always worthwhile. So, now I am off to go quilt some more squares – today’s challenge is to see how many I can do in what I estimate will be at least 6 hours spent ‘at the frame’. No, actually that is misleading – I sit in my art deco bridge chair, divinely comfortable, with my quilting ‘hoop’/rectangle and quilt resting on the down-adjusted ironing board, needles thread and scissors to the right hand side at the end. Good light pouring in all round me…and so endeth today’s epistle.

Yamandu, a gaucho who was there and spent some time dodging my camera before coming over introducing himself and posing…these men cut very fine figures on or off horseback, with wonderful posture and elegant dress. It’s a great sight to see a parade of hundreds of them riding along to a rodeo ground…