Overcoming jet lag and exploring connections

We arrived back in our home in Warwickshire late on Sunday night after a weekend's travelling from New Zealand. It's a long journey, over 12,000 miles.

We have spent a wonderful three months on the other side of the world and now we're back, picking up the reins of life here in the UK. It has been lovely to see our daughter, son-in-law and beautiful little granddaughter who was so excited when we went to have dinner with them on Monday that she went pink in the face and literally jumped up and down on the spot - just like Tigger!

So now we are trying to overcome jet lag! On Monday night we suddenly crashed and had to go to bed at 7.30pm. I did quite well on Tuesday, managing to stay awake until 10.30pm which meant I slept through till 6am. Last night it was back to feeling weird (tired out, not thinking straight) so off to bed at 8.30pm.  Having these too-early bedtimes means we are awake for ridiculous periods during the middle of the night.

So, what do I do?  Look at my iPad, gaze at Flickr pages, flit from BlogSpot to BlogSpot.
This brings up some very interesting connections:
I have had a Flickr page ( Koshka2 ) since September 2009, quite a long time.  Over the years I have 'Favorited" many photos, 2,737 in total! During one of my extended wakeful periods I looked back through my Favourites.

Firstly it was very evident from my choices what sort of things appeal to me:  Bright, Scrappy, Stars, Log cabins, Applique ( not the Baltimore style, more naïve flowers ), String Quilts, Pictorial Styles ( like Gwen Marston or Freddy Moran would produce ), Coin Quilts etc.

And then if you look at the quilts I make, there are the same themes again.  No surprise there, I guess.

And my Favourites include many creations from blogs or Flickr people I follow:
Blue Mountain Daisy, Little Island Quilting, s.o.t.a.k. handmade, I'm a ginger monkey, niftyquilts, Elmosmate, Helene408, roccogal, Mary@Molly Flanders, littleguineapigs, Linda Rotz Miller Quilts, Peoniagialla and many more.  If these folk are new to you, check them out on Flickr - you will be in for a treat.

During my nightly flitting though blogs I discovered a new name, Mary Johnson.  Her blog is MaryQuilts.com or, if you Google "Mary Johnson blog quilts" you find a different blog of Mary's with another whole pathway of links to follow. An Aladdin's Cave!
I spent ages and ages scrolling back through Mary's blog, following her older posts, her Links, Instruction sheets, her tips for improving your quilts and so on.  Along the way I found her HeartString section, quilts she and many other people following her instructions, make for many different charities.  Here I found a definite connection as one of my recent finishes was a String Quilt which I named "Heartstrings".  How about that for a connection? I emailed Mary and received a lovely long email reply. So kind.

I am off to my Patchwork group this morning. It will be lovely to meet up with old friends again and catch up with their news and see what they are currently working on.  Me?  No quilting as I haven't been in my sewing room yet but I do have some knitting that I started in NZ when I hadn't yet started a new quilt.  It's a white basket weave style premature baby-size blanket which, when finished, will be donated to our local hospital. I am accumulating a stash of items to take: premature sized quilts and little knitted hats.