Buzzing head

I got loads of ideas tonight what to be doing next. Plus my eye caught this fabric in a corner of the shelf

Excuse my drooling...
This will be turned into a handbag that Marina showed us this evening. A squareish bag with two pleated pockets on the front.

At the moment I am doing my Christmas tree mat and got to use most of my fabric I had with me. I've opted for the red/green/gold colour scheme and since this pattern will give you two I will give one to my mum for Christmas. Pictures later when I've finished sewing all the strips together.

I got pictures of my lattice bag even though it's not completed but you get the idea. Jamie acted bag holder for me

And the other side

Soon ready to take all my goodies with me to the course

Quilting course

Tomorrow I am starting my quilting course again after the summer break. Can't wait to get there and see what new and exciting things Marina has done during the summer to inspire us!

I've been making a handbag during the summer when I've had time to keep all my stuff in when going to the course and I must say my English wasn't really ready for all the technical terms in sewing instructions. I don't know how many times I've read and re read the instructions in the magazine so I would get it right and not do something silly with the lovely fabric. It's called a lattice bag and I'll take a picture tomorrow to show you how far I've come. I think all that is left to do is to topstitch around the edges and sew the handles together at the top. Oh and find a nice big button. Not a gumdrop button but a button of some kind... :)

Poin curse

Yes it is a poin curse as I told Jamie... Sometimes I wonder how my mind works. But of course it is a Coin Purse that I've made from a tutorial by Bethany. I said either there be pictures of a finished purse or there would be cursing. Well it looks alright so there are pictures but there were some cursing when it got tight to put the zipper on. But I at least managed to remember to keep the zipper unzipped before sewing it all together... I made it slightly smaller as well since the zipper I had at home was very short and I wanted to make one today and the Haberdashery shop (just love that word) is closed by now. Even though I could have used a bigger zipper I thought that was a bit of overkill when seeing how chunky it was. Maybe for something else.

A very nice black fabric with silver lines and a crisp white on white lining. Me likes!

Autumn?

Yes, it is looking that way. Temperatures are dropping and is around +7 at night with night frosts in the north of the county. Not any frosts here yet though, thankfully. I still have veg in the garden that needs a bit longer before they are ready! All spuds are out of the ground though and are drying in our storage, going to turn them tomorrow and see if they need a bit longer before putting them in boxes for winter storage in our cellar.

Not so much quilting done for a while. But the quilting course I'm going to is starting up again so will get much more done soon. I would like to make a Christmas tree rug that Marina (teacher) showed us last spring. They made that one at the course previous to the one I joined. It's a big star in all kinds of colours. I have been buying nice Christmas fabrics when I've found some with this in mind. Still can't decide though if I'm doing it red/white/green, red/green/gold or white/blue/silver.... Got to think a bit more about that. I've been getting fabric in all those colours though, just in case you know.
I still have a very pathetic stash since I've really just started collecting quilting fabric. I got loads of other fabric though in my closet! Mainly for curtains and just because the fabric was too nice to walk by without buying a meter or two. Can never have enough fabric...

Cracking cheese Gromit!

I wonder, how many types of cheese do you have in your fridge at the moment?

Me myself have, lets see, Gouda, Edam, spicy seed cheese, oil marinated soft cheese, goats cheese, greek feta cheese in 2 varieties, locally made Brie, parmesan and your bog standard squeeze tube cheese(delicious on sandwiches).

I just wondered because me and my mum went to the local market today and they had an international food market in the square so that is where I got the Gouda and goats cheese from and realized when I got home and put the new cheeses in the fridge that there already were quite a few in there!

Rain rain rain rain rain rain rain rain

Yes, it is raining.



We went to my sisters today to finish off the wallpapering in her upstairs sitting room and painting the last wall in her stairwell. We've been very busy since Monday but now it is done! Or so we thought. Sister did mention yesterday that it would be nice as well if we painted the actual staircase as well since it is in horrid yellow pine which makes me cringe and isn't my sisters favourite either by the looks of it. So tomorrow we are going back to start sanding it so we can paint it in a light grey. But I don't mind, sister pays me to do all this and she is truly generous since she doesn't have to do it all herself. I still have a few days of my holiday left so why not. Besides it is always nice to visit sister and her bf. We get very nice meals as well.... if we ask politely...

Bread

I am baking a bit of bread today. I've found a most excellent Swedish book about bread making which contains really really nice recipes. What is a bit annoying is that there are some typos in the ingridients list which makes for some very runny dough or very hard dough depending on what they've missed. First time I found out one of the recipes was a bit odd was when I had added half the stated amount of flour and the dough was made alread. You know, the stage when it's gone all nice and soft and has just the right texture and there I was trying to figure out how to put the rest of the flour in. I didnt in the end otherwise it wouldn't have been bread, it would have been brick.

Well the bread I'm making today is called Pain Polka and here it was the amount of liquid that was wrong. I didn't twig either when I read 9dl of water to only 1,4 l of flour. That is way to little flour. Oh well I compensated with adding more flour and now have 2 HUGE round breads cooling on the rail rather then 2 medium sized round bread... Ho hum, the more for Jamie to eat and I am pretty sure he won't complain one bit!

