The view from our cottage

The last two years we have been coming via a roundabout route, supposedly cheaper but involving so many stopovers, flights and taxi rides that I’m sure it must end up costing more, as well as wasting time. This year we went back to the old route and flew directly from Brunei to Manila. For the first time since I can remember the plane left and arrived on time, a smooth transfer to the hotel, which was fairly ordinary but clean, comfortable enough (apart from the pillows which were like blocks of rubber)and relatively quiet for the centre of Manila. Up early in the morning, breakfast and then a taxi dash to the domestic airport, arriving in good time for our eight thirty flight. I couldn’t believe it, everything was going so smoothly.

No queue at the check in, I knew the cases were overweight but was prepared for that, and then the girl at the check in looked at us and said “do you realize that you are booked on the 8.30am flight for Thursday 10^th December?” Today is Tuesday 1^st December!!!

Whose fault? Mine. I booked the flight online a couple of months ago, printed out the ticket and never thought that much about it. I did check the booking several times but obviously didn’t look at it closely enough, and didn’t get my husband to double check it. Luckily the airline office was just round the corner so we were able to go round and change our booking. Unfortunately the early flight was already full and we had to pay quite an extra chunk of money, but were able to get on a flight a couple of hours later. I couldn’t get cross and blame anyone else as it was totally my fault, so nothing for it but to find a spot in the airport that wasn’t too freezing get a cup of coffee and sit down and write my blog which I’ve neglected a bit recently as I’ve been so busy in the last couple of weeks.

I should have checked the dates more carefully!

Now I’m looking forward to a month of relaxation: windsurfing, swimming, catching up on a bit of reading, enjoying some good food and spending time in the company of good friends. I didn’t bring any sewing with me as I feel it is good to have a complete break. Actually I was tempted to bring some hand sewing and very soon start to miss it, so by the time I get back to Brunei I’m always itching to get back to my sewing machine. I do intend to work on creating some new designs while I’m here so I won’t be completely out of touch.

Boracay from the air

trees and foliage

I have been continuing to work on my rain forest design this week. This time I tried a new technique for adding leaves or foliage to the background, I applied fusible web to the back of small scraps of fabrics then snipped them into small pieces and applied them to the background. When I was happy with the placement I fused them in place and then used variegated cotton thread and a free motion zig zag to stitch over them. I was pleased with the way this turned out because it makes the background trees recede into the background and look more realistic. i did the same for the fallen leaves in the foreground, very time consuming but effective.

detail of forest plant

local beach view from the water