Biscuits, tea and sewing

Today in the UK is national biscuit day. This happens every year and of course it would be rude not to join in with the celebrations. I'm reliably informed that biscuits have been around throughout history as they were a way of making flour and other ingredients last longer so they could be taken on long journeys. The Ancient Egyptians and the Romans took them on long sea voyages. Hardtack biscuits made of flour, water and salt were used in many military and naval operations through the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. You can read more about hardtack HERE on wikipedia

In the UK biscuits are a sweet snack and are quite often flat dry and crunchy and often covered in chocolate. We have the Persians to thank for sweet biscuits as they experimented with adding other ingredients to the basic mixture. I'm so pleased they did as when the day is falling to pieces around your ears, a biscuit with a cup of tea serves as a good pick me up and is perfectly acceptable in the work setting, whereas an alcoholic drink isn't. When eaten with a cup of tea many of us like to dunk them and the art here is to 'dunk' it into your tea so it moistens the biscuit but it doesn't end up getting soggy and falling into your cup!  When I'm at work I like two biscuits with my mid morning tea and they keep me going until lunch time. In lock down as I'm getting less exercise I try to avoid biscuits but today Olly bought us some peanut butter biscuits he'd made.

My personal favourite is a digestive biscuit without the chocolate.

Lucy has finished doing buttonhole stitch around the rabbits on her first block. She was a little worried as this is the first embroidery stitch she has learnt to do and didn't want to ruin her block. I was telling her about our embroidery lessons when I was in junior school (age 7 to 11) The boys in the class also had to join in, much to their annoyance. I didn't really enjoy embroidery at that age as I thought it rather slow but now I love sitting doing some hand sewing.

I normally have a small monthly subscription box of fabrics but when we went into lock down it was paused. This month they have done a limited run of the box and I ordered one. I'm so happy I did as the fabrics are so pretty.

The subscription box always comes with a pattern and this one was no exception. The pattern is for a rainbow quilt and I love it. I had to stop myself reaching for my cutting board and making a start straight away.

Being sensible I suppose I should finish my scrappy quilt first. So tomorrow I'll get the machine set up and finish the last few rows. I'll then add a border and it will be finished and ready to be sandwiched once I have some more wadding and fabric for the backing.

Tonight I'm going to settle down with the hexie bag I'm making. So far this week every time I've planned to work on it something has happened to stop me. Tonight we are ordering in a curry from our favourite Indian restaurant and just chilling out. So no cooking to do and minimal clearing up to do once we've eaten. A long evening of sewing sounds perfect. I think I'll go and make a start while we're waiting for dinner to arrive.

Lyndsey