I made a note on the page about the blunder and will try it out with 4 dl of water with the 1 dl of sour cream instead of 8+1.

A Very Good Day

That is what today has been. I have finished my mums overnight bag she asked for earlier. I am making a move on a HUGE bedspread I foolishly promised to make for a friend. I cant see that I will ever manage to quilt it in my machine though. So option two is hand quilt it, which come to think of it might be worse!

Besides finishing the little bag I made  three 6 inch squares of crazy quilt. I've always wanted to try it out and see what its like. And I can tell you, it is very addictive!

Here are some pictures of them all. Jamie very kindly helped me pin the side panels on the BIG beadspread while he was watching the english football premier on telly so he got caught on camera.

The little overnightbag for mum. I made a pocket in this one as well. Me likes to make pockets I think...

And finally my little attempt at crazy quilting. It was so fun I could have used ALL my scraps up if I would have had enough fusible web.

Oh I almost forgot

This is what I have been doing today. My mum wanted me to make a small handbag for a friends grand daughter who just have turned 4 years old. All that is missing is a nice big button for the clasp. I enjoyed doing this one even though I haven't done many handbags, it is 8 inches square so maybe a good size for a little missy? I even made a little pocket inside!

Look what I've found!

Yes this is my very first quilt, still not completed because what doesn't show in this picture is how bubbly it is and not really matching up. So when I had put on the outer border I stashed it away wondering what to do with it. I pulled it out this morning when I was going through my closet where I have all my material and thought I might actually finish it. Since it being sooooo very bubbly I think I might give hand quilting a go rather then try and machine quilt it on my old machine which will probably make it worse. Maybe a wash and stretch while still damp might help crease out some of it but I am doubtful.

Garden looking good

I promised some pictures and since the sun decided to shine almost all day today even though they said it wouldnt i went out  and took some pictures.

This one is of the front side of the new deck with roses and dahlias. I love my pots this year, Zinnias in a dark pink and mums double petunias. Lovely!

This is our vegetable garden showing how well it is doing at the moment with house and new deck

We are growing runner beans along those poles since we didn't manage to fill the bed with flowers i thought it could be nice with some climbing plant and decided on runner beans and some lilac French beans that really have a nice deep lilac coloured flower. The beans themselves are deep lilac but turn green after boiling.

This is our new project along the hedge towards our street. Just a shady spot for various shade lovers. Plan is to do a little wooden pier instead of a grass walkway between the house and hedge. I got a picture in my head you see where ferns and grasses grow over the boards and there are larger bushes to make it a bit like a mini woodland. Am not sure what to do closest to the house though, it has to be something that can manage without extra water so we don't need to water close to the house

Bye bye baby... car

Yes, our Volvo decided to give up and make some loud noise and rattle since it wasn't happy. After a trip to the garage were it really got its death sentence (needs new exhaust, new hand break, and new rear breaks) we decided not to fix it since it is getting old and went hunting for a newish car. We had a little look around but I knew that i wanted a Toyota if possible as our next car. So after test driving a nice little Toyota Auris twice we decided to go ahead and buy it. Next Thursday we're collecting it and leaving our old car in, I am still amazed we got as much as we did for our sorry little car. Btw the Toyota dealers were very good and I'm impressed with their customer service. Didn't have such a good experience from the Volvo dealers and garage I might add.... I will post a picture of it when we get it.

It has been a bit of a stressful start of the week with the car surprisingly breaking. But even with that its been a good week with Jamie's parents visiting. Today we took it easy and cleaned a bit, I even washed all the windows! After a short walk this evening we picked our gooseberries, raspberries and black currants. It's just not possible to do it during the day when all the wasps are about, it is a really bad wasp year here. Just got to wait for the night frosts to come and kill a few off. But hopefully the frosts keep off for at least a month!

All the berries are now cleaned and either frozen or in the fridge waiting to be turned into jam and marmalade tomorrow. All other veg is really growing now when it's turned slightly cooler and is raining more. I am growing 5 different kind of spuds this year and they all taste really nice. The early ones are suffering from some sort of mould on the leaves though so will be eaten first and quickly. The others are keeping better but then they are winter storage ones. This year I am growing Maria and Princess which are early, Amandine which is medium late but keeps very well for winter as well and Asterix and Sava for winter keeping. Dont know if I will do the early ones again though.
Other veg that is groing well now is red and white cabbage, all my squash are setting fruit like crazy, onions are soon ready for harvest, they are really bulking up! Got to remember what kind they are and get the same ones for next year, am very impressed with the sizes I am getting. The carrots are doing well, I am weeding them out by pulling the biggest ones up for eating now. Don't know if we will get any sprouts, they look awfully tiny but I am hopefull. The swedes are starting to look like they actually are there under the soil and not just a bunch of leaves. Just picked a small 2 person portion of sugar snap peas today, they are really lovely to eat raw so the portion got slightly smaller before they got boiled and bagged away in the freezer. All my beans are looking much happier now with more and more flowers showing, I think it must be all the rain and the extra watering that Jamies dad did while trying out the best way of emptying a waterbutt by the far corner of our house using a siphon. It still works!